Chemists May Be Zeroing In On Chemical Reactions That Sparked the First Life (sciencemag.org)

sciencehabit quotes a report from Scientific Magazine: DNA is better known, but many researchers today believe that life on Earth got started with its cousin RNA, since that nucleic acid can act as both a repository of genetic information and a catalyst to speed up biochemical reactions. But those favoring this "RNA world" hypothesis have struggled for decades to explain how the molecule's four building blocks could have arisen from the simpler compounds present during our planet's early days. Now chemists have identified simple reactions that, using the raw materials on early Earth, can synthesize close cousins of all four building blocks. The resemblance isn't perfect, but it suggests scientists may be closing in on a plausible scenario for how life on Earth began. The study has been published in the journal Nature.

Comments

Let's watch the creationists squirm

[spiritplumber]

figuring out how life began would be a great boon to the reverse-engineering of, well, everything that came after.

Re:Let's watch the creationists squirm

[wolfheart111]

Then we ourselves will become god. :)

Re:Let's watch the creationists squirm

[Anonymous Coward]

Why be God when you can be Godder than God?

Re:Let's watch the creationists squirm

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Or dogs? I mean, it's reverse engineering, right?

Re:Let's watch the creationists squirm

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Evolution can happen but it is always devolution (things getting worse not better). Natural selection is the exact opposite of evolution. You may need to understand a little bit here such as evolution is the actual building or increasing of genetic information which is the opposite of natural selection which is the reduction of the genetic information or the selection of existing genetic information.

Look, just because it happened to you doesn't mean it happened to everyone else.

Re:Let's watch the creationists squirm

[Applehu Akbar]

You're a creationist, and you're squirming. Mission accomplished.

Re:Let's watch the creationists squirm

[turbidostato]

I for one welcome our ourselves overlords!

Re:Let's watch the creationists squirm

[MightyYar]

the creationist argument that it is impossible will have to be thrown away forever.

That's very naive. They believe in magic, so they can change the argument in literally any way that they can imagine. If you demonstrated abiogenesis, they'd stop saying it's "impossible" and start saying, "See? You needed an intelligent being to set it all up!"

Re:Let's watch the creationists squirm

[jlowery]

Please check all that apply to your personal belief system:

1. The earth is flat
2. Gravity does not exist
3. The moon is a hologram
4. The Sun is 6,000 miles above us
5. Dinosaurs never existed
6. The Grand Canyon was formed by The Flood
7. Climate Change was invented to enrich evil scientists

By answering this survey, you help us identify the whackadoodliest of the whackadoodles. Thank you for your participation.

Re:Let's watch the creationists squirm

[Gr8Apes]

I didn't see any squirming there. Experiments making the RNA precursors using electric sparks in a "primordial soup" were done decades ago. We're no closer to "creating" life then than now. Suppose one day we did create life, that would be life from an intelligent creator, wouldn't it?

But creating life means we will know how it can happen, and then can assess whether random chance would make it happen and the odds of that. Hint, yes random chance can make life happen as the evidence is all around you, and the odds are greater than most will think.

Re:Let's watch the creationists squirm

[Anonymous Coward]

As Hawking (and no doubt many others) have said: God is unnecessary. Occam's Razor applies; it is part of the foundational principles of Science. We no more need to invoke god to "set it all up" than we need pixies to push each atom in the direction of the net gravitational force. I'd be quite inclined to believe in the supernatural in a world where bad things didn't happen to good people. This is not such a world. My fundamental problem with the supernatural is 1. it explains nothing about ultimate causes 2. Simpler explanations exist for nearly anything it does explain. 3. It is fundamentally an appeal to authority, not evidence.

Re:Let's watch the creationists squirm

[R3d M3rcury]

Adding:

• All of the above
• All of the above and more

That should help improve the efficiency.

Re: Let's watch the creationists squirm

[dougdonovan]

the first life on the planet. that would be my first wife.

Re:Let's watch the creationists squirm

[MightyYar]

I think that many/most "anti-creationists" are guilty of what they accuse the creationists for: religious fundamentalism

Of course we are. Except that only our "religion" (we would call it a philosophy) can produce reliable predictions about the natural world. We make absolutely no attempt to describe the supernatural, and are very happy to leave that to religion.

