Slashdot Mirror
Amino Acids Created in Deep-Space-Like Environment
klevin writes "NASA scientists today announced the creation of amino acids, critical for life, in an environment that mimics deep space. The above link is the press release, with additional details here."
does his mean my chances for finding an alien hotty, ala kirk, have just gone way up?
Isn't this similar to what Stanley Miller and Harold Urey found in the 1960's with their spark-chamber experiment? While this seems to be stellar in nature, how much different is UV photolysis from electrical discharge as far as chemical reactions go?
This is mildly cool, but honestly it's done all the time by companies like TwinLab who sell them to body builders in little glass jars.
Why bother growing them in space when you can bring them with you? Sounds like NASA is taking the long way around.
I can create them there.
I can create them anywhere!
I will not evolve them in a house
I will not evolve them with a mouse
I do not like space genes of man
I do not like them Sam I am.
Until they under the same conditions:
1) create a protein
2) create a cell
3) make it a living cell.
Also notice that the headline used the word created?
You're using her as bait, Master!
Amino acids, so what? I will be excited when the explain how amino acids assemble themselves into something as complex as DNA.
So would I. Perhaps you should read your own signature. Nucleic acids assemble to DNA; amino acids make proteins.
-Sean
Prefix: I am not a Creationist.
"I think this is proof against one of the arguments creationist wackos have been making for quite a long time"
Actually this does nothing of the sort.
What this shows is that the basic components of life--Amino Acids--/can/ be generated in a deep space environment. Whoop de do. The argument against abiogenisis (chemical evolution) stems from the following:
1) Probability versus chance of creating functional proteins. We don't know what this is, but we do know that it is incredibly small. The probability is so small, in fact, that no number of trials that could have occurred within the lifespan of the universe would be sufficient.
2) The number of mutations it takes to create a functional allele (what gives us different characteristics) is a *massive* number. The number of mutations it takes to make a functional allele "nonfunctional" is *one*.
3) It takes millions of mutations to create a hox gene. The number it takes to take one out is *trivial* by comparison.
This does not make the creationist argument correct, but it doesn't mean that this evidence of where Amino Acids can or cannot form lends credence to abiogenesis to the degree or diversity of life that we see.
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
Nope. The point is gone. Proteins are just lots of amino acids, connected by single bonds. The hard part is getting all those constituent atoms to form into the relatively complex amino acids. Then just string the amino acids along and see what you get. True, getting functional proteins that can actually (for example) catalyze a chemical reaction is pretty unlikely when you're just randomly creating proteins by strining aa's together. But remember, not only do you you have most of the history of the universe in which to do it in, but these results suggest that the reactions can take place within most of the area of the universe (ie - deep space). That's a LOT of time, and a LOT of area. It makes me wonder why there isn't MORE life out there, actually.
4-star general in a one-man army.
There is a great deal of doubt whether the mixture of gases used in this experiment actually existed on earth: it assumes a reducing atmosphere, among other things that geology does not tell us.
More than one geologist, in fact, has noted that the only reason that they believe that there ever was a reducing atmosphere on Earth is because life is obviously here and the basic building blocks couldn't form in the presence of Oxygen.
At the same time, however, those amino acids couldn't form without the presence of an ozone layer--which requires free oxygen.
This is interesting and intriguing because it shows how these blocks could form in deep space and then arrive on Earth--since we already know that they can remain intact in their descent through the atmosphere.
It still doesn't even come *close* to answer the criticisms levied against abiogenesis (the formation of proteins, functional alleles, &c), but it is interesting and extremely significant over the Urey-Miller experiment.
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
What do you expect NASA to do? The only people who aren't pissed at them for wasting tons of money are the people pissed at them for not doing anything they're interested in.
It's like this: You give them 40 billion, and we'll go to Mars.
A bit of relevance... This does not disprove God. Christianity is based on faith. The whole system is based on faith. Were we to have ANY proof that God exists, we no longer need faith, and so the system would fail. Therefore, if God exists and He is all powerful, He would have hidden all traces of his existence and acts in order to preserve the need for faith. So there will always be a rational explanation. Case in point: amino acids formed.
By the way, I'm an agnostic communist with Zen and Tibetan Buddhist sympathies. Thought that might be interesting.
