Towards Abiogenesis, step by step

[blü 2]

When it becomes proven that microbes originated from meteorites,
then will all those who claim that life on Earth originated in the 'soup'
please take both their feet out of their mouth and admit they were wrong?

When you have contending hypotheses, it's usual to find that no more than one of them is right. No disgrace in arguing honestly from evidence in support of a well-reasoned claim that turns out to be wrong. (No Nobel either, but being wrong is part of the game of being right.)

Exogenesis might or might not be the horse to back. What makes you so confident?

 

[Valjean]

How does exogenesis even resolve the dispute? It just shifts the venue.

 

[ChristineM]

pff, screw disproving the creationists. we have already done that. I am more interested in creating a new tree of life. many of them. up until now, the earth has only had one tree. all current life is traceable back to a source. if we can create it. image making other planets hospitable and letting loose that primordial goo and watching it adapt and evolve in a unique way never seen. it may even become more suited to said conditions and give us a better understanding of the parameters of life and how we can in turn adapt ourselves

It is a possibility that life on earth has had more than one abiogenesis. A bit of a stretch, but possible.

Did life begin on Earth more than once, ask scientistsdifferent ancestors

Has life only started once on Earth? | Science Questions | Naked Scientists

 

[ChristineM]

When it becomes proven that microbes originated from meteorites,
then will all those who claim that life on Earth originated in the 'soup'
please take both their feet out of their mouth and admit they were wrong?

Or will they pretend that they've always claimed that they really meant
that abiogenesis was not about microbes spontaneously and magically
evolving in their soup?

Will they pretend that they really meant it was all originating in someone else's soup?

Actually was clear water, not soup. No one claims soup except creationist trying to debunk the TOE


Edit :
"In science, there are no universal truths, just views of the world that have yet to be shown to be false.”
― Brian Cox, Why Does E=mc²?

 

[gnostic]

When it becomes proven that microbes originated from meteorites,
then will all those who claim that life on Earth originated in the 'soup'
please take both their feet out of their mouth and admit they were wrong?

Or will they pretend that they've always claimed that they really meant
that abiogenesis was not about microbes spontaneously and magically
evolving in their soup?

Will they pretend that they really meant it was all originating in someone else's soup?

At the moment, no one really knows because there are not enough conclusive verifiable evidences for any of them to be the winner.

The Genesis creation is not really in contention because as Valjean pointed out, YEC creationists cannot even provide evidences or proofs for the existence of the One God aka the Creator.

 

[Valjean]

At the moment, no one really knows because there are not enough conclusive verifiable evidences for any of them to be the winner.

The Genesis creation is not really in contention because as Valjean pointed out, YEC creationists cannot even provide evidences or proofs for the existence of the One God aka the Creator.

So, inasmuch as only two "explanations" are on the table, and you've just shot down one, you seem to have made your choice.

 

[gnostic]

So, inasmuch as only two "explanations" are on the table, and you've just shot down one, you seem to have made your choice.

Well, when one tell a mythical tale of talking serpent, it can hardly be taken seriously.

 

[Crystalline]

Abiogenesis ─ how life first arose.

My own strong feeling is that, not tomorrow but soon, we're going to be reading credible reports that a verified pathway from nonlife to life has been found.

Blu 2, I'm very interested in this but don't understand a lot of it. A long, long time ago someone claimed to have made self replicating poly-peptide chains (MRNA), the precursor to DNA. If it receives nourishment, grows, and replicates.... what's missing to be life? Additionally, when I first started studying evolution, they suggested the primordial soup had very many diverse simple life forms, of which some collaborated into a highly interdependent colony that eventually made a single more complex life form. This is never mentioned any more. There were periods of more rapidly evolving organisms than other times, so I'm curious what caused those rapid spurts? Was the background radiation stronger back then and could have contributed to the spark of life... along with a greater vibration level? Why wouldn't sea water trapped in a lipid bubble, growing through osmosis until it got so big it split in two. be the way it started? Too simple? Thanks.

