Merged God moved into a smaller house as chemicals compete

[athon]

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/01/replicatingrna.html

Life - a series of complicated, competing chemical reactions. Ain't it grand?

Athon

 

[joobz]

I can already here it.
"But, they designed the enzymes...."

 

[athon]

I can already here it.
"But, they designed the enzymes...."

Oh, no doubt. But that old duck will keep quacking, no matter what. Unless you pull up a bucket of water from a puddle outside and find living processes formed out of non-living chemicals (which is highly unlikely, given the very nature of competition says such a situation would be gobbled up by living systems), you'll always have somebody say 'but you needed to intervene to see it happen'.

The point is, the gaps god hides in just got a tiny bit smaller. Chemicals can compete in an ecosystem like process. That's pretty neat.

Athon

 

[MattusMaximus]

New Evidence in Favor of Abiogenesis & Chemical Evolution

Wow, I just took a look at this interesting article in Wired...

Self-Replicating Chemicals Evolve Into Lifelike Ecosystem

Life makes more of itself.

And now so can a set of custom-designed chemicals. Chemists have shown that a group of synthetic enzymes replicated, competed and evolved much like a natural ecosystem, but without life or cells.

"So long as you provide the building blocks and the starter seed, it goes forever," said Gerald Joyce, a chemist at the Scripps Research Institute and co-author of the paper published Thursday in Science. "It is immortalized molecular information."

Joyce's chemicals are technically hacked RNA enzymes, much like the ones we have in our bodies, but they don't behave anything like those in living creatures. But, these synthetic RNA replicators do provide a model for evolution — and shed light on one step in the development of early living systems from on a lifeless globe. ...

Now, I'm not biochemist, though I have followed the Origin of Life (OoL) question closely for years now. I find these latest developments to be quite fascinating.

I wonder how long it will be until we can synthetically create life in a beaker simply by mixing together the appropriate ingredients? (This is the common creationist argument that "No one has ever mixed stuff together in the lab and had something crawl out of the beaker") Personally, at this rate, I give it 10 to 15 years before we create synthetic life in the lab.

Any thoughts and/or comments?

 

[MattusMaximus]

Oops, I started another thread on this one - sorry.

 

[arthwollipot]

Thanks for posting this, athon. I'm going to be linking to this on my other boards.

 

[MG1962]

The article mentions tailored enzymes. So how many steps would there be between a bucket of chemicals, and what these scientists produced.

Would a bucket of the right chemicals ultimately form enzymes naturally, or would there need to be something external like heat, or a lightening strike etc etc

 

[MattusMaximus]

The article mentions tailored enzymes. So how many steps would there be between a bucket of chemicals, and what these scientists produced.

Would a bucket of the right chemicals ultimately form enzymes naturally, or would there need to be something external like heat, or a lightening strike etc etc

Are you saying that heat and lightning strikes cannot be provided by natural processes?

 

[MG1962]

Are you saying that heat and lightning strikes cannot be provided by natural processes?

Not inside a bucket of chemicals. Which why I asked the question I did. Will enzymes occur from just the chemicals being together, or is there need for some sort of imput to get the reactions needed going?

 

[Subduction Zone]

Wow, fantastic article. As I have argued with Creationists in the past "We don't know how life began, but we are learning". This is a huge step forward in abiogenesis. If you are satisfied with all your answers: "In the beginning god... " then you will never learn anything new. And I agree, it will not convince any current believers, but it will help in educating future generations.

 

[athon]

The article mentions tailored enzymes. So how many steps would there be between a bucket of chemicals, and what these scientists produced.

Good question, but depends on what you perceive to be a 'step'. If we're talking 'how many generations?'...then I'd say 'a heap'.

Would a bucket of the right chemicals ultimately form enzymes naturally, or would there need to be something external like heat, or a lightening strike etc etc

We're unlikely to ever deduce the exact polymer or polymer sequence which led to the first organisms, or even know for sure what interactions occurred. So, would these very enzymes form over time? I don't think there is anybody who can answer that. But there is good reason to suspect that complex chemicals could create polymers that can self replicate.

To the second half of your question, an energy source is always required to have chemicals interact. Yet fluctuations in temperature would probably be enough to slowly drive some form of replication process. The polymers themselves could form through a number of processes which occur in nature, such as through sunlight radiation, geological radiation, geothermal heat etc.

