Origin Of Life

From ScienceDaily: A new analysis of the oldest known fossil microorganisms provides strong evidence to support an increasingly widespread understanding that life in the universe is common. The microorganisms, from Western Australia, are 3.465 billion years old. Scientists from UCLA and the University of Wisconsin-Madison report today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that two of the species they studied appear to have performed a primitive form of photosynthesis, another apparently produced methane gas, and two others appear to have consumed methane and used it to build their cell walls. The evidence that a diverse group of organisms had already evolved extremely early in the Earth’s history — combined with scientists’ knowledge of the vast number Read More ›

By top Darwinist George Gaylord Simpson (1902–1984): At a recent meeting in Chicago, a highly distinguished international panel of experts was polled. All considered the experimental production of life in the laboratory imminent … – Simpson, G. G. (1960) The world into which Darwin led us. Science 131: 966–974 The ToC summary reads “The Darwinian revolution changed the most crucial element in man’s world his concept of himself.” Handy to reference this when someone claims that Darwinism in the schools or the churches is all just science and nothing but science… It was never just science and a big question now is, how much of the science even remains? See also: Biochemists: RNA world has run its course. Huh? Rob Sheldon: Read More ›

RNA World is the theory that the earliest life forms used RNA to perform functions now carried out by DNA because RNA was more likely to somehow fall into place. From Jordana Cepelewicz at Quanta: … Perhaps most importantly, an RNA-only world could not explain the emergence of the genetic code, which nearly all living organisms today use to translate genetic information into proteins. The code takes each of the 64 possible three-nucleotide RNA sequences and maps them to one of the 20 amino acids used to build proteins. Finding a set of rules robust enough to do that would take far too long with RNA alone, said Peter Wills, Carter’s co-author at the University of Auckland in New Zealand Read More ›

Dr E. Selensky occasionally requests that UD posts an article on his behalf. What follows is his latest: ______________ Arguably, the RNA world model is excessively complex: it operates too complex structures and involves too complex interactions. The origin of life, some researchers believe, must have been simpler.In an attempt to close the gap between chemistry and life by naturalistic means a new model has been proposed recently, yet another one of many, that seeks to explain the rise of RNAs. This model is called template-assisted ligation. It has been proposed by Alexey Tkachenko and Sergei Maslov at American Institute of Physics. They hope it can help shed light on what could have preceded the RNA world.The crux of the Read More ›

From James Tour at Inference Review: Life requires carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids, and proteins. What is the chemistry behind their origin? Biologists seem to think that there are well-understood prebiotic molecular mechanisms for their synthesis. They have been grossly misinformed. And no wonder: few biologists have ever synthesized a complex molecule ab initio. If they need a molecule, they purchase molecular synthesis kits, which are, of course, designed by synthetic chemists, and which feature simplistic protocols.More. He doesn’t literally mean that “everyone is lying” but rather that the problem is so much bigger and deeper than it is often portrayed that typical science media claims are not reliable. See also: Chemist James Tour calls out Jeremy England’s origin of life Read More ›

Abstract: (public access)One thing that discriminates living things from inanimate matter is their ability to generate similarly complex or non-random structures in a large abundance. From DNA sequences to folded protein structures, living cells, microbial communities and multicellular structures, the material configurations in biology can easily be distinguished from nonliving material assemblies. Many complex artefacts, from ordinary bioproducts to human tools, though they are not living things, are ultimately produced by biological processes—whether those processes occur at the scale of cells or societies, they are the consequences of living systems. While these objects are not living, they cannot randomly form, as they are the product of a biological organism and hence are either technological or cultural biosignatures. A generalized approach that Read More ›

Suzan Mazur, author of Public Evolution Summit, writes at HuffPost that the principals of the Dutch Origins Center have pledged that with respect to involvement in theology, “We will not make the mistake NASA made.” … Several days later in Amsterdam, Origins Center coordinator Jan-Willem Mantel confirmed that theology is not part of the Dutch initiative. Over a million US dollars were squandered by the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI) for a two-year program (2015-2017) to find out, among other things, how the religious community would respond to the discovery of extraterrestrial life—-a story I reported here, which Jerry Coyne picked up a few days later followed by the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) filing a Freedom of Information Act request. The Read More ›

From Retraction Watch: A Nobel Laureate has retracted a 2016 paper in Nature Chemistry that explored the origins of life on earth, after discovering the main conclusions were not correct. Some researchers who study the origins of life on Earth have hypothesized that RNA evolved before DNA or proteins. If true, RNA would have needed a way to replicate without enzymes. The Nature Chemistry paper found that a certain type of peptide — which may have existed in our early history — made it possible for RNA to copy itself. Jack W. Szostak—a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., who shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Elizabeth Blackburn and Carol Read More ›