Re:Let's watch the creationists squirm

[iggymanz]

yes yes, I agree with you.

But what if life or RNA precursors did some to Earth in the past, say on a meteor or whatever, and it was spread that way by some intelligence somewhere? Is that point of view impossible?

Re: Let's watch the creationists squirm

[mark-t]

Generally, the most typical retaliation to people that are believed to be off their rocker is to either institutionalize them if they pose any kind of danger to others, or to simply ignore them entirely.

Even bothering to waste the time to have said what you did suggests that I must have struck some kind of nerve. Or did you seriously think that resorting to name calling was somehow going to make you look particularly ingenious?

With that out of the way, let me point out that I wasn't even suggesting that the universe necessarily even *has* a creator, I am only stating that while one may observe that the universe contains things which might appear to make a creator irrelevant to the universe's existence, and by virtue of Occam's razor come to the conclusion that it is more likely a creator doesn't exist, this line of reasoning is only practical if you expect that the universe's creator was somehow a part of the universe in the first place.... By definition, anything that exists beyond the observable universe cannot be perceived, but it grossly inaccurate to suggest that anything that cannot be perceived is seriously more likely to not exist at all.

One cannot rationally draw any conclusions about the existence or non-existence of the universe's creation by an intelligent entity because the parameters for testability do not exist in this universe, and trying to argue with anyone as though they should exist is either making the assumption that there is no creator in the first place, or else one is imposing biased and unproven limitations on such a creator, possibly without even intending to do so.

Re:Let's watch the creationists squirm

[John Bokma]

Evolution can happen but it is always devolution (things getting worse not better) Natural selection is the exact opposite of evolution. You may need to understand a little bit here such as evolution is the actual building or increasing of genetic information which is the opposite of natural selection which is the reduction of the genetic information or the selection of existing genetic information.

Obviously you have no clue about evolution, just like every other creanutter. Look up polyploidy, horizontal gene transfer, etc. And read something like "Why Evolution is True" instead of millennia old piss-poor fiction only the frauds and the gullible fall for.

Re: Let's watch the creationists squirm

[backslashdot]

That's like saying astronomy can't be true because if you cant see what's happening inside the room next door right now how can we see what's happening in a galaxy one billion trillion zillion miles away.

Re: Let's watch the creationists squirm

[ChrisMaple]

Except for what caused the hypothetical God.

Re:Let's watch the creationists squirm

[h33t l4x0r]

Any time someone uses the word "devolution" you know instantly that they don't get it. And yes I'm looking at you, that Star Trek TNG episode where the crew turns into spiders and cavemen.

Re:Let's watch the creationists squirm

[K. S. Kyosuke]

No, the odds are what they are, and a few people thought they knew what they are, and wrote about it, but we don't know if they were right or wrong (most likely wrong, as it is most commonly the case).

Re:Let's watch the creationists squirm

[K. S. Kyosuke]

That would have to be some flood, abrading away material to such depths in such a short time frame.

Re: Let's watch the creationists squirm

[MightyYar]

I don't follow. If "what started the whole process" is natural, the philosophy with the best track record in understanding the natural world is the most likely way to find it. If it is not natural, it is outside of the domain of science and you can have it.

Re:Let's watch the creationists squirm

[Gr8Apes]

We'll go with the Holmes statement there:

when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?

What if.

We can make a whole series of what ifs. Let's start with "What if life spontaneously started on earth?" It is possible, it is not even improbable, we can't rule it out. That one should be at the top of the list until some more improbable possibility becomes less improbable. This position does not preclude other life originating elsewhere.

Re:Let's watch the creationists squirm

[Gr8Apes]

So you, specifically, didn't find the answer to this question. And that precludes anyone else from discovering it how?

