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/ drjamestour WeChat - @drjamestour Posted on 11/26/2023 11:45:43 AM PST by daniel1212
[Video transcript] Can Scientists Answer These Questions? RNA, Abiogenesis, Chemical Natural Selection & more Dr. James Tour. [Video. [More of his videos here].
[Note: this is from a synthetic organic chemist at Rice University and who and what he presents here is way out of my league, and read just a little, but think it is worth posting. Thus I used https://poe.com/ to format this* provocative transcript from the YouTube video, which was a giant wall of text.] Note also that the main body of the transcript is here, but Question number 3 was evidently mistakenly listed in the vid as #4]
Okay, guys. I'll admit it. I was all wrong on the origin of life. These guys have it all figured out. They know where life came from. I am going to take down all the content on my YouTube channel where I have critiqued the origin of life on one condition.
What is this? I am going to name 10 key researchers that have published key papers in the area of origin of life, and I'm going to give all 10 of you a chance to answer five essential questions that need to be answered for the origin of life to be solved. What are these five questions? Well, they're the same five questions that I put up on a recent debate that some YouTubers have said have already been solved.
Show me the prebiotic chemistry that would do this coupling. This scheme is what James wanted me to write on the board. If their answer's good, take their answer. I'd like to see you as a researcher in the origin of life community take their answer and present that as a solution. Who's going to be the judge? The judge will be you. That's right, you can judge yourself whether this really answers those questions. All five have to be answered to have a model for the origin of life. You just answer one, and I'll take down all my content. But if you can't answer any of them, I'll continue to say that we're not just clueless on the origin of life, we are utterly clueless, and the world will see.
I'm Dr. James Stewart. I'm a professor at Rice University. I'm a synthetic organic chemist, and I just don't get it. I just don't understand the chemistry. So help me out, guys. Help me with the chemistry here. The people I'm appealing to are people in the origin of life community, people who have published in it, all of them with the ability to make molecules and assess whether this chemistry can work. And the invitation is to these 10 people: Steve Banner, Jack Sawstek, Clemens Reichert, Lee Cronin, Bruce Lipschitz, John Sutherland, Nicholas HUD, Ramana Naran Krishnamurthy, Neil Devaraj, and Matthew Pounder. Any one of these people can answer just one of the five questions, and it will be considered a win.
Who's going to decide whether the question was properly answered? I'm going to assign three of those: Steve Benner, Jack Sawstek, and Clemens Reichert as the judges. What do I mean by that? So if all three of those judges are in agreement that that has answered the question, then we'll consider it a win for the origin of life community. If none of these five can be answered, then we'll consider it a loss, and I'll continue to say that we're clueless on the origin of life.
And I'm giving you 60 days to solve this because I've always said that I presume one day we'll be able to solve this. We will someday figure out how life was formed. But I'm giving you 60 days because we have to be able to wrap up this challenge and talk about it at some point. You can send it to me by email where you just write the thing out, use ChemDraw, write out the structures, write out the mechanism. You want to write it by hand? That'll work too.
Or best, just get an iPhone or your smartphone and have somebody film you at a blackboard. Yeah, I don't need the board. I started at a blackboard with the very reagents that I put down and go from those reagents to those products. Be my guest, but you're going to have to start with that starting material and make your way to the proposed product.
The Product
What I'm going to do is I'm going to yield all 19 of the canonical amino acids, all the nucleotides, and all the monosaccharides in 100 enantiomeric purity. And you know that these things are hard to make in enantiomerically pure form. And you say, "Well, they might come on meteorites." Well, they don't. They don't come in enantiomerically pure form on meteorites. They come as gross mixtures, and it would be very hard to use them. I don't think me trying to make the right sort of mixtures, but let's just say you have all 20 amino acids, the 19 of them that have a stereocenter, that you get in pure 100 pyro form, 100 in anti-americ excess, same with any of the nucleotides you want, and also of the monosaccharides. The five areas arethe same five areas that I talked about in my recent debate. ...you're going to have to make polynucleotides and polysaccharides. You're going to have to come up with the origin of specified information where there is a specified code. And then the assembly of all those components into an integrated functional living system, namely a cell that bears the textbook characteristics of life. Not my definition of life, but the textbook definition. It's going to have to be responsiveness to the environment, growth and change ability, ready to reproduce, have a metabolism and breathe, maintain homeostasis, being made of cells, and passing traits onto offspring. All you've got to do is answer any one of those five, and we'll call it a win for you.
