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"Spark of life: Metabolism appears in lab without cells "

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  • "Spark of life: Metabolism appears in lab without cells "

    This one looks as if it could be a breakthrough in understanding a putative natural origin of life. The New Scientist article is here:-

    Spark of life metabolism appears in lab without cells

    The research article, and it's more difficult title is here:-

    Non‐enzymatic glycolysis and pentose phosphate pathway‐like reactions in a plausible Archean ocean


    It is important to note the difference between real science and the creation science as explained to us by Jorge.

    In real science, people get and idea and go out and test it, collect evidence for it, write up what they did or what they found, etc. This is not a perfect system by a long shot, given all the human foibles we posses. But these folk to back up their ideas and they publish their claims and how they went about discovering them and collecting evidence in support of them. Naturally these ideas are open to examination and criticism.



    In the creation science described by Jorge, at best you get this:-

    Originally posted by Jorge explaining creation science
    Nonsense, untrue and a misrepresentation of reality.
    You should know better after reading hundreds of my posts.
    If you were Pinnochio, your nose would be dragging on the floor by now.
    - or this:-

    Originally posted by Jorge explaining creation science
    "Good words"???
    After that you want me to "chime in" here.
    May I ask what you've been snorting?

    You wouldn't be able to handle me, Santa. Plus, the fact is that I am readying myself for a lengthy work-related trip. I'm here until next week and then I'm gone until May 18-20th. Perhaps (no promises) I'll have some time to post a few things but, frankly, a "few things" wouldn't even put a dent into the barrage of falsehoods, misrepresentations, prejudices and ignorance that you people display in threads such as this one. Believe whatever you wish, I'd like to help -- I really would -- but (as I have learned from experience) that would require a gargantuan effort.

    Besides, and I've said this to you before, a person has to be RECEPTIVE in order to learn. If there is one thing that your numerous posts make abundantly clear -- i.e., 'the evidence indicates that' -- you are as receptive towards Biblical Creationism ("YEC") as Adolf Hitler was towards Judaism. IOW, it would be a total waste of my time.

    Lastly, don't take any of this personally - people like Rogue06, Oxmixmudd and others here on TWeb fall into exactly the same category as you do. In short, until you truly seek the truth regarding these matters, you won't find anything to rid you of your errors. Vaya con Dios.
    And so it goes.
    Last edited by rwatts; 04-26-2014, 03:44 PM.

  • #2
    Originally posted by rwatts View Post
    This one looks as if it could be a breakthrough in understanding a putative natural origin of life. The New Scientist article is here:-

    Spark of life metabolism appears in lab without cells
    Very interesting article, but why pollute it with gallicoprolite?

    Roy
    Jorge: Functional Complex Information is INFORMATION that is complex and functional.

    MM: First of all, the Bible is a fixed document.
    MM on covid-19: We're talking about an illness with a better than 99.9% rate of survival.

    seer: I believe that so called 'compassion' [for starving Palestinian kids] maybe a cover for anti Semitism, ...

    Comment


    • #3
      Originally posted by rwatts View Post
      This one looks as if it could be a breakthrough in understanding a putative natural origin of life. The New Scientist article is here:-

      Spark of life metabolism appears in lab without cells

      The research article, and it's more difficult title is here:-

      Non‐enzymatic glycolysis and pentose phosphate pathway‐like reactions in a plausible Archean ocean


      It is important to note the difference between real science and the creation science as explained to us by Jorge.

      In real science, people get and idea and go out and test it, collect evidence for it, write up what they did or what they found, etc. This is not a perfect system by a long shot, given all the human foibles we posses. But these folk to back up their ideas and they publish their claims and how they went about discovering them and collecting evidence in support of them. Naturally these ideas are open to examination and criticism.



      In the creation science described by Jorge, at best you get this:-



      - or this:-



      And so it goes.
      Very interesting research indeed and seems to solve another piece of the abiogenesis puzzle.

      Comment


      • #4
        Originally posted by Roy View Post
        Very interesting article, but why pollute it with gallicoprolite?
        THIS. You have a really interesting article here: talk about that, surely!

