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Origin of life: A dash of salt was the key?

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artist’s conception

So argues an article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences:

How did the first cell originate in evolution? It is a chicken or the egg causality dilemma: a cell doesn’t function without a cell wall, but how does the cell wall form if there is no cell? Research by chemist Wilhelm Huck, professor at Radboud University Nijmegen, suggests that the cell came first.

In a solution containing the biomolecules that are normally locked in a cell (like DNA, RNA, enzymes, proteins) these large biomolecules clustered together spontaneously when the salt concentration was increased. This indicates that a cell wall is not a prerequisite for a cell-like structure.

Huh? Maybe a frame and sides are not necessary for a house or a suitcase either, it’s just that …

The underlying problem is that the researchers are trying to find a way that it happened purely by accident; hence these resorts to implausibility even in major journals.

See also: Origin of life: An unreasonable standard of proof?
Why origin of life studies
won’t flatline

Origin of life studies flatlined

Comments
There is a lot of literature on the the origin of life. We know a good deal about some of the basics and have come up with a lot of ideas to connect the dots. No doubt it is a very complicated field of study, however with every passing month we discover a new piece of the OOL puzzle. Don't make the mistake of thinking the first cells to come about were even close to as complicated as they are today, that was most certainly not the case. The basic building blocks of all cells are extremely simple and most have only minor differences, from that point it is a matter of redundancy in structure and function over the course of evolution at the molecular level and higher.AVS
July 5, 2013
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OOL and evolutionary speculations are like Weekly World News (http://weeklyworldnews.com/) headlines. It doesn't matter if they make sense or not, or if they contradict whatever last week's headline was. It's only about grabbing attention and giving muddled minds something with which to occupy themselves -- "Ever learning, but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth."sagebrush gardener
July 4, 2013
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