Re:Let's watch the creationists squirm

[LeftCoastThinker]

As the thousands of man hours tick up higher and higher as we attempt to understand how to create life, it only re-enforces what the man on the street with basic common sense already knows: Life, including man, was designed by a Designer, not by accident. If it takes 100,000 man hours (already likely spent) figuring out how to create life, and a multi million dollar lab to create it, all that proves is that it requires intelligence and direction to create life, not random chance (I doubt that we will ever be able to truly create life, because even if you take an organism, with all the parts and chemicals in the right place, once it has died, we can't figure out how to bring it back to life, let alone creating all the complex molecules, organelles and chemical processes from scratch and then getting them to come to life). At a basic level, we don't understand what makes one thing alive and another thing dead (sure, we understand the biochemical processes and actions, but the spark of life that causes those things to begin? No. (It's like building a mechanical clock, half of the knowledge required is how to build all the parts, the other half is how to properly apply an outside force to start the clock in motion. Otherwise, Frankenstein's monster would not be just fiction). Every process requiring greater entropy is a basic physics principle (2nd law of Thermodynamics) that evolution ignores. Evolutionists believe in science from the dark ages (spontaneous generation, disproved centuries ago) and their cognitive dissonance is amazing. Even this article is not about actual scientific discovery but speculation "Scientists may be"...

Evolutionists continually do mental back flips to try and justify their quackery and at this point people who have been paying attention have figured out that the Evolutionists of today will be viewed in much the way as the Vatican of the dark ages in the future. Evolutionary science today is science in name only, because they start with a conclusion and exclude all evidence (or opinions, or scientists) who indicate otherwise...

Re:Let's watch the creationists squirm

[LeftCoastThinker]

To be clear, we believe an intelligent, extra-dimensional Being created all things in this universe. It is not necessarily magic, but the mechanisms are currently unknown to us (and thus appear supernatural to our perception and understanding). This Creator also left instructions for how to act and there are many people out there who strongly dislike these instructions and are willing to go to great lengths to pretend that the Creator does not exist...

Even if you manage to spend 100,000 man hours in a multi-million dollar lab and figure out how to create living tissue from non living material, all you have proven is that to create life from non life it requires directed, intelligent intent. Your above assertion is like saying that because cars are built in a factory, setting off a bomb in a junk yard can also create the same exact car... Please try to control your emotions and apply a modicum of logical intelligence to the discussion...

Re:Let's watch the creationists squirm

[MightyYar]

It is not necessarily magic, but the mechanisms are currently unknown to us (and thus appear supernatural to our perception and understanding).

Right, so science makes no claim to deal with that at all. It's impossible to use science to explore that realm.

Your above assertion is like saying that because cars are built in a factory, setting off a bomb in a junk yard can also create the same exact car...

At least I'm using a philosophy with a demonstrated record of success to try and understand how the car was actually built, whereas you are content knowing that it was conjured by an unobservable sky pixie.

Re:Let's watch the creationists squirm

[RockDoctor]

Then all you've done is move the location for the origin of life from here (where we've got a modest chance of figuring out what happened) to an unknown location which was "nearby" 3.5 billion years or more ago. I.e. you've made the problem far, far harder, and delayed any realistic chance of solving it until after we've assessed in detail (i.e. visited dozens (*) of other planetary systems).

That's the fundamental problem with all variants of panspermia (the idea you're promoting ; no, it's not a new idea, except possibly to you) : you move the real problem off the table to somewhere where it's going to be much harder to examine, without contributing anything helpful to the solution of the problem.

(*) How many planetary systems? I'd say until it's been several generations since a new type of planetary system has received fieldwork. Which would be the 3rd or 5th example of each type. With what we're still learning from the likes of Kepler, that'd be upwards of 30 to 50 planetary system examples needing examination, and the know our sample of known systems is still seriously biased towards "hot Jupiters" just by the nature of the observations we make. Think of a number to answer that, but anything less than several millennia would just provoke derisory laughter.

Re:Let's watch the creationists squirm

[iggymanz]

If life did not arise here, then the problem is far, far harder to study and that is reality. Plenty of credible scientists are open to the possibility at least life did not arise on Earth. The increased difficulty of studying origins in that scenario is not an argument against it, you are being illogical.

Of course the idea of panspermia is old, more ancient then you know.

Re:Let's watch the creationists squirm

[spiritplumber]

can't tell if serious....

