Posted: Mar 04, 2010 9:46 am
Early criticism of Miller's work in the scientific community focused upon the requirement for a reducing atmosphere in accordance with the Oparin model. However, subsequent workers determined by repeat experimentation, that a range of atmospheric constitutions would be suitable for a Miller-Urey type synthesis on a prebiotic Earth[6], several of those constitutions being only mildly reducing, expanding the range of conditions for which the Oparin model would be viable. More recently, work has suggested that the prebiotic Earth could have developed an atmosphere containing considerably more hydrogen than originally thought[7], making the Oparin reducing atmosphere once again more plausible. Indeed, the range of conditions under which amino acids could be synthesised has since been expanded to include interstellar ice clouds, courtesy of more recent research[8 - 14], and the Murchison meteorite was found to contain no less than ninety amino acids, nineteen of which are found on Earth, which were obviously synthesised whilst that meteorite was still in space. Other data from meteorites adds to this body of evidence[10, 15, 16].
What this does illustrate is that simple organic compounds, including amino acids - are indeed quite easily formed under quite a range of conditions, as long as the elements carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen are present - in approximately the right ratios.
Nothing really surprising about that if you understand the Chemistry.