The point of this experiment is not to say with any confidence 'how' the probiotic elements formed, but rather that factors which represent only some of the features we associate with life (lacking, for example, a chemically driven metabolism) can still exhibit behaviours which are associated with a living system, such as replication and change. This ecosystem-in-a-bucket is by no means alive, but does have some living characteristics.

Athon

 

[athon]

Will enzymes occur from just the chemicals being together, or is there need for some sort of imput to get the reactions needed going?

Ah, so you're asking 'can component chemicals arrange themselves without intervention into more complicated chemicals that show enzyme-like behaviour'? In which case, yes. RNA can form simple polymers that exhibits enzyme-like behaviour. Given enough permutations, some of these behaviours will be more useful to their own sequences than others. The problem is, to have this occur without intervention would take a hell of a lot of time. It's a monkeys on typewriters thing.

Athon

 

[Subduction Zone]

It's a monkeys on typewriters thing.

With the exception that these monkeys have to follow certain chemical rules.

This is an extremely important work since it shows that one of the steps hypothesized by evolutionists will actually take place. In fact it looks like this experiment went much further than the experimenters hoped for. Not only replication but evolution of the original chemical.

 

[joobz]

The point is, the gaps god hides in just got a tiny bit smaller. Chemicals can compete in an ecosystem like process. That's pretty neat.

I completely agree. I think it is extremely cool. Personally, I don't know how anyone could have doubted the idea of chemical evolution once learning of prions.

I'd love to see someone do this showing the evolution of protovesicles torwards the development of lipid bilayers.

 

[athon]

I completely agree. I think it is extremely cool. Personally, I don't know how anyone could have doubted the idea of chemical evolution once learning of prions.

I'd love to see someone do this showing the evolution of protovesicles torwards the development of lipid bilayers.

Actually, the next thing that needs to be demonstrated is the interaction of two unrelated chemical systems. Something like this competing RNA soup interacting with some basic metabolic process, such as some sulphide redox reaction etc.

But, yeah, having it interact with lipid micelles would also be cool.

Athon

 

[MG1962]

The point of this experiment is not to say with any confidence 'how' the probiotic elements formed, but rather that factors which represent only some of the features we associate with life (lacking, for example, a chemically driven metabolism) can still exhibit behaviours which are associated with a living system, such as replication and change. This ecosystem-in-a-bucket is by no means alive, but does have some living characteristics.

Athon

Thanks for the reply. The thing that stands out in the experiment for mine is it is the start of at least understanding the parameters needed to get from a lifeless earth to the first traces in the fossil record.

And never say never in science When Lord Rosse first observed structure in the Whirlpool galaxy 1847, no one would have guessed what we have figured out about cosmology since

 

[spork]

I wonder how long it will be until we can synthetically create life in a beaker simply by mixing together the appropriate ingredients? (This is the common creationist argument that "No one has ever mixed stuff together in the lab and had something crawl out of the beaker")

Let's say we produced the perfect conditions. How long would it take before life sprang from that? Millions of years perhaps? I think the notion that because we haven't been able to reproduce it in a lab this suggests it didn't happen is just ludicrous.

Personally, at this rate, I give it 10 to 15 years before we create synthetic life in the lab.

If you're talking about synthesizing life intentionally, I'd be inclined to agree. But whether it happens in a lab or in a computer is the real question for me.

 

[Madalch]

Would a bucket of the right chemicals ultimately form enzymes naturally, or would there need to be something external like heat, or a lightening strike etc etc

Depends on how big the bucket is.

If it's a few litres, not much is going to happen without external pressure.

If it's the size of Lake Winnipeg, shining the sun on it for a few hours a day will cause enough currents due to the heat differences that it will generate its own mechanical effects, concentration gradients, potential gradients, and generally everything it needs. Given enough time.

 

[Puppycow]

I wonder how long it will be until we can synthetically create life in a beaker simply by mixing together the appropriate ingredients?

Is that not what these scientists have just done?

What defines "life"? Are self-replicating chemicals that evolve not yet life? What about viruses?

 

[Dancing David]

I am sure that there will be a variation on the 'micro vs. macro' argument.