Re:Let's watch the creationists squirm

[LeftCoastThinker]

It is not necessarily magic, but the mechanisms are currently unknown to us (and thus appear supernatural to our perception and understanding).

Right, so science makes no claim to deal with that at all. It's impossible to use science to explore that realm.

It is not impossible to explore that realm, we just don't know how yet. It was impossible to explore the moon or Mars for medieval man, that didn't mean it was actually impossible in the absolute sense.

Your above assertion is like saying that because cars are built in a factory, setting off a bomb in a junk yard can also create the same exact car...

At least I'm using a philosophy with a demonstrated record of success to try and understand how the car was actually built, whereas you are content knowing that it was conjured by an unobservable sky pixie.

No, I am relying on the eyewitness accounts of tens of thousands of historical, real people who have had first hand interactions with the supernatural. You can blow it off all you want, but that means you are ignoring thousands of years of recorded history (or revising it to fit your bias, which a true scientist would never do). Science as a philosophy tells us what is knowable to us. If something is unknowable to us, science by definition fails to explain it. There are other tools besides science, history being one, logic being another. They are no less valid at understanding our world (the scientific method is actually just a limited extension of logic that deals with understanding only the physical world).

Re:Let's watch the creationists squirm

[iggymanz]

I have no problem agreeing life is "just chemistry" (and physics). Consciousness is in that realm too. What is ridiculous is our fantasy that a purely digital system could have self-awareness. Biological neural networks are not digital.

Re:Let's watch the creationists squirm

[iggymanz]

I have scientific basis to say they may not possibly be digital, as all extant self-aware systems are decidedly analog. Not even conscious effort on the part of an analog self-aware system to make a digital one has born any effort in the last 80 years.

Re:What about hardware ?

[ColdWetDog]

Don't go pushing bad analogies - you'll be talking about cars next.

The fun thing about nucleic acids is that they can hold data (genetic information) and act as catalysts by folding into specific shapes. RNA in particular can fold into complex 3D structures by itself or paired with some simple molecules like ligands. The "RNA Hypothesis" generally holds that an RNA - like molecule both encoded information to repeat itself

All a primitive 'living' structure had to do was make more of it's primitive self and in the process make enough errors to allow for evolutionary change. You don't really need an 'interpreter' - it is a function of the molecule itself. Yes, evolutionary drive pushed the creation of all sorts of ancillary functions, but in the beginning it may well have just been a nucleic acid string trying to make a nucleic acid string.

The process that made the individual nucleic acids is presumed to be abiotic - just a series of chemical reaction that managed to take place with some frequency on primordial earth (or wherever). TFA is the first (according to them, don't really follow this line of research) proposed reaction to make both types of RNA precursor bases. While not strictly necessary - billions of years allows for several distinct unlikely processes to happen simultaneously (think bowels of petunias, or rather, don't) it seems 'cleaner' to have a single, tweak able pathway to create the pool of chemicals that will turn into RNA, then the underlying precursor to all like, then slime molds, then politicians.

Re:Still has problems

[ColdWetDog]

Success is often just a bunch of the right kind of failures strung together.

Re:What about hardware ?

[Anne Thwacks]

then slime molds, then politicians.

Like the guy said: it ain't evolution, its devolution, if its getting worse!

Re:What about hardware ?

[PopeRatzo]

think bowels of petunias

Please make this happen. I'd save a fortune on air freshener.

Will This Work In Bars?

[FrankHaynes]

Because I've been trying to pick up women in bars to help me demonstrate the chemical reaction that sparks life. They just don't seem to grasp the significance of the scientific breakthrough that we could make together. I'd be willing to share the prize money 50/50, no problem.

Re:What about hardware ?

[Dread_ed]

Something in my brain keeps advocating for the application of additional pressure and temperature to these experiments. That same something thinks that life did not evolve in primordial oceans but in the mid to deep lithosphere. Higher pressure and temperature require less catalysis. Temperature gradients abound. Worth a look at least.