        Here's the abstract:

        The reaction sequences of central metabolism, glycolysis and the pentose phosphate pathway provide essential precursors for nucleic acids, amino acids and lipids. However, their evolutionary origins are not yet understood. Here, we provide evidence that their structure could have been fundamentally shaped by the general chemical environments in earth's earliest oceans. We reconstructed potential scenarios for oceans of the prebiotic Archean based on the composition of early sediments. We report that the resultant reaction milieu catalyses the interconversion of metabolites that in modern organisms constitute glycolysis and the pentose phosphate pathway. The 29 observed reactions include the formation and/or interconversion of glucose, pyruvate, the nucleic acid precursor ribose‐5‐phosphate and the amino acid precursor erythrose‐4‐phosphate, antedating reactions sequences similar to that used by the metabolic pathways. Moreover, the Archean ocean mimetic increased the stability of the phosphorylated intermediates and accelerated the rate of intermediate reactions and pyruvate production. The catalytic capacity of the reconstructed ocean milieu was attributable to its metal content. The reactions were particularly sensitive to ferrous iron Fe(II), which is understood to have had high concentrations in the Archean oceans. These observations reveal that reaction sequences that constitute central carbon metabolism could have been constrained by the iron‐rich oceanic environment of the early Archean. The origin of metabolism could thus date back to the prebiotic world.

        The article is available at the link; and it has some diagrams as a kind of summary that help. Input from chemists would be great.

        But basically, it seems that what the paper is describing are reactions occuring without the help of various enzymes that are present within cells. The hypothesis is, it seems, that the major parts of reactions chains involved existed first in open solutions, and then later became a part of the first cells. The enzymes to help make the reaction chains more efficient presumably came later within the cells.

        The reactions involved deal with how living things manage energy from sugars. These reactions are an important aspect of how cells get their energy requirements, or "fuel".

        That's my attempt at a layman summary -- and since I *am* a layman, I may have aspects wrong! Corrections invited.

        Cheers -- sylas

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by Roy View Post
          Very interesting article, but why pollute it with gallicoprolite?

          Roy
          Fossilized chicken feces?
          βλέπομεν γὰρ ἄρτι δι᾿ ἐσόπτρου ἐν αἰνίγματι, τότε δὲ πρόσωπον πρὸς πρόσωπον·
          ἄρτι γινώσκω ἐκ μέρους, τότε δὲ ἐπιγνώσομαι καθὼς καὶ ἐπεγνώσθην.

          אָכֵ֕ן אַתָּ֖ה אֵ֣ל מִסְתַּתֵּ֑ר אֱלֹהֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל מוֹשִֽׁיעַ׃

          Comment


          • #6
            First step to the zombie apocalypse.

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by abstract View Post
              The reactions were particularly sensitive to ferrous iron Fe(II), which is understood to have had high concentrations in the Archean oceans.
              Which raises the possibility that the reason we don't see abiogenesis today is not just because of the presence of existing life, but also because of the presence of oxygen.

              Roy
              Jorge: Functional Complex Information is INFORMATION that is complex and functional.

              MM: First of all, the Bible is a fixed document.
              MM on covid-19: We're talking about an illness with a better than 99.9% rate of survival.

              seer: I believe that so called 'compassion' [for starving Palestinian kids] maybe a cover for anti Semitism, ...

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by Roy View Post
                Which raises the possibility that the reason we don't see abiogenesis today is not just because of the presence of existing life, but also because of the presence of oxygen.

                Roy
                Yes! That struck me also.

                I've often thought that the greatest mass extinction in Earth's history was not the "Great Dying" at the end Permian (~250 million years ago), but the "Oxygen Catastrophe" (somewhat over 2 billion years ago).

                We think of Oxygen as a key to life -- which it is, for us now. But free oxygen is a somewhat extraordinary thing to find in the atmosphere. It is extremely reactive, so one would normally expect it to get sucked out of the atmosphere by all the available oxidation reactions. In fact, the normal residence time for an oxygen molecule in the atmosphere is about 4,500 years. We have free oxygen because it is being continually replenished by photosynthesis.

