Origin of Life 'Gateway' Remains Hidden

ICR ^ | June 17, 2009 | Brian Thomas, M.S.

[GodGunsGuts]

UK researchers believe they may have “broken new ground” in the ongoing quest to find out how living cells first evolved. The New York Times proclaimed, “An English chemist has found the hidden gateway” to the origin of life.[1] But despite the claim that the scientists “have developed an experiment that sheds new and fascinating light on how life on Earth might have begun,”[2] what they really demonstrated was that the molecules of life can only come from living cells...

[GodGunsGuts]

Ping!

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[fishtank]

Nice article.

I guess “Steampunk Spon-Gen” hasn’t solved jack-cheese yet.

[GOPGuide]

I personally believe in Macroevolution, but I still have serious doubts about non-life being able to turn into self replicating life (aka, “abiogenesis”).

[Cheetahcat]

So the egg came first or the chicken “experts” like algore at it again!

[mc6809e]

what they really demonstrated was that the molecules of life can only come from living cells.

Since "God" isn't supposed to be made of living cells, then we can rule him out as the creator, right?

[metmom]

But despite the claim that the scientists “have developed an experiment that sheds new and fascinating light on how life on Earth might have begun,”

Imagine that.

Intelligent (presumably) scientists develop (design) an experiment that sheds no new light on how they think that life on earth might have begun because it's all based on unsubstantiated presumption.

[CottShop]

[[what they really demonstrated was that the molecules of life can only come from living cells.]]

—what they really demonstrated was that it takes intelligent Design to create life- whether they like it or not—

There- fixed it. It takes itnelligent design at every step to create life- and htese butt ugly blind scientists just keep proving htis fact over and over again by showing hte NEED to create designer cells and molecules, and by having to manipulate the environemnts in which htese designer molecules exist in ways that are un-natural, and by showing htat these designer molecules MUST be protected from all of life’s natural destructive forces in order for htese designer molecules to exist long enough for these butt ugly blind scientists to ‘evolve’ new intelligent designed designer molecules that can itneract with hteir first intelligently designed designer molecules in ways that again, do not exist in nature.

[[sheds new and fascinating light]]

Way to overhype something you STILL don’t have a clue about NYT! Yep- the NYT’s keeps on getting exited about INTELLIGENTLY DESIGNED experiments - and keeps tryign to pass it off as ‘progress toward the explanation for how life’ suppoedly arose from non life- it just exposes their ignorance- At least they’re consistently blind and ignorant

[lurk]

Old news.

Dawkins, in the Blind Watchmaker, says that the beginning of living cells began with molecular bonding in clay.

So there you go. Problem solved.

[RegulatorCountry]

If these people could just step back from their philosophical revulsion regarding tradition and morality long enough, they might realize that it’s far more plausible that life was placed here by some external agency, than clinging to all the millions and billions of years they require for life to have somehow self organized and mindlessly improved itself.

Just when did the notion that genuine “science” absolutely cannot allow for outside intervention in the origins of life on Earth arise? I’m guessing the 30’s. Hubble was well along with advocating the denial of any conclusion that led to an assumption of exceptionalism for Earth or even this solar system by 1937.

[metmom]

Dawkins, in the Blind Watchmaker, says that the beginning of living cells began with molecular bonding in clay.

No matter how hard some people try, they just can't get away from Scripture.

[GodGunsGuts]

LOL!

[metmom]

Just when did the notion that genuine “science” absolutely cannot allow for outside intervention in the origins of life on Earth arise? I’m guessing the 30’s.

It could be.

The problem is that they've painted themselves into a corner. Science has no plausible explanation for abiogenesis as of yet, and the faith that they exhibit in the confidence that some day science WILL be able to explain it, sans external meddling, is impressive.

[Donald Rumsfeld Fan]

CELL..

[FormerRep]

However, an analysis by Ekland suggests that in the sequence space of 220 nucleotide long RNA sequences, a staggering 2.5 x 10^112 sequences are efficent ligases [12]. Not bad for a compound previously thought to be only structural. Going back to our primitive ocean of 1 x 10^24 litres and assuming a nucleotide concentration of 1 x 10-7 M [23], then there are roughly 1 x 10^49 potential nucleotide chains, so that a fair number of efficent RNA ligases (about 1 x 10^34) could be produced in a year, let alone a million years. The potential number of RNA polymerases is high also; about 1 in every 10^20 sequences is an RNA polymerase [12]. Similar considerations apply for ribosomal acyl transferases (about 1 in every 10^15 sequences), and ribozymal nucleotide synthesis [1, 6, 13]. Similarly, of the 1 x 10^130 possible 100 unit proteins, 3.8 x 10^61 represent cytochrome C alone! [29] There's lots of functional enyzmes in the peptide/nucleotide search space, so it would seem likely that a functioning ensemble of enzymes could be brewed up in an early Earth's prebiotic soup. So, even with more realistic (if somewhat mind beggaring) figures, random assemblage of amino acids into "life-supporting" systems (whether you go for protein enzyme based hypercycles [10], RNA world systems [18], or RNA ribozyme-protein enzyme coevolution [11, 25]) would seem to be entirely feasible, even with pessimistic figures for the original monomer concentrations [23] and synthesis times.

[ElectricStrawberry]

Oooooo.....another uber-intelligent POS article by Brian Thomas *MS.

These guys spontaneously generate a form of RNA molecule and Brian Thomas *MS can’t handle that?

[Ben Ficklin]

Its called Astrobiology. The study of the origin, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe.

[goodusername]

“what they really demonstrated was that the molecules of life can only come from living cells.”

—What are these “molecules of life”? Nucleobases? amino acids?

“Evolutionists have theorized that life started with RNA molecules, but one difficulty has been how RNA’s building blocks, nucleotides, spontaneously assembled themselves prior to linking together to form the chain-like RNAs.”

—Nucleotides have been produced in experiments in which researchers believe replicate natural conditions going back decades. It hasn’t been a “difficulty” for quite a while now.

Just last week I read a story where nucleotides were produced in an experiment in ice:
http://discovermagazine.com/2008/feb/did-life-evolve-in-ice
“Over a quarter-century, the frozen ammonia-cyanide blend had coalesced into the molecules of life: nucleobases, the building blocks of RNA and DNA, and amino acids, the building blocks of proteins.”
(Yeah, I know the story is in the Feb 2008 edition, I’m a tad behind in my reading).

Nor is it an issue getting the nucleotides to form into RNA, even hundreds of nucleobases long:
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/orig/2005/00000035/00000005/00005009

[CottShop]

[[The problem is that they’ve painted themselves into a corner. Science has no plausible explanation for abiogenesis as of yet,]]

Worse than that- working from the present on backerds- they have no explanation for macroevolution either- everythign discovered in science is nothign but microevolutionary evidence, and nothign to date proves that microevolution can create new non species specific organs and features needed for macroevolution- they haven’t even been able to jump this biologically impossible hurdle yet, and they’re tryign to show that amino acids can form under carefully controlled and manipulated circumstances in the lab? Where’s all the informaiton and metainformation coming from to keep ‘species’ fit once they do manage to create single cells out of chemicals? Where is the needed metainformaiton goiong to come from to move a psecies beyond it’s own kind? Random mutaitons sure aren’t capable of providing that kind of mega-informaiton, thta’s for sure.