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To: Forgiven_Sinner
My problem with cellular evolution is a little earlier: how did we go from non-life to life?

That depends on where you choose to draw the line between "non-life" and "life". Define your question more specifically and I'll be glad to answer.

The general answer is that "life" as we think of it includes many properties, but early "life" (or proto-life, or whatever you want to call it) wasn't that complicated. So while it seems baffling to think of "life" (*as we now know it*) arising *poof* from "non-life", instead the process was a much more gradual accumulation of properties, and there was no *poof* instant, nor any point where the preceding step was obviously "non-living" and the following step was obviously "alive" by our standards.

And how come all proteins are left handed, when the proteins we synthesize in vidrio are left and right handed?

They aren't all left-handed, just most of them. Numerous living things produce and incorporate right-handed amino acids. As for why, because things work out more neatly when working with building blocks that are mostly of the same handedness, so evolution favored processes of life which specialized in one "hand" (left, or right).

27 posted on 09/08/2004 9:25:04 PM PDT by Ichneumon ("...she might as well have been a space alien." - Bill Clinton, on Hillary, "My Life", p. 182)
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To: Ichneumon
My problem with cellular evolution is a little earlier: how did we go from non-life to life?

That depends on where you choose to draw the line between "non-life" and "life". Define your question more specifically and I'll be glad to answer.

Sure. How do we get from amino acids (primodial soup) to organisms that can take in food and reproduce?

And how come all proteins are left handed, when the proteins we synthesize in vitro are left and right handed?

They aren't all left-handed, just most of them. Numerous living things produce and incorporate right-handed amino acids. As for why, because things work out more neatly when working with building blocks that are mostly of the same handedness, so evolution favored processes of life which specialized in one "hand" (left, or right).

Excuse my lack of clarity. Here's my thought process: 1. synthesis of proteins produces left and right handed proteins. 2. current life has primarily left handed. 3. proto life must use only one handed proteins 4. How does the first organism start with only the right handed proteins when the solution contains both right and left handed proteins?

44 posted on 09/09/2004 10:28:47 AM PDT by Forgiven_Sinner (The Passion of the Christ--the top non-fiction movie of all time)
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