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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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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.