-Skeld
Amino acids don't make DNA. Amino acids make protein. Check your facts.
Here is how protein is made:
Base pairs (adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine) self-assemble into DNA. If you put base pairs together, they will assemble, all completely by themselves. Base pairs are 2 bases (adenine and thymine, or guanine and cytosine) connected to eachother by hydrogen bonds. These base pairs are connected to other base pairs by alternating deroxyribose and phosphates.
Now, BTW, I haven't mentioned this important bit: DNA and RNA are divided into sections called codons. These are 3 base pairs that code for a particular protein.
DNA can catylise single-stranded mRNA. The DNA splits, and an RNA molecule forms on each strand of DNA. RNA is the same as DNA except it is single stranded and instead of Thymine it has Uricil. Now when the RNA molecule forms on the DNA, it makes a perfect anti-copy of the DNA.
They split, and the 2 single DNA strands recombine. Then the mirror-image mRNA binds to tRNA codons, and this creates a perfect copy of the original DNA, at least in respect to protein coding.
Now, if you have digested that, I will talk about how the protein is actually made:
Now the tRNA is at the ribosome, which is the protein manufacturing organelle of a cell.
Amino acids from around the cell then bind to their respective corresponding codons. This eventualy forms a protein chain. All our DNA does is make protein. That is how all life is made.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
It is ridiculous to debate the existence of evolution today. We see it all around us, with bacteria and such becoming resistant to antibiotics. The fossil record supports it, genetics supports it, as does virtually every other realm of science. But as per your #1 comment, particularly the last bit, is bull. In some bacteria, generations can be measured in seconds, or less. Within a few generations - a few seconds - they can evolve to become resistant or immune to antibiotics or certain bacteriophages. Life on Earth is said to have began around 4, to some estimates as far back as 5, billion years ago. I'm not going to calculate how many seconds there are in 4 billion years, but it's quite a lot. Just one bacterium producing just one offspring for that entire timespan would probably be in the hundreds of trillions, perhaps more. But that's not the way it works, is it? Multiply that by a hundred billion for every member of that species. All of them mutating, evolving, etc. I don't even know the name for that number. Then consider how many entities there are on Earth. It multiples, and multiplies, and multiplies, again and again and again. As per 2, couldn't it also be said that it only takes one gene to create a functional allele from a nonfunctional one? But taking away a gene doesn't always destroy a nonfunctional allele. It sometimes makes a variation, a mutation, that works. And that is how evolution works. As per 3, see 1. There are uncountable multiples of a million right there. Also, your whole post can be discredited based upon the fact that you know not what abiogenesis means. Abiogenesis is the spontaneous formation of life from a primordial soup. Not evolution. Abiogenesis is not factual, but it holds a great deal more credence than creationism, or any other theory for that matter. But evolution, sir, is an empirical fact.
I am not a creationist.
Several posters have said this.
I'll be charitable and guess that they are "Intelligent Design" advocates.
How can we know that the odds against life occurring "are too great"? We are talking about a process we don't understand. Any guess regarding odds can only be a guess. And the fact of the matter is that we are all here... Ergo, life was created somehow or other. See TalkOrigins for more on the odds of life et al).
Conclusion 1: All the evidence is that life was created by natural processes. We don't know exactly how.
Nothing in that precludes the existence of "god". If a natural process created life, then surely it would be "his" natural process...
What IDer's attempt to argue is that the creation of life "requires" or "proves" not only (a) that god exists; but also (b) that he is a "conservative" christian god. It does nothing of the sort.
If there was any scientific evidence whatsoever of "design" in the building blocks of life - as the IDer's favorite Michael Behe suggests - it would be like finding a black monolith on the moon (as in "2001"). Behe has found nothing of the sort.
Conclusion 2: "Intelligent Design" theory goes nowhere (a) to proving the existence of god(s); or (b) to proving anything about his/her/its/their nature.
PTET
Nope. The point is gone. Proteins are just lots of amino acids, connected by single bonds. The hard part is getting all those constituent atoms to form into the relatively complex amino acids.
As a protein/organic chemist, I say to you: why don't you try making that single bond? It's quite hard when you don't have a ribosome to do all the work for you.