The most fascinating thing about the whole issue is that all life and even the "non-life" we see is not a result of random chance. It is a direct result of the fundamental underpinnings and natural laws that govern matter and energy in this universe. Our structure, function, and form is as intricately tied to Carbon 14 and H2O as it is to the weight of the electron, the speed of light, and the force of gravity. That we are a construct of these laws and interactions, and that we study these laws and interactions while being a product of them, fascinates me.

Re:Fallacy

[spiritplumber]

Fair enough. Just don't expect your God to survive the event unscathed.

Re:What about hardware ?

[HiThere]

Actually, these guys are probably overthinking the point, but it's good work, regardless. But IIRC the amino acids needed to create something RNA like have been found in clouds of dust out in space. The sugars needed to bind them may be something else. But *I think* those may require a watery environment. And until there was something to eat them those could just pile up until they reached thermodynamic equilibrium.

Re:The parts aren't the problem

[HiThere]

The functional information is easy. To summarize, start out by making a bunch of random junk and then filter for things that increase on their own faster than they fall apart. Do this for millions of years.

For an explicit version of this check out evolutionary programming. This will show you some of the problems that need to be solved, and how simple most of the steps are. And do it in a way where you can examine every step of the process...if you've got enough patience and lifetime.

I've always wondered...

[dbreeze]

... why did the random spontaneous generation of "life" apparently only occur 1 time in the history of the known universe. DNA analysis seems to indicate a common genesis for all known Terran life forms, why has there been no discovery of evidence for another bio-genesis event here on Earth? Is the known RNA/DNA based life the only possible form of life?

Re:I've always wondered...

[pauljlucas]

Since it's a low probability, the mean time between occurrences would be large. Whichever happened first would have time to spread and out-compete any other that might have arisen.

Re:I've always wondered...

[LeftCoastThinker]

Yep, the probability is so low in fact that it is just a total SWAG theory and has never actually occurred at all, either in the lab under artificial, ideal circumstances, or in the wild. The Evolutionist argument that it must have happened once because we exist is flawed in that it excludes all other explanations, and an extra-dimensional alien being creating life on earth is much more likely than an impossible event of spontaneous generation, which was disproven centuries ago. The Evolutionists just exclude this possibility (and all of the other evidence to support this) because they happen to not like the other consequences that go along with it. Evolutionists call Creationists all manner of names because the believe in this higher being, while Evolutionists believe that rocks and mineral water became humans... and every other creature on the planet. You tell me which is more implausible.

Re:I've always wondered...

[RockDoctor]

... why did the random spontaneous generation of "life" apparently only occur 1 time in the history of the known universe.

We have only closely examined one planetary system (actually, the one we live in), which gives us a 100% hit rate for planetary systems being hosts to life.

DNA analysis seems to indicate a common genesis for all known Terran life forms,

It seems to, yes. But since we've only been looking for other systems for at best a couple of (scientist) generations, it remains possible that there are other life forms which we've not detected. Or maybe which we have detected, but not recognised or understood. The store rooms of museums are full of specimens which await detailed analysis.

why has there been no discovery of evidence for another bio-genesis event here on Earth?

Maybe there was only one biogenetic event. Maybe there were two, but in the 100 million years after the appearance of our DNA/ RNA, all of the evidence of the previous system was eaten, then everything buried for 35 time longer before we started to bang rocks together. As a geologist, I know of no law of nature that requires all organisms to leave fossil traces, or indeed, for all fossils to be found before being eroded away, or indeed, for fossils found by palaeontogists to be identified as something interesting before the rock is thrown away. When I went fossil hunting for mere billion-year old fossils, it took me a good half-hour to "get my eye in", and I'm a lot more experienced at this than most people.

Is the known RNA/DNA based life the only possible form of life?

It is the only form we know. But that doesn't mean that other forms are impossible, just that we don't know. Anyone who implies that we do know is either over-speaking the evidence, or being incautious with their phrasing (the latter does not yet carry the death penalty, though it might get buns thrown at you and a sharp intake of breath).

Re:Chuck Missler

[indi0144]

Ive come to the conclusion that the late preaching on /. Is just the response from an underrepresented community in fear of H1B visa workers, community who in the midst of the cognitive dissonance and their political fuck ups, decide to turn into God and preaching in order to be more like those Indian guys that believe such funky shit, because maybe thats their secret.

