Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Lab-made primordial soup yields RNA bases

nature.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 134 posts

Re: Lab-made primordial soup yields RNA bases

#41

Post by bediger4000 »

brink wrote: post #15
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.

Dragging "Darwinism", which is a theory of evolution, into an argument about abiogenesis, which is life coming from non-living stuff, is a hallmark of Creationism. Creationist are known to argue in bad faith. Best just to rid the space of Creationist arguments. Like Mark Twain once wrote, if you wrestle with pigs, you'll get very dirty, and the pigs just might enjoy it.

Re: Lab-made primordial soup yields RNA bases

#42

Post by hinkley »

aazaa wrote: post #17

> 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 a…

There's a multiverse theory that there are many possible or existing universes with different physical constants, affecting everything from chemistry to orbital mechanics, and the reason we are having this conversation is because this universe was conducive to the formation of highly organized lifeforms capable of abstract thought.

In this line of reasoning "Why this set of constants" doesn't matter, because only the universes that could have observers would be observed.

Re: Lab-made primordial soup yields RNA bases

#43

Post by builderburg »

hinkley wrote: post #42
aazaa wrote: post #17

> 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 a…

There's a multiverse theory that there are many possible or existing universes with different physical constants, affecting everything from chemistry to orbital mechanics, and the reason we are having this conversation is because this universe was conducive to the formation of highly organized lifeforms capable of abstract thought. In this line of reasoning "Why this set of constants" doesn't matter, because only the…

The anthropic principle doesn't depend on a multiverse.

Re: Lab-made primordial soup yields RNA bases

#45

Post by Fjolsvith »

aazaa wrote: post #17

> 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 a…

Another way that nucleobases could have formed were in ice [1].

1. http://discovermagazine.com/2008/feb/did-life-evolve-in-ice

Re: Lab-made primordial soup yields RNA bases

#46

Post by crusso »

Valmar wrote: post #25
lovecg wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Sure, I guess. But we've been down this road of chemical soups before ~ and gotten nothing out of it. I'm just frustrated that they seem to keep chasing the same failed ideas. It's time to look for other explanations... not a religious one, at that. Some biologists look towards a meteoric explanation of life, but punting it off-planet isn't an explanation, either...

the same failed ideas

Saying that the idea of "a primordial soup produced the building blocks that eventually led to all life on earth" has failed because some extraordinarily limited experiments (spatially, chemically, temporally, and complexity limited) haven't produced cellular life is about like saying that the "fusion of hydrogen produces the heat of stars" theory has failed because we haven't been able to produce stable fusion here on earth. The scope of the effect that was likely produced in the primordial environment over billions of years is beyond basic human comprehension.

Re: Lab-made primordial soup yields RNA bases

#48

Post by kanzenryu2 »

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.

Here's a working theory. Warning: turn down the volume. https://youtu.be/U6QYDdgP9eg?t=227

Re: Lab-made primordial soup yields RNA bases

#49

Post by The_rationalist »

GistNoesis wrote: post #47

>The chemistry is also a “strong indication” that the appearance of RNA-based life was not an exceedingly lucky event, but one that is likely to happen on many other planets, he adds. Does this mean a new lower bound for the fl factor for the drake equation ?

Than why all earth living beings come from one common ancestry rather than many different ones?

Re: Lab-made primordial soup yields RNA bases

#50

Post by civilian »

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 should read "The Vital Question" by Nick Lane. He puts forward a theory for what the first life might look like, based on the shared common genes between bacteria and archea.

I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt that you're genuinely curious.

Post reply on HN