Let’s read the Nature abstract: Nature (2019) Article | Published: 15 May 2019 Total synthesis of Escherichia coli with a recoded genome Julius Fredens, Kaihang Wang, Daniel de la Torre, Louise F. H. Funke, Wesley E. Robertson, Yonka Christova, Tiongsun Chia, Wolfgang H. Schmied, Daniel L. Dunkelmann, Václav Beránek, Chayasith Uttamapinant, Andres Gonzalez Llamazares, Thomas […]
Origin Of Life
Researchers: Rare ocean life forms breathe arsenic in low oxygen environments
What’s amazing is the way life, once started, exploits every avenue, and yet how DOES it get started?
New OOL book: Life rests on physics but can’t be derived from it
Walker disagrees with this view, of course, but the problem is, physics is a mess just now and whether biology can be derived from it might depend on which piece you are holding. And who agrees that that piece is indeed a part of physics?
Did life get started on planetesimals before Earth formed?
If life got started so quickly back then—and there is no evidence of it ever just getting started somehow, time after time, since then—either life was an event triggered from outside nature as we know it or it was implicit in the Big Bang (but that would point to some kind of encoded information).
Globally famous chemist James Tour on the origin of life
Talk: What if the discoveries of science actually lend support to belief in God?
Researchers: Origin of life more likely in ponds, assisted by lightning, than oceans
The researcher’s analogy is interesting (more like building a cathedral than knocking over a row of dominos). If the origin of life were like knocking over a row of dominos, life would be coming into existence ex nihilo, easily and often. That is assuredly not what we find.
Walter Bradley: Tell people about AI, not sci-fi
His struggle to bring reality to“sci-fi” origin of life research is Intro of the Walter Bradley Center’s inspiration for our work on AI: The Bradley Center hopes to have a similar effect by promoting more general knowledge of fundamental issues around “thinking computers and questions around the real effects of technology on human well-being. A friend […]
OOL researcher Paul Davies: They used to make fun of me for saying Earth, Mars swapped microbes…
If we discover life on Mars and it turns out to be a lot like life on Earth, as Davies suggests, will that be experienced as an achievement or a disappointment? It certainly won’t prove anything like what some have hoped. Heck, it won’t even prove that We Are NOT Alone…
Researchers: Genetic code emerging in an RNA world faces “insuperable problems”
Note: “ The hypothetical RNA World does not furnish an adequate basis for explaining how this system came into being, principles of self-organisation that transcend Darwinian natural selection furnish an unexpectedly robust basis for a rapid, concerted transition to genetic coding from a peptide·RNA world.”
Researchers: First animal cell was not simple; it could “transdifferentiate”
From the paper: “… these analyses offer no support for the homology of sponge choanocytes and choanoflagellates, nor for the view that the first multicellular animals were simple balls of cells with limited capacity to differentiate.”
Paul Davies: Incorporating information into science as a physical quantity
In a world where some believe that consciousness must be a material thing, perhaps it’s not surprising that others seek to see information as a physical quantity. Computer scientist Robert J. Marks would ask, what is the weight difference between a full CD and an empty one? Could we start there?
Chemist Manfred Eigen (1927–2019) dies
A Nobelist (1967), he was among other things an origin-of-life chemist and in that capacity he authored Eigen’s paradox
NASA recreates the origin of life and it’s totally shocking
What’s shocking is the hype. Essentially, the team created some amino acids and “Some researchers believe these could combine (like Legos) and create further complex molecules which could then be a precursor to life.”
NASA is investing more in pre-biotic chemistry
Georgia Tech biochemist Loren Williams was recently named co-leader of NASA’s new consortium to tackle origin of life: Did life on Earth originate in Darwin’s warm little pond, on a sunbaked shore, or where hot waters vent into the deep ocean? And could a similar emergence have played out on other bodies in our solar […]
Origin of Life: Christian Scientific Society meeting March 10-11 in LA
The meeting focuses on origin of life.