The Problem
We're used to as chemists working on moles of molecules. We have lots and lots and lots of the same molecules in there, so we don't worry as much about their stability, about how quickly they would hydrolyze. I think more about this because I worked in an area called molecular electronics for many years, where one molecule would be a switching device. We had to have things be really stable because one molecule can decompose really quite rapidly.
"So let me show you the problem here when you're converting a half-life of a sample of many molecules to the stability of a single molecule. You have to have a conversion of a half-life to a probability. We're assuming exponential decay, so I have some assumptions here. I'm assuming exponential decay and independent bond breaking events. So if we're hydrolyzing a polymer chain, I'm just assuming independent bond breaking events, and the probabilities of independent events multiply. So the exponents are going to add. So what it works out to be is the half-life of the enmer, whatever that enmer is, however number number of groups it is, the half-life of the enmer is the half-life of one of those bonds divided by the number of those Bonds in the enmer.
For example, if you have a protein and a protein has a seven-year half-life, if you have a single 200 polypeptide in water, if you have one molecule of that polypeptide in water, then its lifetime is 2,555 divided by 200, thirteen days. That's all you have. Somehow, if that one polypeptide form that happened to be the right sequence to do something, it's going to have to find all the substrate that it's going to act upon very quickly within 13 days.
The problem, of course, is exacerbated when you have RNA. If you want to have the RNA hypothesis, let's just take a 600 of an identical RNAs, say you had a mole of these, let's be generous and say it had a half-life at room temperature of 100 days, again that's probably pretty generous, that's 2,400 hours in water at room temperature. Then for a single RNA strand, its lifetime would be 2,400 hours divided by 600, if it's a 600, which is fairly short for an RNA, but let's just say it's a 600, be four hours. Four hours, think about that because time really is enemy number one when it comes to origin of life and these organic compounds. Time is not the great savior, actually time is a real problem, but that's the problem when the free energies are positive. These reactions favor, as you know, the starting material. These want to hydrolyze, and these are the types of times you have.
So if you do have that single RNA strand, it's like one of my colleagues said, maybe it only takes one RNA. Joshua Swami Das told me when we were discussing this. So, but when you have, you only need one RNA strand. That's all you need. Well, you got four hours. Then he's gonna have to find the substrates that it's going to act upon. Just to give a little bit of background, here's the 20 canonical amino acids. All the ones in red circles have these active side chains, and the ones in dashed circles are reasonably active. So that just paints the picture."
The Question 1
Question number one: Prepare this dipeptide DK, or if you want to prepare KD, I'll accept that too, in greater than or equal to 90 percent yield from D and K. I'm giving you D and K to the exclusion of side chain-linked systems using prebiotically relevant chemistry. So, you need to use prebiotically relevant chemistry, and you guys know what I'm talking about. These side chains, this active carboxyl group is quite reactive, very much like the reactivity of that carboxyl group and very much like the reactivity of that carboxyl group. But you're going to have to make it so that that carboxyl group does not react. Remember, that's what's necessary to make polypeptides. This amine group cannot undergo the reaction. Only this amine or this amine can undergo the reaction, so that we get DK or KD. And note the sterochemical purity. Here, I am giving you these in 100 in anti-americ excess. So, that's what you have. Note the stereochemical retention. The stereochemistries here have not changed, and the regiochemical control where there's no side chain reactivity.
Now, Matthew Pounder, you have amino nitriles doing this in a Prebiotic setting. Paul Rimmer has suggested that your amino nitriles would work. They can't because there is no aminonitrile. You have to start from these amino acids that we know that I've given you. I've given you these amino acids. This is all you've got. These amino acids are your starting material. You've got to start with these starting materials and make this product.
Why these starting materials? Because these are the starting materials that people have argued for many years could be made in Miller-Urey type chemistry, that you could somehow get these to form agglomerates and get them separated. People have worked out lots of things where they suggest that they can do this cleanly. Okay, so we'll start with these.
And also, if you start with your amino nitriles, you have no stereo control here. So starting with these two acids, get this product. Paul Rimmer tried to answer this question, and for Paul, he started with a different material. He started with an amino nitrile. That's not what's given here. Plus, the amino nitrile would have never controlled stereochemistry, so everything was planar. You guys know better than that. You've got to show stereochemistry because that's going to be important for making polypeptides.
Reza Gadari, a good friend of mine, he and I were in school together. How about your carbonyl sulfide chemistry, which is Prebiotic? Will this work, or will it have side chain competition here? How about Bruce Lipschitz? Will your hydrophobic pockets work for this? Bring this forward and see if the three judges agree that you could cleanly get this dipeptide in greater than 90 percent yield. And you say, 'Well, that's a really high yield.' That's really not a high yield. Remember, you're going to have to do condensation polymerizations, and condensation polymerizations generally need to be in 99.99 yield to give you any decent molecular weight compound. 90 percent yield is being very generous on this. This may be the easiest question among..."
