Theoretical origin of life: current dead end (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, June 09, 2016, 23:19 (2878 days ago) @ David Turell

I've shown over and over that the attempts to figure out the start of life have all been dead ends. Starting with advanced forms like RNA doesn't seem to offer any road to success. Now a Science article which I cannot get, making the same point is reviewed elsewhere:-http://www.evolutionnews.org/2016/06/origin-of-life_1102900.html-Direct article quote:-"How can matter transition from the nonliving to the living state? The answer is essential for understanding the origin of life on Earth and for identifying promising targets in the search for life on other planets. Most studies have focused on the likely chemistry of RNA, protein, lipid, or metabolic "worlds" and autocatalytic sets, including attempts to make life in the lab. But these efforts may be too narrowly focused on the biochemistry of life as we know it today. A radical rethink is necessary, one that explores not just plausible chemical scenarios but also new physical processes and driving forces. Such investigations could lead to a physical understanding not only of the origin of life but also of life itself, as well as to new tools for designing artificial biology. [Emphasis added]-"In one fell swoop, Cronin and Walker have cast doubt on essentially the whole history of origin-of-life research. Whether from Oparin, Miller, Orgel, Benner, Hud, Russell, Cairns-Smith, Wachtershauser, Shapiro, or maybe even "warm little pond" Darwin himself -- it's all inadequate and probably misguided. Otherwise, why would a "radical rethink" be necessary? -***-"Such thinking is flawed for a number of reasons, some of which we can glean from the paper and summarize here:-•Dilution and entropy: "Left unattended, sophisticated chemistry becomes more dilute and disordered."-•Oversimplification: "A quick route to complexity and enrichment that could lead to the development of evolvable units seems to be required to avoid this serious issue."-•Ends without means: "Yet, most research efforts have focused on detailing precise chemical mechanisms for producing high yields of individual bio-inspired products, without addressing the processes necessary to form increasingly complex molecules and networks."-•Improbability: "The molecular constituents of simple networks are more likely to arise by chance than the highly evolved molecules of extant life."-•Begging the question: "how did evolution begin if the complex machinery for evolution was not in place?"-***-"A concept of information relevant to biological organization may be essential to identifying these networked processes. Adami and LaBar have described life at a basic level as "information that copies itself". Given that life not only copies information but also uses information to construct itself, we might instead describe the start of life as "simple machines that can construct slightly more complicated machines." Focusing on information in this way moves the narrative even further from a chemistry-specific mode than focusing on networks alone but may perhaps provide our best shot at uncovering universal laws of life that work not just for biological systems with known chemistry but also for putative artificial and alien life. For example, Walker et al. have recently shown that information-theoretic measures distinguish biological networks from random ones," (my bold0-Comment: I'm not surprised at the reappraisal. Note the bolded area that emphasizes information at the basis of life. I couldn't reproduce a vast amount of the long article. It is worth a review.