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Sludge In Flask Gives Clues To Origin of Life
sciencehabit writes "In the 1950s, scientist Stanley Miller conducted a series of experiments in which he zapped gas-filled flasks with electricity. The most famous of these, published in 1952, showed that such a process could give rise to amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. But a later experiment, conducted in 1958, sat on the shelf--never analyzed by Miller. Now, scientists have gone back and analyzed the sludge at the bottom of this flask and found even more amino acids than before--and better evidence that lightning and volcanic gasses may have helped create life on Earth."
Didn't he leave a Twinkie sitting on the shelf too? (And scientists found fewer amino acids than ever before!)
* Goes off running to go show this to his creationist "friends"...*
Tired of my customary (Score:1)
and say "NA! NA! NOT LISTENING!"
But don't let that stop you.
I was going to say "How do they know there was no contamination?", but TFA states that equal amounts of right handed and left handed organic molecules were found, ruling out contamination as a source of the amino acids.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
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But how is it that lightning formed amino acids found they're way deep among the deep ocean floor, and in large enough quantities for life to have formed and survive?
Two words: shit sinks
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
It took hundreds of millions of years and a lab the size of a planet to do it the first time. It may take more than a few decades to reproduce that.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
If examining sludge in a 50-year old flask can give clues to the origin of life, just imagine what scientists could learn by examining the inside of my fridge!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
It just proves that 6000 years ago God created life by zapping with lighting a flask filled with methane and hydrogen sulfide!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
In the fifties, when these experiments was set in motion, it had just recently been proven that DNA was the mechanism by which cells passed on their programming to their offspring. Prior to that, the common belief was that proteins did all the work, and that DNA was just a structural fibre like cellulose. Today, we're strongly of the opinion that not only was protein less relevant to early life, but probably completely irrelevant, as we've determined that RNA can perform the role of both DNA (information storage) and proteins (enzymes and structure). Evidence suggests that it once performed both of these roles exclusively, and that DNA and proteins evolved because they were tools better-suited to certain tasks.
THEREFORE: the availability of amino acids isn't relevant to the origin of life; only that they're around later for higher life forms to evolve. We really need to worry about the availability of ribonucleotides. The idea that we need to worry about the availability of amino acids only comes later.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Not much though. Creation of amino acids in the "primordial soup" does not explain where life came from, which is what both of those theories are in search of. Also, the original experiment has been improved greatly so they have the data now to confirm the formation of amino acids along with other building blocks. Fact is there's still a huge gap of knowledge between molecule and cell formation.
One interesting theory, possibly related depending on your view, is RNA-first formation. Another is silicate-based. There is a lot of info out there on these and other theories but if you want a good read on the subject of the formation of life I highly recommend the book Life as We Do Not Know It: The NASA Search for (and Synthesis of) Alien Life, by Peter Ward. *Warning* this book contains unscientific generalizations from a geologist *Warning*
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They're actually very similar, in the grand scheme of things. They're DNA and RNA based, use the same amino acids (or at least, almost exactly the same) etc. There was a common ancestor between archaea and all known life, so far as I know.
It's quite possible that life evolved twice, or more than twice. The trick would be recognizing it when we see it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_biosphere
Biochemist and Ohio U Ph.D. Fuz Rana in Creating Life in the Lab makes a strong case that a basic life form created by scientists is approximately a decade away.
http://www.amazon.com/Creating-Life-Lab-Discoveries-Synthetic/dp/0801072093
The article points to a few methods the amino acids could be produced in nature, (including underwater vents) and the experiment seems to back that up. So given that amino acids are not that hard to produce, the question of life isn't what caused the amino acids to form (because similar conditions exist on other planets in our own solar system and beyond.) The question is what caused the amino acids to begin to form the complex chains that actually are life.
In legal terms, there is the concept of "chain of evidence" meaning that the material has not left authorized hands, nor sat on a shelf unattended for 53 years. If this was a murder trial, that "chain of evidence" would be completely broken. If this is required to prove the death of someone, it surely must apply to prove the "life" of something.
If you have a corpse, and you can identify who it is, but you don't know where it was for a little while, you're no longer sure that that person is dead?
I think the point must be that since we don't know what was going on with the flask during all those years, God could have easily slipped in and planted those amino acids!
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
There are plenty of repeats of this - they just don't bother publishing them because there isn't much new to learn.
In fact, we repeated a version of the Urey-Miller experiment in my undergraduate biology lab independent project. The hard pard was going around bumming free equipment (high voltage transformer from the EE dept, balloons of elementary gases from the chemistry dept, even the help of a very cool tech in the physics dept who helped us make a simple spark gap chamber out of a glass bottle, a couple tungsten rods, and a blowtorch).
The goal was to repeat a few times with slightly different starting materials, and see what different amino acids we could find. Unfortunately, we managed to blow up the custom made spark bottle on the second run; someone dropped it and caused a hairline crack after the first run, and that let enough oxygen get in after we (not-so-successfully) evacuated it to cause a nice little explosion after turning on the spark gap. Luckily we were careful enough to put it under an enclosed fume hood ;)
In the end it was more an exersice in begging for supplies than novel science. But that was probably a lot more useful skill to learn for a budding researcher than how to inseminate a sea urchin...
