Some additional perspective here, gents.
Insight into RNA origins.
A short article, but some selected quotes:
However, Robert Shapiro, professor emeritus of chemistry at New York University disagrees. 'Although as an exercise in chemistry this represents some very elegant work, this has nothing to do with the origin of life on Earth whatsoever,' he says. According to Shapiro, it is hard to imagine RNA forming in a prebiotic world along the lines of Sutherland's synthesis.
And..
But Sutherland acknowledges the implications of his research in this debate. 'The RNA world is a very restrictive, hypothetical arrangement and one shouldn't necessarily interpret our results as just supporting an RNA world,' explains Sutherland. 'Our work doesn't preclude metabolism being important, but it suggests that nucleic acids would be central to any early origin of life idea.'nullasalus
May 14, 2009
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C Bass, the problem of how RNA forms from its parts has been more or less addressed: activated ribonucleotides can form RNA. This paper provides a new route to understanding how those ribonucleotides formed in the first place.
although there has been some success demonstrating that 'activated' ribonucleotides can polymerize to form RNA, it is far from obvious how such ribonucleotides could have formed from their constituent parts (ribose and nucleobases.
This paper gets us to the chemical formation of ribonucleotides. We already have mechanisms for getting from ribonucleotides to RNA, and we already have good reason to believe that RNA molecules could produce the first proteins.David Kellogg
May 14, 2009
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David Kellogg,
“there is no natural route to RNA.” Dembski and Wells, The Design of Life (quoted at Evolution News and Views).
That would seem to be a claim worth revising if not withdrawing.
Again, nucleotides are not RNA. Dembski's and Wells' claim stands, until a natural route to grammar and/or spelling is discovered.
Hell, we haven't actually witnessed these lone ribonucleotides naturally linking up to form long chains, yet, but even if that does come to pass, it still wouldn't represent RNA, not until and unless it contained specified information.
It's interesting how this aspect of the problem eludes the materialist mindset.C Bass
May 14, 2009
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I can see what C Bass is saying here. Along the lines of pointing out that, if you demonstrate the existence of silicon on earth 4 billion years ago, you have not therefore demonstrated (or even come close to demonstrating) that RAM cards are prone to developing without guidance and/or foresight. So keep things in perspective.
(Though I'd take a different tact compared to ID proponents and critics, and point out that there's no way to scientifically demonstrate 'with' or 'without' guidance and/or foresight even if the event certainly came to pass. Those questions aren't scientifically fruitful. They key for critics to understand is that the 'without' part isn't fruitful either.)nullasalus
May 14, 2009
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The paper shows clearly how RNA could have arisen purely chemically. Time to move the goalposts (a good start C Bass).
This is categorically incorrect. As I stated in my first response, ribonucleotides are not RNA. Ribonucleotides represent individual letters, but RNA also embodies such concepts as "words", "spelling", and "grammar", all of which imply intelligent agency. By way of illustration, certain English letters, such as I, O, even W, can be observed in nature, but we have yet to observe the rules of English grammer in natureC Bass
May 14, 2009
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Smidlee, terms like "cooking" are not in the Nature paper but in the popular account. The paper itself simulates likely natural conditions and is very careful about its claims. I'll quote the last paragraph:
Our findings suggest that the prebiotic synthesis of activated pyrimidine nucleotides should be viewed as predisposed. This predisposition would have allowed the synthesis to operate on the early Earth under geochemical conditions suitable for the assembly sequence. Although the issue of temporally separated supplies of glycolaldehyde and glyceraldehyde remains a problem, a number of situations could have arisen that would result in the conditions of heating and progressive dehydration followed by cooling, rehydration and ultraviolet irradiation. Comparative assessment of these models is beyond the scope of this work, but it is hoped that the chemistry described here will contribute to such an assessment.
That will be behind a firewall if you don't have a personal or institutional subscription to Nature.David Kellogg
May 14, 2009
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Joseph,
"there is no natural route to RNA." Dembski and Wells, The Design of Life (quoted at Evolution News and Views).
