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Transition Metal Catalysts Could Be Key To Origin of Life

Posted by samzenpus on from the it-was-just-zirconium-all-along dept.

An anonymous reader writes "One of the big, unsolved problems in explaining how life arose on Earth is a chicken-and-egg paradox: How could the basic biochemicals — such as amino acids and nucleotides — have arisen before the biological catalysts (proteins or ribozymes) existed to carry out their formation? In a paper appearing in the current issue of The Biological Bulletin, scientists propose that a third type of catalyst could have jumpstarted metabolism and life itself, deep in hydrothermal ocean vents."

3 of 145 comments (clear)

  1. Re: ok but how does this explain by Black+Parrot · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    What kind of rank idiot fucks up something like that?!?!

    Are you supposing that Obama made the rug himself?

    There are plenty of substantive issues you could have criticized him for.

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    Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
  2. Re:ok but how does this explain by phantomfive · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    What kind of rank idiot fucks up something like that?!?!

    Me, actually. With quotes that get thrown around a lot, it's really easy to misattribute them. Martin Luther King did say it, after all, and sometimes it's hard to trace back to the original source. It is possible Theodore Parker even heard it from somewhere else, you don't know.

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    Qxe4
  3. Re:ok but how does this explain by PPH · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Glen Beck and his chalk board can be explained by A Beautiful Mind.

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    Have gnu, will travel.