It is time to restart our debate into the origins of life; new evidence arrived.
One more secret of abiogenesis has revealed itself in this week’s Nature:
It is well established that the evolution of life passed through an early stage in which RNA played central roles in both inheritance and catalysis — roles that are currently played by DNA and protein enzymes, respectively. But where did the RNA come from?
Experiments reported by Powner et al. (page 239 of this issue) provide fresh insight into the chemical processes that might have led to the emergence of information-coding nucleic acids on early Earth….
The authors’ path to RNA begins with the same starting materials used in many recent studies of prebiotic chemistry, but differs in the order in which they are combined. When the structurally simplest sugar, glycolaldehyde, reacts with the simplest derivative of cyanide and ammonia, cyanamide, a complex mixture of undesired compounds is formed. But Powner et al. add a third ingredient — phosphate — to the mix. In their reaction, phosphate acts as both a pH buffer and a catalyst, thereby short-circuiting the network of possible unwanted reactions and leading instead to the fast, efficient synthesis of a key intermediate known as 2-aminooxazole…
The authors wrap up their synthetic tour de force by using ultraviolet light to clean up the reaction mixture. They report that ultraviolet irradiation destroys side products while simultaneously converting some of the desired ribocytidine product to ribouridine (the second pyrimidine component of RNA). The development of this complex photochemistry required remarkable mechanistic insight from Powner and colleagues, who not only correctly predicted that ultraviolet irradiation would destroy the majority of the by-products, but also that the desired ribonucleotides would withstand such treatment.
RNA from the sort of chemical brew that one would expect to find in a pre-biotic Earth. Genius!
ummm, my fine arts degree and I feel a whole lot dumber now. Mom was right, should have gotten a real degree…sigh. Maybe if I come to Slog Happy could someone explain the big words to me cause I was reading and in my head it soudned like the teacher on Charlie Brown (thats how I imagine Charles sounds in real life actually “waaa wha waaa whaa”)
And the retards at the Discovery Institute now have a fun week of rewriting their asinine crap arguments to look forward to.
I think he said, “The building blocks of life can be spontaneously made from ooze if sunlight hits it.”
Tina, see Jesse @3.
@4, Jonathan, Well why didnt you say it LIKE THAT in the first place? Wasnt that an episode of Deep Space Nine or something, transforming ooze I understand. Uppity Doctors… geeezs…
Hmph. It made perfect sense to me. I guess all those thousands of dollars on college weren’t a complete waste after all.
Golob, you are such a treasure to Slog.
Personally, I’m far more excited about the April 30 edition of Nature on Orally delivered siRNA targeting macrophage Map4k4 suppresses systemic inflammation, but then maybe you don’t get off on glowing yeast cells you take orally saving your internal organs from killing you …
A chaque son gout.
Funny how one gets the sense that Mr. Golob has done all the reading and thinking necessary to digest this material, whereas Mr. Mudede often leaves me wondering if he’s actually done enough reading, or adequately grasped, Heidegger, Kant, Hegel, Adorno, or whatever German philosopher he’s into for the moment, to utilize a basic critical apparatus based on them… On the other hand, German philosophy is undoubtedly harder than organic chemistry.
Very elegant. And yet the real shame here is that most Americans don’t care–and perhaps even worse, they don’t care that they don’t care.
#5, this was touched on in the TNG series finale, “All Good Things”. Q tricked Picard into creating a stellar anomaly that grew larger as it traveled back in time, and that was “deventually” responsible for disrupting abiogenesis on Earth.
Where do you think they got the idea for the test, w7ngman?
It has to be repeatable. Then we shall see.
@3 um … i think what he said was there was intelligent intervention by adding the right ingredient to create the desired result. not once did the word “spontaneous” ever appear. it wasn’t like presto magico.
That’s so cool. 😀
@9
German phil IS harder than ochem. Which is not an excuse for incoherence, of course. :p