That would seem to be a claim worth revising if not withdrawing.David Kellogg
May 14, 2009
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I've never read where anyone claimed that ribonucleotide was a product of intelligent design and couldn't be made naturally even though "RNA world" scientist has trouble with this. Yet in the article I read phrases like "new recipe" and "this time the cooks seem to have got it right" So it took this long for "the cooks" to find just the right condition (combination) just to be two of the basic building blocks?
I do believe if given enough time man will be able to produce "life" from RNA and DNA yet it will be by "cooks" following a very complex "recipe" in the exact order.Smidlee
May 14, 2009
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David Kellogg,
There was never a goalpost saying that RNA cannot form purely chemically.
There is a goalpost saying that living organisms are not reducible to matter, energy, chance and necessity- ie purely chemically.
And this stuff is a good start to seeing how reducible it is.Joseph
May 14, 2009
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How long would the RNA -- assuming they someday actually do manage to synthesize RNA as opposed two ribonucleotides -- have to survive before it manages to produce proteins able to create DNA code?tribune7
May 14, 2009
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"I’m sure the world’s evolutionary biolgists are quaking in their boots."
Why the false hype? Why the continued attacks and denunciation of ID if it is a nothing idea. Why the worry when someone publishes a study that could be considered to be ID friendly. Can you think of another reason.
Actually I can. They are nowhere on this topic so just getting announced in the batter's box is a huge deal. Actually they haven't made it as far as the batter's box, they are scouting little league games for anything that breathes.jerry
May 14, 2009
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jerry, I'm sure the world's evolutionary biolgists are quaking in their boots.David Kellogg
May 14, 2009
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David Kellogg,
The goalposts are still in the same place about 10 universes down the field. There are a lot of first downs between where they are and any hope of ever seeing the goalposts. They discovered letters, not even a small English sentence. "See Spot Run" is still millions of light years away in the future.
The fact that this is hyped is just another indication of how strong the ID threat is to them.jerry
May 14, 2009
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The paper shows clearly how RNA could have arisen purely chemically. Time to move the goalposts (a good start C Bass).David Kellogg
May 14, 2009
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This is the comment I posted on their forum, trying to keep this discovery in proper perspective...
Yes, progress has been made but we are still light-years away from explaining OOL. The scientists were able to facilitate the quasi-spontaneous creation of ribonucleotides, similarly to the famous Urey-Miller experiment so many years ago. Granted, a ribonucleotide is a more complex molecule than an amino acid, but, essentially, the scientists have succeeded in creating a couple of letters of the biological alphabet.
What they need to do now is create the remaining letters, and then show how these letters were able to attach themselves together to form long chains of RNA, and arrange themselves in a specific order to encode information for creating specific proteins, and instructions to assemble the proteins into cells, tissues, organs, systems, and finally, complete phenotypes.
"It suggests that RNA would be forming it lots of pools, continuously, ... meaning the probably of life forming spontaneously seems really high."
Gotta love the unbridled optimism, but no, what it suggests is that *ribonucleotides* *could* have formed in many pools continuously, but ribonucleotides are not RNA, and the conclusion, "the probably of life forming spontaneously seems really high", is extremely premature.C Bass
May 14, 2009
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Correction: just as (not just like).David Kellogg
May 14, 2009
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Kyrilluk, just like every transitional form creates two new gaps, every discovery about the chemical origin of life creates new reasons to doubt the chemical origin of life.David Kellogg
May 14, 2009
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Looks like very nice work (original paper here).David Kellogg
May 14, 2009
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Does anyone know:
1) What the primitive soup was made of and where to find it (I mean, at least in which part of the world can we find residues of it or strate)?
2) What was the earth condition on earth (temperature, atmosphere, soil composition, etc..)?
and last but not least:
3) who was the guy making sure that the phosphate doesnt react with the mixture at the early stage ,getting the right amount of UV at the right time, twist the molecules to get them left-handed and then make them form a cells that ran into a cave to escape the same UV radiation (and occasionally the different meteorites bombarding the earth at the time)?
Good to know that my taxes are being well spent...Kyrilluk