Stanley Miller has been making amino acids (granted, the wrong way) since 1955. And he didn't even have his doctorate yet. Raw amino acids are easy- what's difficult is selecting the proper stereochemistry (amino acids have mirror images which are chemically identical but structurally different- life only uses one of the two mirror images (enantiomers)). If you condense the wrong enantiomer, or both enantiomers simultaneously, you get garbage out. Same problem with nucleic acids to DNA. In the end, this report is plagued with the same problems that Stanley Miller faced in 1955, sorry kids, deep space (or almost every other non-biological natural chemical synthesis) doesn't care about symmetry.
If you're interested in a brief history of Miller, why he's wrong, and what we think now, see my other post.
It is ridiculous to debate the existence of evolution today.
Somehow I doubt that will stop you from doing it anyway.
We see it all around us, with bacteria and such becoming resistant to antibiotics. The fossil record supports it, genetics supports it, as does virtually every other realm of science.
Congradulations. You slayed a strawman by lumping several different empirical datasets that record several different kinds of changes in several different kinds of organisms into one very vague term, "evolution". Empiricaly all one can probably grasp from that is that things change, but I suppose that doesn't stop you from reaching for so much more.
In some bacteria, generations can be measured in seconds, or less. Within a few generations - a few seconds - they can evolve to become resistant or immune to antibiotics or certain bacteriophages.
Bacteria have many mechanisms to support change, mostly from incorprating or jumping genes more than random "mutation", but that isn't important now. The poster is pointing out the statistical probability of the random production of the building blocks of life. Since it is not alive, it does not take advantage of the intelligent (although not entirely controlled) gene splicing that Bacteria and viruses use to propegate changes.
Life on Earth is said to have began around 4, to some estimates as far back as 5, billion years ago.
Again, I think you jumped off the mark early and throught your post. He's talking about the mechanisms that existed to create life, not change it.
As per 2, couldn't it also be said that it only takes one gene to create a functional allele from a nonfunctional one?
Here is another example of over-reaching pseudo-science. This is not a symetrical relation between a one-away allele and a functional allele. Assuming that a non-functioning allele is one gene away from functioning, the probability of out of all the random gene changes that it occurs is astronomicaly low. However, the likely hood out of all the possible changes of making a change in a functioning alelle to render it non-functioning actually pretty high.
But taking away a gene doesn't always destroy a nonfunctional allele. It sometimes makes a variation, a mutation, that works. And that is how evolution works.
I've not seen any flying pigs over Chernobyl, super-humans, or new species for that matter. As was brought to my attention long ago on Slashdot, there have never been any observed beneficial random mutations. Subjecting thousands on thousands of grasshoppers to radiation never once produced a beneficial mutation. Changes occur, and mutations occur, but only when they occur along certain natural laws do they produce a limited beneficial result. Check out the "Observed Speciation" page and with some luck you'll find out what the common thread is.
Now, lets end this with my favorite non-sequiter...
Also, your whole post can be discredited based upon the fact that you know not what abiogenesis means. Abiogenesis is the spontaneous formation of life from a primordial soup. Not evolution. Abiogenesis is not factual, but it holds a great deal more credence than creationism, or any other theory for that matter. But evolution, sir, is an empirical fact.
Yet the person you are disagreeing with (as far as I can tell) was talking about the [p]robability versus chance of creating functional proteins. . Sounds like he understood quite well.
However, recent research suggests that there is an excess of L-amino acids (the specific enantiomer used in life-proteins) in amino acids found in space, which further suggests that the shuttling of amino acids from space via meteorites and comets could have led to pre-biotic proteins on planet Earth.
...
From the article:
Recently it has been discovered that an excess of L-amino acids is present in the Murchison and Murray meteorites indicating that a preference for L-amino acids existed in solar system material before there was life on Earth. This supports an idea, first proposed by Rubenstein et al. (1983, Nature 306, 118), for an extraterrestrial origin for homochirality.
In this model the action of circular polarized light on interstellar chiral molecules introduced a left handed excess into molecules in the material from which the solar system formed.
If our own solar system formed in such a region of high circular polarization, it could have led to the excess of L-amino acids which we see in meteorites and to the homochirality of biological molecules. It is possible that without such a process operating it would not be possible for life to start. This may have implications for the frequency of occurrence of life in the universe.