Suzan Mazur author of Origin of Life Circus, talks to Jan-Willem Mantel of the new Dutch Origins Center sponsored by the University of Groningen on the Dutch group effort: Suzan Mazur: The Dutch Origins Center is a virtual center, but would you say the University of Groningen serves as sort of the hub? Jan-Willem Mantel: In a way. We try to create a flat network. We have groups in 17 or 18 universities and/or independent research organizations and we try to avoid one university leading or dominating. But, of course, the practical work has to be done somewhere and that is being done by Groningen. In an intellectual sense, however, you can’t say Groningen or any one of the others Read More ›

UD participant Upright Biped (of Complexity Cafe U/D: Biosemiosis) has commented recently in the what is knowledge thread, replying to frequent objector CR by summarising key aspects of the role of information systems in observed cell based life. His remarks are well worth headlining: __________________ UB, 195: >>We can start by summarizing the core physical requirements of the system we are trying to explain: an autonomous self-replicator with open-ended potential (i.e. it can describe itself or any variation of itself). The system requires: 1) a sequence of representations in a medium of information. 2) a set of physical constraints to establish what is being represented. 3) a system of discontinuous association between representations and referents, based on spatial orientation (i.e. Read More ›

Abstract: Biological systems reach organizational complexity that far exceeds the complexity of any known inanimate objects. Biological entities undoubtedly obey the laws of quantum physics and statistical mechanics. However, is modern physics sufficient to adequately describe, model and explain the evolution of biological complexity? Detailed parallels have been drawn between statistical thermodynamics and the population-genetic theory of biological evolution. Based on these parallels, we outline new perspectives on biological innovation and major transitions in evolution, and introduce a biological equivalent of thermodynamic potential that reflects the innovation propensity of an evolving population. Deep analogies have been suggested to also exist between the properties of biological entities and processes, and those of frustrated states in physics, such as glasses. Such systems Read More ›

It ranks right up there with “What is a species?” From Derek J. Skillings at Aeon: Evolution itself is meant to tell us which entities count as individuals. Because natural selection is the engine of evolution, Hull said, we need to account for individuality in terms of what is required for selection. At their most basic, evolutionary individuals are entities that vary among each other, their variability causes variations in fitness, and that variation and fitness is passed along to the next generation. These individuals are also often referred to as ‘units of selection’ because they are the unit upon which the process of natural selection operates. It is the selective pressure over evolutionary time that explains why organisms have Read More ›

One eventually gets used to science claims with a lot of “may”s in them. From ScienceDaily: Fast-moving flows of interplanetary dust that continually bombard our planet’s atmosphere could deliver tiny organisms from far-off worlds, or send Earth-based organisms to other planets, according to the research. The dust streams could collide with biological particles in Earth’s atmosphere with enough energy to knock them into space, a scientist has suggested. Such an event could enable bacteria and other forms of life to make their way from one planet in the solar system to another and perhaps beyond. The finding suggests that large asteroid impacts may not be the sole mechanism by which life could transfer between planets, as was previously thought. Okay, Read More ›

Readers may recall the recent flap about Canada’s governor-general ridiculing anyone who thinks that life did not originate randomly, to which Canadian biophysicist Kirk Durston responded, among other things: The third problem with the Governor General’s example of unquestioning faith in science is the corruption that has reached crises proportions in certain areas of science itself, with a special nod to the biological sciences. In 2012 the journal Nature published an exposé which found that 89% of “landmark” papers in the field of cancer research, could not be reproduced. More. This is not a good time to be gung-ho for scientism but anyway, Durston notes: that other astronauts do not agree with Payette: On two different occasions, I spent time Read More ›

Not good news for Mars life. From ScienceDaily: Dark features previously proposed as evidence for significant liquid water flowing on Mars have now been identified as granular flows, where sand and dust move rather than liquid water, according to a new article. These findings indicate that present-day Mars may not have a significant volume of liquid water. The water-restricted conditions that exist on Mars would make it difficult for Earth-like life to exist near the surface. … Scientists from the USGS, the University of Arizona, Durham University (England) and the Planetary Science Institute analyzed narrow, down-slope trending surface features on Mars that are darker than their surroundings, called Recurring Slope Lineae, or RSL. These RSL features grow incrementally, fade when Read More ›