That you cash a check made entirely out of science and logic work is where we already won our argument, down voting is just taking out of sight the shameless freeloading that you and your kind represent. Wanna impress people with your faith? Leave fucking everything to the poor and go preach in Africa, aint nobody hearing faith preaching from a fucking neckbeard that has prolly never ever gone to bed hungry in his life.

Re:metamorphosis can happen without "life"

[John Bokma]

Stromatolites?

Re:let's see now...

[mfnickster]

Hawking is no diety, he's not even an Einstein. Some of his ideas are as bannanas as stuff spouted by 8-year-olds but because he is severely disabled and was once right about ONE idea (Hawking radiation) nobody is allowed to question ANY lunacy he spouts. In the era of snowflakes, questioning Hawking will get you banished for "hate" towards the disabled (oops, the "less abled")

Re: Ha Ha Ha, not even close

[backslashdot]

I think by creationist, we mean young earth creationist. A creationist who believes God set up the Big Bang and it's various parameters is not mentally ill. A creationist who thinks the earth is in the range of 10,000 years old is bona fide mentally ill.

Re:let's see now...

[mfnickster]

Ack. Hit "submit" when I meant to hit "preview." Stupid mobile site... :-P

Anyway, that's "differently abled," you infrasensitive clod!

Re:The parts aren't the problem

[HiThere]

Actually, sample simulations indicate that there is a superfluity of time for the process when particular limited characteristics are examined. And you've got to have those limits or current computers can't run the simulation (at least within budgets allocated for the experiment). This has, admittedly, only been done a few time, but every time it has been done the result has been that not only is there enough time, there's hugely more than is needed.

Now there have only been a few of these simulations done, because most people don't believe that those who deny them are willing to look at the results. As a result this isn't a sound argument...but at least it's based on SOME evidence.

Re:Chuck Missler

[LeftCoastThinker]

My God is rational and logical. (Where do you think logic and mathematics comes from in the first place? It is inherent to the existence of the universe.) He created a universe filled with laws that can be observed and understood, both physical laws and moral laws (where do those laws come from, by the way, if there is no Creator?). If you violate either, there are consequences, whether you like it or not. That is the harmony of my worldview as an applied scientist. You seem to harbor a false sense of moral superiority and at the same time an intense intolerance to those of a different worldview about whom you make many intolerant and bigoted assumptions https://www.merriam-webster.co... . You might want to take a minute and think about why you hate Christians, and what that means about you and your worldview.

I am happy to discuss philosophy or science with anyone who is interested, but name calling obscenity laced irrational tirades are hardly productive.

Re:let's see now...

[RockDoctor]

Serious professional physicists have publicly disagreed with Hawking - and Hawking has admitted to them being right (I'm thinking of the case a couple of years ago where he settled a bet about information destruction in black holes with an encyclopedia of some sort ; I forget his challenger's name), without the "h8r" card being played.

Re:What about hardware ?

[RockDoctor]

You don't get the bowls of petunias ("Oh no! Not Again") without the accompanying mounds of whale meat.

Re:What about hardware ?

[RockDoctor]

Higher pressure and temperature require less catalysis. Temperature gradients abound. Worth a look at least.

At the very least the Carnegie Lab in Washington are conducting regular experiments in this field. Possibly others, but I don't follow it closely either. I'd be pretty surprised if they were alone, but given that hint, you should be able to get the current researchers by reading the reference lists in a handful of their researcher's papers.

Re:What about hardware ?

[RockDoctor]

But IIRC the amino acids needed to create something RNA like have been found in clouds of dust out in space.

RNA (and DNA) do not contain amino acids. But yes, several amino acids have been found by spectroscopy of molecular clouds.

Re:The parts aren't the problem

[RockDoctor]

The AC is just spouting from the Creationist Big Book of Unthinking Responses. It (AC, or CBBUR) has utterly failed to consider that there may have been a metabolism/ information system that preceded the appearance of the RNA system (itself probably pre-dating the DNA system).

Re:What about hardware ?

[HiThere]

Sorry, my slip, you're right. But I believe they've also found nucleic acids.