The money isn't wastet. The scientists (and all the other ppl around there) get the money. And if the pay thousands for a pice of electronic, some body has to build it. Since even scientists need sth to eat etc. they spend the money say to the pizza boy -- and what would the pizza boy do, if there were no NASA scientists. ;-)
..that glycine, alanine and serine, the amino acids formed, are three of the smallest and structurally less energy-consuming amino acids?
You do not exist. Go away.
Hmmm, I wonder how many of some of the things we consider indispensable to modern life and commerce came as a result of NASA and "irrelevant" research in general.
Although I agree that it seems like there are more pressing issues here on Earth...I bet you were one of the kids who was always whining about having to learn math.
And whoever said that then is as wrong as you repeating it now. Plenty of beneficial mutations have been observed. Simple example: a bacteria evolving resistance to a drug is certainly beneficial to the bacteria.
More complex example: there's a cluster of people in rural Italy that have developed a gene that gives them dramatically lower cholesterol levels, thus improving their health. Analysis of genological records show that this cluster are all descended from one person, born about 150 years ago. That person evidently got what can only be considered a beneficial mutation from one of this parents.
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Did you read the link about chirality? They address this very issue off the "more questions" page. Here is the link.
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Put lots of energy in to break everything apart and hope the bits come together in the right way with a means to carry off the excess energy (so the acids stay together)
And if they don't come all the way apart, how do you know?
Every square centimeter of every piece of lab equipment everywhere on the planet is covered in bacteria and virii. Merely killing the little critters is not enough for this type of experiment to be valid. Their bodies must be done away with. All amino acid and amino acid fragments must be removed. Not 99% removed. Not 99.9999% removed. Everything must be gone. Otherwise, all you're showing is that:
Raw material + energy + amino acids -> amino acids
instead of
Raw material + energy -> amino acids
Until all organic compounds are removed from the system (which we can't do), claims of creating spontaneous amino acids are invalid. In fact, the only thing that these experiments demonstrate is how difficult it is to wipe them out.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
I'm not sure. If science manages to create a very artificial environment within which they're somehow able to coax life into existence then, yes, you might be right. But if if it can be demonstrated that those were precisely the conditions and circumstances that existed on a primordial earth, I'm not sure I agree. In that case, scientists would not be creating artificial conditions, simply carefully reproducing conditions that had already occurred naturally.
In essence, the scientists are then the trancendent entity that created life.
The problem is we needed to use the word "create" with greater precision. "Creation" can be understood in two senses: 1) creatio ex nihilo, or creation by fiat from nothing. And 2) a derivative creation, in which something is created from previously existing materials. Human beings are masters of the latter; only God is capbable of the former.
Assuming humans eventually succeed in producing life by reproducing the conditions under which it (presumably spontaneously) originated doesn't de facto disprove intelligent design. Scientists are not trying to disprove God; they're simply trying to better understand the conditions and processes that led to the emergence of life.
I suspect that once science manages to create life, we'll simply be right back at ground zero in the whole creationist debate. Non-theistic evolutionists will claim they've disproven God. Creationists and theistic evolutionists will continue to argue that reproducing the primordial conditions does not in itself prove that those conditions could have arisen as simply a product of chance plus time. I.e., that we've simply managed to reproduce conditions and processes which required the direction of an Intelligence.
Correction: it wasn't 150 years ago, it was 220 years ago. His name was Giovanni Pomaroli. A popularized account of the research may be found here.
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Not quite. Bacteria developing drug resistance is indeed evolution, since evolution is strictly defined as changes in alleles (genes) in a population over time. Enough evolution over time can result in a new species - this is called (no suprprise here) speciation, which has also been observed in the lab and in the wild. But evolution is not directly equal to speciation.
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
You seem to have missed the point. NASA's experiment was by no means a carbon copy. The original Miller-Urey experiment was in a simulated atmosphere with electric arcs. The NASA experiment was in simulated DEEP SPACE, with radiation. It's the difference between an early earth-like environment and the depths of the universe. If you really think the two are similar, then I guess moving your house to deep space wouldn't be much of an inconvenience, eh?
I can tell from your comments that you don't understand science well. Or at the very least, you're a Popular Scientist that thinks they know everything about science. Well, I'm sorry, but science doesn't work the way you want it to. Discoveries proceed by increments, not by leaps and bounds. Sure, I'd be impressed if someone synthesized a biologically important protein from scratch. But I'd also be INCREDIBLY doubtful, since it would mean the researchers ignored all the preliminary work that needed to be done and just jumped in randomly.
