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Lab-made primordial soup yields RNA bases

nature.com

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Re: Lab-made primordial soup yields RNA bases

#11

Post by salgernon »

jonmc12 wrote: post #9

> Carell’s team has shown how all nucleobases could form under one set of conditions: two separate ponds that cycle through the seasons, going from wet to dry, from hot to cold, and from acidic to basic, and with chemicals occasionally flowing from one pond to the other. I've enjoyed Bruce Damer's explanation of related theory, "The Hot Spring Hypothesis for the Origin of Life". Search "goldilocks chemistry" for some…

Is that the Brice Damer of “DigiBarn” fame (vintage computer restoration and archiving)? An illustration shows a MITS Altair reading a paper tape, presumably to illustrate interpreting dna instructions.

Re: Lab-made primordial soup yields RNA bases

#13

Post by yarg »

yarg wrote: post #10
jonmc12 wrote: post #9

> Carell’s team has shown how all nucleobases could form under one set of conditions: two separate ponds that cycle through the seasons, going from wet to dry, from hot to cold, and from acidic to basic, and with chemicals occasionally flowing from one pond to the other. I've enjoyed Bruce Damer's explanation of related theory, "The Hot Spring Hypothesis for the Origin of Life". Search "goldilocks chemistry" for some…

I was going to reply with "now do it accidentally", but that actually seems like it could be a tidally guided experiment that would occur coincidentally with a relatively high frequency.

Another nice thing here is that we are left with a fairly low complexity - perhaps even high accuracy super-computer simulable - mechanism by which we can draw out viable candidates for probable forms of life across a wide variety of initial environments.

Which seems cool to me.

Re: Lab-made primordial soup yields RNA bases

#14

Post by Valmar »

For all of these lab soups, it means basically nothing.

None of this has advanced any understanding of the Neo-Darwinian origin of life model.

There's still no working theory of how one gets from basic building blocks to a fully-functioning working cell, nevermind the rest.

Re: Lab-made primordial soup yields RNA bases

#15

Post by brink »

Valmar wrote: post #14

For all of these lab soups, it means basically nothing. None of this has advanced any understanding of the Neo-Darwinian origin of life model. There's still no working theory of how one gets from basic building blocks to a fully-functioning working cell, nevermind the rest.

To those downvoting this comment, can you please clarify why you're downvoting?

This is also how I see it, and I'd like to know the counter-argument.

Re: Lab-made primordial soup yields RNA bases

#16

Post by analreceiver »

Valmar wrote: post #14

For all of these lab soups, it means basically nothing. None of this has advanced any understanding of the Neo-Darwinian origin of life model. There's still no working theory of how one gets from basic building blocks to a fully-functioning working cell, nevermind the rest.

How?: Time

Re: Lab-made primordial soup yields RNA bases

#17

Post by aazaa »

> Carell, an organic chemist, and his collaborators have now demonstrated a chemical pathway that — in principle — could have made A, U, C and G (adenine, uracil, cytosine and guanine, respectively) from basic ingredients such as water and nitrogen under conditions that would have been plausible on the early Earth. The reactions produce so much of these nucleobases that, millennium after millennium, they could have accumulated in thick crusts, Carell says. His team describes the results in Science on 3 October.

> The results add credence to the ‘RNA world’ hypothesis, says Carell, who is at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Germany. ...

It's worth noting that what was made were nucleobases - flat very low molecular weight molecules - that when attached to ribose yield nucleotides.

It is nucleotides, not nucleobases, that form RNA.

The "RNA world hypothesis" still needs to explain where the ribose came from, how it was joined with the bases that were supposedly littering the Earth's surface, and how the resulting nucleotides started spontaneously assembling themselves through combination with phosphate into polymers.

That's a very, very tall order in chemistry.

Re: Lab-made primordial soup yields RNA bases

#18

Post by Valmar »

analreceiver wrote: post #16
Valmar wrote: post #14

For all of these lab soups, it means basically nothing. None of this has advanced any understanding of the Neo-Darwinian origin of life model. There's still no working theory of how one gets from basic building blocks to a fully-functioning working cell, nevermind the rest.

How?: Time

Time cannot logically explain it.

Given such complex lifeforms, even a billion years wouldn't suffice to explain going from a RNA bases to a modern day human.

And no, I don't buy the Christian fairytale, either.

It's fine for me to accept that we humans have no answer as to life's origins.

Re: Lab-made primordial soup yields RNA bases

#19

Post by lovecg »

Valmar wrote: post #14

For all of these lab soups, it means basically nothing. None of this has advanced any understanding of the Neo-Darwinian origin of life model. There's still no working theory of how one gets from basic building blocks to a fully-functioning working cell, nevermind the rest.

So? Don't you think it’s important to understand even this first basic step?

Re: Lab-made primordial soup yields RNA bases

#20

Post by smpetrey »

Valmar wrote: post #14

For all of these lab soups, it means basically nothing. None of this has advanced any understanding of the Neo-Darwinian origin of life model. There's still no working theory of how one gets from basic building blocks to a fully-functioning working cell, nevermind the rest.

You must be fun at parties. /s
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