1- Create life- done.; the polio virus has been synthetically produced
I was astonished to learn that biologists don't consider viruses to be "life". They don't meet some of the criteria of the common definition(s) of life.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
That could really put a spin on things. Evolution ~ Creationism. Humm...
No amount of evidence would convince creationists that they're wrong.
As the saying goes, you can't use reason to leverage someone out of an opinion that wasn't acquired by reason.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Disclaimer: i was a student under one of Miller's former post-docs. That doesn't mean I know much more than you.
From my understanding, the problems to be solved had to do with the misconception that organic molecules could only be made "organically." It was well known that life makes amino acids, fats, etc.; however, it was also well known that such things were done by the action of enzymes or other structures within living cells. So the question was more of a "how do we break the chicken-and-egg paradox?" instead of "can we reverse engineer exactly how life was created".
The fact that you could start off with inorganic materials and make organic building blocks without a living system processing them was the ground shaking breakthrough. Once you had that, then it's easy to conjecture that enough organic molecules would eventually build up that some of them would become self-organizing (and eventually resemble life). If some other technique was discovered to make organic molecules from inorganic, then the key missing link would still have been satisfied.
I suspect at least some reluctance to "play god" in the past and to "anger the fundies" nowadays inhibits research in this area.
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God!
-- Epicurus, philosopher (c. 341-270 BCE)
As a potential lottery winner, I totally support tax cuts for the wealthy
In school we were taught that they weren't life, exactly, because they couldn't reproduce themselves, but IIRC there was a minority position that they were life nonetheless.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
They don't meet some of the criteria of the common definition(s) of life.
I know some biologists that don't meet some of the criteria. It's usually in the "reproduction" area where they have problems.
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Your analogy is broken...
This is more like finding worms eating a corpse, and then saying it's proof that the worms must have been there when the person was living.
I can assure you that those samples were intact all these years. Besides, most of the samples were in vials and not in flasks. How do I know this personally? I did my PhD work in a lab right next to Jeffrey Bada's (see the paper, he's one of the main authors). I was there when he found these samples from their storage or something and told us all about it.
Also any amino acids that were in the vials must have been synthesized in the Miller's apparatus since there was no starting materials left in those vials (remember the S.M. were gases). Even so this experiment is still irrelevant to the origin of life for the reasons I've discussed in another comment of mine (see below).
Regardless, this experiment is still irrelevant because those gases Miller used (H2S, H2, NH3, CO2, esp.) cannot coexist in the same place for any appreciable amount of time. Gases like CO2 would not exist without a significant amt of O2, but H2S, H2, NH3, etc (and the amino acid products) would be quickly oxidized at elevated temp in the presence of O2. Moreover, if O2 was absent, unfiltered UV radiation (w/out O2, no O3 layer) would also quickly destroy those reducing gases and amino acid products.
Some were yelling one thing, some another. Most of them had no idea what was going on or why they were there. Acts19:32
People need to Mod this up.
Creationists (and other ill minded ilk) seem to miss that this was the big revolution not just for abiogenesis. Suddenly organic compounds were in easy reach of inorganic reactions. This was really relevant for both biologists interested in the origin of life, but also people interested in organic chemistry basic research at the time. I was 'introduced' to this experiment twice in college - the first time was in biology, where you'd expect. But the second time was in organic chemistry.
anything is going to have signs of life in it!
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
Perhaps this so called 'sludge' is not really sludge at all. I believe that is is actually sauce, sauce from the Flying Spaghetti Monster itself. And being a sauce, this gives us believers in the FSM more actual evidence for its existence, than the magic man in the sky.
Glory to the Flying Spaghetti Monster!
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
...that this sludge has given me clues to the origin of life, but I can say certainly that life has given me clues to the origin of this sludge.
Here's the thing about Genesis chapters 1 and 2: they are poetry. It wasn't meant to be a play-by-play description of How We Got Universe. The most obvious clue is the repetition of "And there was evening, and there was morning, the x day." Scholars I am willing to trust because they know Hebrew say that it's still more obvious in its original tongue.
Too many Christians (led by the institution of the church) and also people in general are ignorant of the different kinds of literature found in the Bible. Psalms and Proverbs and Song of Solomon are pretty obviously song, poetry and...well, proverbs; but there is also history, which includes incidents most of us find far-fetched but also accounts with corroborating evidence from other historical documents. There is also apocalyptic literature, the most famous being Revelation. That, too, was never meant to be taken literally but was more of a sort of pep-rally for the Christians of the time to give them encouragement to persevere knowing that they win in the end. St. John may have also eaten some funny mushrooms.
There is a willful ignorance among many American Christians* that doggedly claims "read it literally!" without consideration for the genre within which a particular piece was written and makes those who practice it into fools. There is a willful ignorance among many opponents of Christianity, and religion in general, who do the same thing.
*I will not speak about trends in other countries because I don't have experience with the Christians in them.
Your brain is not a computer.