Chemists see first building blocks to life on Earth

Yahoo News ^ | Wed May 13, 5:05 pm ET

[Sopater]

PARIS (AFP) – British scientists said on Wednesday that they had figured out key steps in the process by which life on Earth may have emerged from a seething soup of simple chemicals.

Genetic information in living organisms today is held in deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), the famous "double helix" molecule of sugar, phosphate and a base.

But DNA is too sophisticated to have popped up in an instant, and one avenue of thought says its single-stranded cousin, ribonucleic acid, or RNA, came first.

RNA plays a key role in making proteins and, in viruses, is used to store genetic code.

It is chemically similar to DNA but is simpler and tougher in structure, and thus looks like a good candidate for Earth's first information-coding nucleic acid.

But for all its allure, the "RNA first" theory has run into practical problems.

Its three ingredients -- the base, ribose sugar and phosphate -- must have formed separately and then combined to form the molecule, according to conventional thinking.

Critics, though, say that RNA, while somewhat simpler than DNA, is still a complex molecule and could not have been assembled spontaneously.

These doubters have been comforted by the failure to find any feasible chain of chemical events to explain how the three components all came together.

But a paper published in the British journal Nature by University of Manchester chemists puts forward a different explanation.

[Sopater]

Well... let's see it in action.

[US Navy Vet]

OK let’s que up the “Oh Jeez not this Sh*t again” guy.

[freedumb2003]

>>Well... let’s see it in action.

You’re here, aren’t you?

[texan75010]

When will they figure out where the “soup of chemicals” came from?

[AreaMan]

Well... let's see it in action.

Building blocks of life! Fun for all ages:

[DaveyB]

Repeat, observe, verify... repeat, observe verify!

The rest is just science fiction!

[Sopater]

You’re here, aren’t you?

Our being here says nothing of how or why we came to be here.

[Pistolshot]

Opinions vary as to when the first organisms appeared on Earth.

One estimate, based on fossilised mats of bacteria found in Australia, is that this happened around 3.8 billion years ago, around 700 million years after the planet was formed.

Creationist debunking in 5.....4.....3.....

[muawiyah]

You can get water molecules to form extended chains of "double helix" formations under enough pressure. There's absolutely no reason such "double helix" formations can't absorb and incorporate other chemicals in the matrix to create DNA.

The proposal here involves low pressures, moderate temperatures, "warming Sun", etc. Note that they only get half way there ~ and even if they come up with an elegantly simple, straightforward pathway from this point to the completion of an RNA molecule, they still have to get from there to DNA.

Don't rule out the case that DNA can be formed spontaneously out of nothing but water, sugar, and garage floor cleaner under enough pressure!

[freedumb2003]

Repeat, observe, verify... repeat, observe verify!

So to understand geology, scientists have to create a planet and watch it gtow over billions of years? To understand astronomy they need to travel billions of light years to directly observe the phenomena they describe?

Science doesn't work that way.

[muawiyah]

The “soup” is usually envisioned as star dust in water. Lots of dust out there, and much of it comes from Super Nova explosions of giant suns. Water is less widely found.

[Sopater]

Creationist debunking in 5.....4.....3.....

Using words like "opinions" and "estimates" don't draw the fire of creationists as much as more absolute statements such as "Chemists see first building blocks to life on Earth". The title seems to indicate that the debate is over.

[freedumb2003]

Our being here says nothing of how or why we came to be here.

Science is pretty clear on the how. Science does not and should not deal with why.

[mnehring]

bfltr

[muawiyah]

Science is not clear on that particular question. The process discussed here doesn't take you from nothingness to DNA ~ it just addresses the narrow issue of how you can get two of the three processes believed needed for RNA (not DNA) to work simultaneously.

I'm holding out for DNA being a natural byproduct of processes that take place in water under intense pressure.

[Sopater]

Repeat, observe, verify... repeat, observe verify!

Science doesn't work that way.

Science does, evolutionism doesn't.

[mnehring]

+1

[freedumb2003]

Science does, evolutionism doesn't.

Evolution works just fine. Like I said, you are here so I guess it worked just fine. Well, good enough anyway.

[Sopater]

How it could have and how it actually did could be as far from each other as the East is from the West.

[freedumb2003]

Science is not clear on that particular question. The process discussed here doesn't take you from nothingness to DNA ~ it just addresses the narrow issue of how you can get two of the three processes believed needed for RNA (not DNA) to work simultaneously.

The minutiae are still very much under investigation -- the overall theory is pretty well set.