The Question 2
All the five-question number two: Polymerize two greater than or equal to a 200, which is actually quite short for RNA, but polymerize this nucleotide with less than or equal to two percent of the two-five linked and less than or equal to two percent of the two-prime branched system using this prebiotically relevant chemistry.
Is there a method to take this nucleotide? You can take it as the triphosphate or you can take it as an aminozzole derivative. If you want to, either way, I'm okay. So, it could be the phosphor imidazole, that would be fine too. Show me how you would polymerize these to the exclusion of the two-prime-five prime linkage and to the exclusion of the branching. And so, that's the question. You have to be able to make a 200 or longer, and you can use it with this base or any one of the bases that you want to use.
I don't think Steve Benner's chemistry addressed this because Steve Benner had plenty of the two-prime-five prime linkage and plenty of the branching. And that's why Jackson Charles Tech said that he went with the hype and not the science. That is the question: take a nucleotide and polymerize it because this is what we're going to have to have.
I mean, a YouTuber suggested something. I mean, is what he suggested, Martin Marilla night clay, does that solve it? So first of all, this is completely idiotic. Nucleotide polymerization has been demonstrated on Montmorillonite clay for decades. Yes, yes, with 30 to 70 percent two-five. I asked you for three-five, which is what you need to have life. You three are the judges."
"You guys understand the difficulty with this. You guys understand that these are active hydroxyl groups. You can have branching from here. How do you stop that branching from occurring? And you guys understand that this hydroxyl group can be hooked on to this position, the two prime-five prime, which is a problem here. So we want to be able to solve these problems, make this material. That's the question. The question is not whether that you could get it to be active in something. The question is, with this, can you polymerize this, limiting the two prime-five prime linkage and limiting the branching to less than two percent in each of those?
Now we'll look at the molecule glucose. So here's glucose. YouTubers suggest it's no problem getting glucose because the foremost reaction makes it, foremost mixed sugars. Foremost reaction makes sugars. What are you talking about? And it does, but it's unusable. You know that, as John Sutherland has said. But we need to have more constrained chemistry to actually make the right sort of mixtures. You have to have more constrained chemistry. You have to have selective chemistry.
Nobody ever has made glucose in its enantiopure form from the foremost reaction, and nobody has ever even separated what they've been able to make because it's unusable. And you know this. The foremost reaction doesn't provide it. But I've given it to you already. Remember, I've given you all the monomeric sugars in 100 chiral form.
And just so that you understand how gracious it is to be giving you this, here's what Nature has to go through to prepare glucose. Doesn't use the foremost reaction because that would be unusable. That material just to make glucose, it takes 11 different enzymes. Four of those enzymes are unique to glucose formation. And it takes four activators on top of that. So there's 15 different activation steps, enzyme-induced and activator-induced. Four of those enzymes being unique. And so you have all of these different enzymes.
You say, 'Well, this enzyme might form randomly.' Well, if this enzyme were to form randomly, it would be 10 to the 6368 possibilities. Numbers, big numbers, guys. That would take you more time than 10 of our universes to do this. So you know that this is not going to form randomly and then fold up randomly. I mean, some people think that enzymes can just form randomly without using any of the active enzymes, and then those would fold and make other enzymes. And it's really wishful thinking. But you guys are above that. You guys aren't going to propose that kind of nonsense.
You've got all of these different steps. This is what Nature has to go through to make glucose. But I've given it to you. I've given you glucose. And if you add up all the amino acids, all of these polypeptides, it's 10 to the 65,000 possible combinations here. You know this isn't going to happen. But I've given it to you anyway.
Now here is the enzyme phosphorylase. This is the enzyme that dimerizes glucose. Look at this enzyme. It's 98 kilodaltons. That's a molecular weight of 98,000. It says 842 amino acid units, 10 to the 1095 possible combinations. And then it has to get folded, right? And all of this. So this is what Nature has to go through just to dimerize glucose.
And all I'm asking you to do is dimerize glucose, prepare this disaccharide in greater than or equal to 90% yield from glucose, to the exclusion of the other regioisomers, to the exclusion of the furanos on this side. You can have a furanos that could open and close here, but to the exclusion of the furanos here. And it has to have this animer because this is the animer we're going for. So you've got to control that animer, and you can't have any of the other regiochemistries. Just show me. I mean, you're just dimerizing glucose, for goodness' sake. Help me out here. Why do I think that this chemistry is so difficult? The world thinks that this chemistry is simple. Why is it? What am I missing here?