 

[blü 2]

Blu 2, I'm very interested in this but don't understand a lot of it. A long, long time ago someone claimed to have made self replicating poly-peptide chains (MRNA), the precursor to DNA. If it receives nourishment, grows, and replicates.... what's missing to be life?

First, please understand that I speak as an interested onlooker.

Yes, we know a lot about polypeptides and self-replication, and the formation of proteins through DNA; but that's only part of it. Wikipedia (under Abiogenesis) defines the problem this way ─

Life functions through the specialized chemistry of carbon and water and is largely based upon four key families of chemicals: lipids (fatty cell walls), carbohydrates (sugars, cellulose), amino acids (protein metabolism), and nucleic acids (self-replicating DNA and RNA). Any successful theory of abiogenesis must explain the origins and interactions of these classes of molecules.​

Additionally, when I first started studying evolution, they suggested the primordial soup had very many diverse simple life forms, of which some collaborated into a highly interdependent colony that eventually made a single more complex life form. This is never mentioned any more.

Just so. However, the idea that the conditions in which life arose, whether correctly thought of as 'soup' or not, contained the necessary biochemicals to allow the development of self-replicating cells, presents itself as a logical necessity. It's one of the attractions of the thermal vent hypothesis.

There were periods of more rapidly evolving organisms than other times, so I'm curious what caused those rapid spurts?

Apart from microfossils, which of course don't contain DNA or any such direct evidence anyway, most of the rest of our understanding of seriously early life comes from geology, where bacterial action left a number of markers. I could do worse than refer you to Wikipedia again >for an outline<.

Was the background radiation stronger back then and could have contributed to the spark of life.

The earth's first atmosphere was probably the result of volcanism, meaning that it contained a great deal of CO2, retaining heat on the planet. At that time the sun was cooler and much more active, and the earth's magnetic field was not yet an efficient shield, so there would have been many more energized particles from solar flares hitting the earth. I don't know whether that has any relevance to the formation of life, but once life existed, it could be a factor for mutation (and for keeping most life under water).

.. along with a greater vibration level?

What's a 'vibration level'?

 

[sayak83]

Blu 2, I'm very interested in this but don't understand a lot of it. A long, long time ago someone claimed to have made self replicating poly-peptide chains (MRNA), the precursor to DNA. If it receives nourishment, grows, and replicates.... what's missing to be life? Additionally, when I first started studying evolution, they suggested the primordial soup had very many diverse simple life forms, of which some collaborated into a highly interdependent colony that eventually made a single more complex life form. This is never mentioned any more. There were periods of more rapidly evolving organisms than other times, so I'm curious what caused those rapid spurts? Was the background radiation stronger back then and could have contributed to the spark of life... along with a greater vibration level? Why wouldn't sea water trapped in a lipid bubble, growing through osmosis until it got so big it split in two. be the way it started? Too simple? Thanks.

Regarding self replicating RNA, take a look,
Quest for self-replicating RNA edges closer to life’s possible origin

 

[Crystalline]

Regarding self replicating RNA, take a look,
Quest for self-replicating RNA edges closer to life’s possible origin

Thank you blu 2 and Sayak83 . It’s great to find people that have a good understanding of this!

I hope I understand… So just a specific chemical group encapsulated by a lipid bubble conducive for osmotic growth, growing to the point it splits in two and does it again is too simple. The criteria of the origin of life requires genetic material and chemical activity. The self replicating RNA is two strands of RNA, one being mRNA and the other is the template destined to be DNA? If so, then the mRNA has successfully replicated a template, only when the template is longer than itself, and a process done while in ice and water. This is contrary to the thermal vents theory. Repeating the process is problematic because the template tends to fold over and pair with itself instead of with the mRNA to make copies.

