Posted on 01/09/2009 10:46:53 AM PST by Coyoteman
A new molecule that performs the essential function of life - self-replication - could shed light on the origin of all living things.
If that wasn't enough, the laboratory-born ribonucleic acid (RNA) strand evolves in a test tube to double itself ever more swiftly.
"Obviously what we're trying to do is make a biology," says Gerald Joyce, a biochemist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. He hopes to imbue his team's molecule with all the fundamental properties of life: self-replication, evolution, and function.
Joyce and colleague Tracey Lincoln made their chemical out of RNA because most researchers think early life stored information in this sister molecule to DNA. And unlike the stuff of our genomes, RNA molecules can catalyse chemical reactions.
"We're trying to jump in at the last signpost we have back there in the early history of life," Joyce says.
Continues...
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
I can’t stand these so-called theologists with absolutely no background in science attempting to explain the origins of life...
All from “PhD”’s, right?
You must care an awful lot!
*snicker*
You weren't supposed to notice that.
“laboratory-born ribonucleic acid (RNA)”...He hopes to imbue his team’s molecule with all the fundamental properties of life...Joyce and colleague Tracey Lincoln made their chemical out of RNA...Joyce’s team created...Further lab tinkering made this molecule better at copying itself, but this is not the same as bringing it to life...Lincoln redesigned the molecule to forge a sister RNA...”I wouldn’t call these molecules alive,” he cautions...Joyce says his team has endowed its molecule with another function...More fundamentally, to mimic biology, a molecule must gain new functions on the fly, without laboratory tinkering. Joyce says he has no idea how to clear this hurdle with his team’s RNA molecule....”If somebody makes something great in the lab, it’s fantastic. But really the origin of life on Earth is an historical problem that we’re never going to be able to witness and verify,” he says. (Bingo!—GGG)
Does it ever occur to these scientists (who are made in God’s image) that they are intelligently designing (non-living) molecules to mimic God’s pre-existing intelligent designs?
Except that scientists have no explanation of the origins of life, so they're no further ahead than the theologians.
At least for the theologian, we have the input from the One who did it. He should know what He's talking about it anyone.
And scientists have exactly what? concerning the origin of life?
The facts inadvertantly failed to support their contention, and thus had to be omitted :o(
The crucial difference being the timespan allowed. Billions of years vs. a few manhours. I'm surprised you overlooked this. [/sarc]
Blasphemy. ;-)
Heh, heh - Poor Wiley!
So do the Hindus, and every other religion out there.
By your logic, a believer in Norse mythology is more knowledgeable about the universe than a geologist or an astronomer.
Microevolution is trivial to demonstrate. It doesn’t affirm or refute species-level evolution.
Well, more like a cake that keeps on making cake as you pour in more ingredients.
Well, more like a cake that keeps on making cake as you pour in more ingredients.
[[Not content with achieving one hallmark of life in the lab, Joyce and Lincoln sought to evolve their molecule by natural selection. They did this by mutating sequences of the RNA building blocks, so that 288 possible ribozymes could be built by mixing and matching different pairs of shorter RNAs.
What came out bore an eerie resemblance to Darwin’s theory of natural selection: a few sequences proved winners, most losers. The victors emerged because they could replicate fastest while surrounded by competition, Joyce says.]]
Hmmmm- Swell, but like the link Coyote posts abotu the supposed rise in non intelligent complexity which uses a very sophisticated software program to preprogram certain outcomes, while protecting hte process from any unwanted bad effects, were Joyce’s experiments also tightly and intelligently controlled? Protecting certain outcomes until the desired results arose? Article doesn’t say, but I’ll bet this is the case-
[[Joyce says his team has endowed its molecule with another function, although he will not say what that might be before his findings are published.]]
Yup- Another unrealistic attempt to kick God out of creation by intelligently designing systems under strict scientifically sterile lab conditions-
[[More fundamentally, to mimic biology, a molecule must gain new functions on the fly, without laboratory tinkering. Joyce says he has no idea how to clear this hurdle with his team’s RNA molecule. “It doesn’t have open-ended capacity for Darwinian evolution.”]]
Woopsie- another dead end for Macroevolution- surprised this admission wasn’t written in microscopic letters and at the end of the article under a list of intelligence endowed contribotors to the project
[[”If somebody makes something great in the lab, it’s fantastic. But really the origin of life on Earth is an historical problem that we’re never going to be able to witness and verify,” he says.]]
Oh Darn!
On a more scientifically important point, I’ve created the perpetual motion machine- the only problem is that it needs energy to keep going, but by golly it’s a perpetual motion machine none-the-less- I declare it so because I got the parts to move!
I guess that means that origins are *not science* after all.
Now we're back to square one. Only the theologians have anything approaching an answer.
On a planet before life existed, the surroundings, by logic, would be biologically sterile.
Wow, let’s substantiate evolution by redefining it!
So, I guess they just experimentally demonstrated intelligent design, right?
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