I mean, certainly you guys know that we've made lots of synthetic molecules. We've made lots of complex molecules. We've done this sort of thing. I've done this in my career. Why is it that I have such trouble with this, but YouTubers can provide the answer? I want to know if you guys can provide the answer because you guys think that we're really not far from cracking this problem."
The Question 4:
Question number four: account for the origin of specified information rather than Shannon information. Shannon information is trying to gather information out of random sequences, but specified information is embedded in the sequence in polypeptides, polynucleotides, or polysaccharides. Any one of the three, whichever you think arose first. And consider how that would translate its information in a relevant time. If it's just one polymer molecule, think about that.
But the question is, what is the origin of the information? How do you gather together the information you're going to need to build a cell? I don't know. YouTubers have said it's already encoded in the DNA. DNA is inherently information because of the way genes code for proteins when expressed. No, that's Shannon information. If there's no particular sequence to this thing, origin of information critical for life is the origin of information. DNA and RNA, the order in which these things are attached, this information is primary, matters secondary. Matter is secondary.
So if I have a thought in my mind, alright, and then I write it on a piece of paper, it was stored in internet pathways in my brain. Now it's written down on a piece of paper. Now I take that paper and I type it into my computer. It goes into a flash memory. It goes actually into SRAM right away. And then when I hit save, it goes into, uh, into flash memory. Now I take this and I upload it to the cloud. So it goes to an RF wave to the box on the wall, wherever that is. And it'll go into that box just through an RF wave. So that information has been here. It's been on a piece of paper. It's been on SRAM. It's been on flash memory. Now it's in an RF wave. Then when it hits that box, it goes down a wire. That information is going down a wire. It goes through a server farm into another flash memory. The matter upon which it resides is secondary. The information is primary. The information is the key.
Nobody knows where this informational code came from. If somebody tells you that the DNA itself is the code, that's a bunch of garbage. That's like saying this memory stick, you know, I just bought it. This memory, I have a memory stick in my pocket. So this memory stick, this is the information. Uh, I haven't written anything on it, but that's inherently the information. No, this is the medium upon which it's stored. Where did the blueprint come from? Where did this specified information come from? That's question number four."
The Question 5:
Question number five, assuming you had access to all the polypeptides that you wanted, your choice, whatever you want, all the enzymes you want, that's fine too. All the polynucleotides, DNA, all the RNA, and I'll even give it to you in any sequence you want. So you can have any sequence you want. I'll give you the information, it's yours. And you have all the polysaccharides, which are the hardest class to make as you know. All the polysaccharides you want, and I'll give you all the lipids of your choice. Could you, in your research group, not on a Mindless early Earth, even in your research group, in your laboratory, could you assemble those in your lab into an integrated functional living system, namely a cell? Could you assemble those into a cell?
Because I'm lost on this, guys. I'm just lost. I don't understand that even if you had all these molecules, even if you could make all these polymers, which I don't think you can because you can't solve numbers one, two, and three. And even if you had the informational code, the answer to question number four, how would you address in your laboratory, not trying to figure out how it did it on a Mindless early Earth, how would you figure out in your laboratory to make the simplest of cells? And remember, a cell is going to have these characteristics: responsiveness to the environment, growth and change, ability to reproduce, have a metabolism, and breathe, maintain homeostasis. And that's what constitutes a cell. And you have to be able to pass on traits to offspring. This is the characteristics of life, not my definition, textbook definition.
Conclusion:
I don't understand why there's this suggestion that we're very close to solving this problem on the origin of life. My contention has always been that we will get there, but that target is very far away because it moves away from us faster than we get toward it. Because we find out all the complexity of what has to go on here. But you have to solve all five of these questions in order to make life. I'm just asking you to solve one. For those of you in the research groups, go ahead, just point out to your advisor that this challenge is out there, and all they've got to do is answer one of those questions, and Jim Tour will shut up.
These guys who work in the origin of life are absolutely clueless. Everybody's clueless on this. They were utterly clueless. I'll stop bothering you guys. I'll stop bothering your research groups if you guys just answer one of those questions. I won't talk about the origin of life publicly anymore. Origin of life research is a scam.
So that's the challenge, guys. Help me out here. Teach me. You guys understand the chemistry. You understand the magnitude of this challenge. YouTubers don't, but you guys do. I will email you the link to this video, and I'll have those five questions in PowerPoint slides to you. And, have at it, guys. The clock starts now.