Consider this: Some say events that take place are a quantum wave of possibilities that collapses on one event. Some claim, we, the observer make this happen by watching it. Amit Goswami says that it is not always us being the observer because that is how we were formed, so there must be an underlying consciousness… implying something like a divine source. This is in harmony with Carl Sagan too. When is life conscious instead of being more mechanical?

Abiogenesis has been a long effort to get just this far. If it is accomplished, what could be the positive implications for its use?

 

[Runewolf1973]

There's a good reason why we haven't been able to recreate Life. There is no such thing as "living" matter. Matter is interactive and it changes form.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/brainwaves/why-life-does-not-really-exist/

 

[Subduction Zone]

There's a good reason why we haven't been able to recreate Life. There is no such thing as "living" matter. Matter is interactive and it changes form.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/brainwaves/why-life-does-not-really-exist/

I have a different interpretation of that article. It only shows that from mere chemical reactions forming crystals etc, to human life itself we have a continuum. There is no hard line between "alive" and not "not alive". There are only gradations. By the way, that is a natural result of life being the product of evolution and before that abiogenesis. The two run imperceptibly together. If life was the result of a creation event there should be a hard border somewhere.

 

[blü 2]

There's a good reason why we haven't been able to recreate Life. There is no such thing as "living" matter. Matter is interactive and it changes form.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/brainwaves/why-life-does-not-really-exist/

I'm inclined to agree with Subduction Zone here.

I read the article as pointing to a continuum from simplicity (he cites the hydrogen atom) to colossal biochemical complexity (he cites the brain). Life is at one end and nonlife at the other, but there's no crossover point but a large blurry crossover region which throws up blurry examples that fit our intuition of life but not our definitions.

And he also points out that this implies ways forward in the search for abiogenesis, and gives an example I wasn't aware of, which resulted in spontaneous formation of self-replicating complex chemicals ─ a very impressive trick:

the pair eventually produced two ribozymes that could replicate one another ad infinitum as long as they were supplied with sufficient nucleotides. Not only can these naked RNA molecules reproduce, they can also mutate and evolve​

Thanks for the article, by the way ─ excellent reading.

 

[sayak83]

I have a different interpretation of that article. It only shows that from mere chemical reactions forming crystals etc, to human life itself we have a continuum. There is no hard line between "alive" and not "not alive". There are only gradations. By the way, that is a natural result of life being the product of evolution and before that abiogenesis. The two run imperceptibly together. If life was the result of a creation event there should be a hard border somewhere.

I agree 100%.

 

[Sapiens]

Religionists seem to favor binary choices rather than continuums, in all things. They like simple.

 

[sayak83]

Religionists seem to favor binary choices rather than continuums, in all things. They like simple.

Hey, I follow a religion as well. Grr.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Hey, I follow a religion as well. Grr.

Perhaps he should have said fundamentalists. At least in Christianity those that insist the Bible be read literally seem to have this behavior. The ability to think either in only black or white is very limiting.

 

[WalterTrull]

Oh well, here comes simple.

There is no such thing as "living" matter.

My thought is that since there is no such thing (objectively) as matter, it couldn't be living. Since I side with the subjectivists (to whom or what is the tricky question). Interestingly though, matter being subjective, it certainly could "appear" to be living. It could appear to be as whatever we (or whom/what again) see it. I'm sure some scientist or tists will appear to create life at some point, freeing Pandora's captives once again. Let's all watch.

 

[Runewolf1973]

I have a different interpretation of that article. It only shows that from mere chemical reactions forming crystals etc, to human life itself we have a continuum. There is no hard line between "alive" and not "not alive". There are only gradations. By the way, that is a natural result of life being the product of evolution and before that abiogenesis. The two run imperceptibly together. If life was the result of a creation event there should be a hard border somewhere.

Firstly, in what way is life the product of evolution?

Secondly, are you assuming that life should have been the result of some "creation" event and therefore there should be a hard border between life and non-life somewhere?

Unless you are a creationist of some sort, life was never "created", matter changed form and things became more complex and more interactive. That's what "life" is...complex, highly interactive forms of matter.