origin of life (The atheist delusion)

by David Turell , Wednesday, March 05, 2008, 02:05 (5887 days ago) @ dhw

The problem with origin of life research is that approaches used by the researchers have produced only negative results. They have learned what does not work, and have no solid theories as to how to get from inorganic molecules to something living. Trying to re-invent an imagined RNA world as a first step and been fruitless. Yes, one lab did produce a self-replicating RNAzyme that could copy itself with 95% accuracy, after studying trillions and trillions of RNA candidate molecules with a computer program.
 
This is not surprising. A single celled organism, even the simplest, is made up of enormous numbers of amino acids. There are 20 'essential' amino acids, those required for living organisms. If one cooks up a reaction of nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen and carbon as inorganic atoms, with appropriate catalysts, one get a soup of tar and some amino acids. The problem is amino acids and other organic molecules are three dimensional, and from the reaction half will be right and half left handed. Life uses only left handed amino acids. Similarly if one looks at DNA or RNA in living organisms all the nucleotides are right handed. If life occured by accident, why this preference? No one knows but some substrates have been found to prefer a degree of handedness. - Compounding the problems, protein molecules which are the basis for life are strings of hundreds of amino acids which must be folded properly to have any function at all. As proteins are manufactured by the cell, other proteins already present control the folding. Each single cell is a miniature compound factory. - The only good approach at the present time to researching 'start of life' is to work with simple inorganic molecules according to the method of Robert Shapiro and by working out energy exchange loops of inorganic molecules hope to jump the enormous gap from inorganic to living organic organisms. - Invoking the Fred Hoyle approach of assuming life arrived from outer space, simply removes the problem to elsewhere in the universe.