You keep thinking of proteins as millions of chemical bonds, which they are. But behind those millions of chemical bonds are amino acids, which are themselves about 20-30 bonds. So this NASA experiment shows that those relatively complex 20-30 bond components can be made in deep space. After that, just use a single bond to string them together. Do that enough times, and you've got a protein. Maybe not a functional protein, but a protein nonetheless. Repeat billions and billions of times over the history/area of the universe, and maybe you'll end up with something useful.
4-star general in a one-man army.
Is the set of 17 amino acids in use on Earth-based life a privledged set? As in, are there any possible substitutes? Or could the set reasonably be expanded or contracted? I'm presuming size, composition, polarity and electronegativity are all limitations.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
Plenty of beneficial mutations have been observed.
Peace my paranoid friend, no one is arguing that there have been no beneficial changes to genetic code. You can save your energy on that strawman.
However, evidence shows that there are rules guiding those changes as brought about by jumping gene, gene survival and other theories, and by every-day live occurances like the existance of heterogeneous-sexes and their reproduction. Changes happen becuase it is built into the genetic code for them to happen. Rarely if at all (and never observed) have random mutations produced outside of these procedures been beneficial.
Now, they may not be functional proteins, nor DNA, or even genes, but it sounds like these molecules just might be the chemical starting point.
Shop Smart, Shop S-mart!
Phil Reeds short reply - attacking your gross misrepresentations about benificial mutations having never been observed - aside;
...evolution is strictly defined as changes in alleles (genes) in a population over time.
... then you've answered your own question.
Not so fast, Phil Reed has shown that he cannot find a scientific arguement with both hands and a flashlight. Just in case this is still in doubt lets look at how he defines evolution.
This is a strict definition? Lets compare it to the definition from the National Association of Biology Teachers.
evolution: an unsupervised, impersonal, unpredictable and natural process of temporal descent with genetic modification that is affected by natural selection, chance, historical contingencies and changing environments
Notice that in his religious zeal he completely bypasses the process criteria and effect, i.e. the "unsupervised, impersonal, unpredictable and natural process", in order to conclude via non-sequiter that things change over time... ***whala*** evolution.
Now, beyond that I can only say that I won't be drug down into a creation vs evolution debate. I'll be quick to point out evolutionary zealots who do not understand the science they are advocating but there is no use in it for me to go further.
However, I'm afraid you suffer from the same, so I'll offer a few corrections...
Ok, he has calculated that the odds for a fully functional cell forming is about 10^440
That was an assertion that anonymous coward proposed, and not Llewelyn who wrote the post that Razorguy produced arguements that were a gross disservice to science. And I was exposing RazorGuy's disservice more than defending anyone.
Llewelyn was talking about the unlikelyhood of random production of the basic building blocks of life, that "first success", which would not have the benefit of the processes of mutation and evolution that are built into the genetic code. Although he did not produce a number, it does fit along the lines of abiogenisis and based on shear randomness would be astronomicaly improbable.
Your ignoring that basic fact of his arguement makes me suspicious that your looking for straw-men more than the truth. The next sentence provides more evidence.
As to creationism - please don't try to advocate it; for the Fundamentalist Christian Young Earth Creationism to work, ALL of science has to be mangled into utter unintelligibility. Cosmology, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, geology, paleontology, archeology, meteorology, and all their (very useful) subfields - must be dismissed as garbage in order to force the world-veiw that YE Creationism demands.
You start out by advocating the dismissal outright of "creationism", but back it up with vague hand waving at a selective strawman representation in "Young Earth Creationism".
But wait there is more...
Not only that, but all the problems that you present for abiogenesis plague your "Creator" - did it simply arise by chance? What are the odds there?
Where did I reference "my creator" in the post you are refering to? Either you have your own divining power or you just conjered it up as part of a strawman. Lets say my creator is "Natural Selection" from the unlikely event of a decendent allel many millions of years ago. Whats the odds that you shake a box and "Natural Selection" comes out? There are many governing laws in this universe, how many times do you shake a box and come up with gravitation, "PV=NRT". Sure you could argue that for the box to exist you need those things already, and