If you're enjoying this series, give us a thumbs up and click the Subscribe button, and that way you'll hear when we're coming out with new videos. There are no salaried employees in this organization. All the accounting, all the legal work, that's all done by friends of mine. The only thing that I have to pay for is the production work. And if you could help us out with that, I'd appreciate it. There's a link below where you can just click on that and help us in several different ways. Thank you."
124,080 views Premiered Aug 24, 2023
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Top Scientist on God and the Origin of Life | Dr. James Tour Jews for Jesus[Using https://poe.com/ to format this, tand o which I only bolded section tittles. I could not paste too much at once (about 2,000 words), and I needed to to repeat the instructions each time. And which was,
“I am going to paste sections of a transcript (which is a “wall of text” having no paragraph spacing or punctuation) and I want you to render each section of a transcription readable (to humans) by only adding punctuation, and paragraph spacing, and capitalization of pronouns and proper names. So here is the section to do that to:“
I see no copyright, but i posted on the web site that “I wanted to know if I could post it somewhere for free reading. I could send it ti you if you want to.” Thanks. Grace and peace thru Jesus the Lord. No reply
However, this is posted as Fair use noncommercial purposes. His org, Centre for Intelligent Design Ltd, Pembroke House, Ty Coch Lane, Llantarnam Park Way, Cwmbran NP44 3AU states,
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It seems that this genius is has some very substantial creationist arguments. Thank God if so.
My understanding is that the mathematical odds of all these various things coming together are beyond astronomical. A single protein chain has a chance of 1X10 to the 164th power of forming. A one followed by 164 zeros. This is more than all of the atoms in the observable universe. If you need two proteins the odds become 10 to the 324 power. You need lots of proteins and many other things and they have to be assembled in a certain way in a membrane to have a functioning cell. You also need a clean lab environment which exists nowhere in nature. You are probably talking 10 with thousands of zeros behind it as the odds for a functioning cell to appear accidentally.
Abiogenesis is basically magic. And they call these who believe in creation idiots. They are desperate to prove that matter creates life rather than the other way around. The researchers can milk it for lifetimes, though.
This guy wrote the college textbooks on chemical predestination of life and after decades of research proved evolution
Impossible.
He also found Jesus the Creator and life eternal , so it all worked out for him for the best.
/-)
Answers in genesis is a great resource for him and other PhDs that address this subject.
Dr. James Tour is the best! Watched so many of his videos. He shows how most secular scientists fudge on where the current state of the research really is. What a huge blessing this man is. He holds something like over 6 hundred patents.
Very fitting!
Yes; they CAN answer them.
But what they canNOT do is PROVE them!
Diagram of a replicated and condensed metaphase eukaryotic chromosome: | Part of a series on |
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A chromosome is a long DNA molecule with part or all of the genetic material of an organism. In most chromosomes the very long thin DNA fibers are coated with packaging proteins; in eukaryotic cells the most important of these proteins are the histones. These proteins, aided by chaperone proteins, bind to and condense the DNA molecule to maintain its integrity.[1][2] These chromosomes display a complex three-dimensional structure, which plays a significant role in transcriptional regulation.[3]
Chromosomes are normally visible under a light microscope only during the metaphase of cell division (where all chromosomes are aligned in the center of the cell in their condensed form).[4] Before this happens, each chromosome is duplicated (S phase), and both copies are joined by a centromere, resulting either in an X-shaped structure (pictured above), if the centromere is located equatorially, or a two-arm structure, if the centromere is located distally. The joined copies are now called sister chromatids. During metaphase the X-shaped structure is called a metaphase chromosome, which is highly condensed and thus easiest to distinguish and study.[5] In animal cells, chromosomes reach their highest compaction level in anaphase during chromosome segregation.[6]
Chromosomal recombination during meiosis and subsequent sexual reproduction play a significant role in genetic diversity. If these structures are manipulated incorrectly, through processes known as chromosomal instability and translocation, the cell may undergo mitotic catastrophe. Usually, this will make the cell initiate apoptosis leading to its own death, but sometimes mutations in the cell hamper this process and thus cause progression of cancer.
Some use the term chromosome in a wider sense, to refer to the individualized portions of chromatin in cells, either visible or not under light microscopy. Others use the concept in a narrower sense, to refer to the individualized portions of chromatin during cell division, visible under light microscopy due to high condensation.
Sounds like the 400 prophets of Baal may be in for a bit of a challenge.
450 - my mistake
It’s the prophets of the groves that were four hundred
A different class of intellect and knowledge than me for sure, thank God for such. Have you seen Genesis Impact (2020) Full Movie
That movie was really good.
Saving for later, thx.
“Get your *own* dirt” on steroids.
🤭
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