                Oxygen is a deadly poison to some forms of life; and it was deadly poison to the the great majority of living things in the early stages of life on Earth.

                When photosynthesis first developed, oxygen was produced as a waste product and that is why we have oxygen in the atmosphere now. Some new forms of life developed the capacity to use the reactive power of oxygen directly in their own metabolism; and this brought about tremendous opportunities for new metabolism taking advantage of oxygen -- we are inheritors of that ability.

                The presence of free oxygen is a major major chemical difference between now and the times when life developed. It's entirely credible that the first origins of reactions involved in life could not have occurred with the oxygen rich environment of present times.

                Cheers -- sylas

                Comment


                • #9
                  I thought the presence of oxygen as well as existing life forms which "eat" proto-life molecules were the main reasons we didn't see abiogenesis occuring today - Oh, also the VERY VERY short time frame we have for observation.

                  Sylas seems right that it appears we're seeing some metabolic-like reactions occurring without aid of enzymes which are one of DNA's contributions to cellular metabolism.

                  K54

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by sylas View Post
                    Yes! That struck me also.

                    I've often thought that the greatest mass extinction in Earth's history was not the "Great Dying" at the end Permian (~250 million years ago), but the "Oxygen Catastrophe" (somewhat over 2 billion years ago).

                    We think of Oxygen as a key to life -- which it is, for us now. But free oxygen is a somewhat extraordinary thing to find in the atmosphere. It is extremely reactive, so one would normally expect it to get sucked out of the atmosphere by all the available oxidation reactions. In fact, the normal residence time for an oxygen molecule in the atmosphere is about 4,500 years. We have free oxygen because it is being continually replenished by photosynthesis.

                    Oxygen is a deadly poison to some forms of life; and it was deadly poison to the the great majority of living things in the early stages of life on Earth.

                    When photosynthesis first developed, oxygen was produced as a waste product and that is why we have oxygen in the atmosphere now. Some new forms of life developed the capacity to use the reactive power of oxygen directly in their own metabolism; and this brought about tremendous opportunities for new metabolism taking advantage of oxygen -- we are inheritors of that ability.

                    The presence of free oxygen is a major major chemical difference between now and the times when life developed. It's entirely credible that the first origins of reactions involved in life could not have occurred with the oxygen rich environment of present times.

                    Cheers -- sylas
                    Is this "oxygen as waste" an inevitable side effect?
                    I'm not here anymore.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Originally posted by Carrikature View Post
                      Is this "oxygen as waste" an inevitable side effect?
                      It's an unavoidable output of the photosynthesis chemical reaction. Whether there are other means of converting light to useful metabolic energy without producing oxygen that never evolved, I don't know. Maybe a chemist could speculate better.

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Originally posted by Carrikature View Post
                        Is this "oxygen as waste" an inevitable side effect?
                        Of photosynthesis, of course! It's also, by definition, necessary for aerobic metabolism.

                        Perhaps I don't understand your question.

                        K54

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Originally posted by klaus54 View Post
                          Perhaps I don't understand your question.
                          I'm asking if there are other energy production methods that don't also produce oxygen. Ultimately, the question aims at learning whether or not oxygen-based life is more or less unavoidable. A follow up question would be if non-oxygen processes could produce enough usable energy for complex organisms to develop.
                          I'm not here anymore.

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Originally posted by Carrikature View Post
                            I'm asking if there are other energy production methods that don't also produce oxygen. Ultimately, the question aims at learning whether or not oxygen-based life is more or less unavoidable. A follow up question would be if non-oxygen processes could produce enough usable energy for complex organisms to develop.
                            Using oxygen or releasing oxygen?

                            1) Fermentation obtains energy from carbohydrates with using oxygen. Of course glucose contains oxygen and must be made by photosynthesis.

                            2) Thermophiles (mostly Archaeobacteria) have a metabolism driven by high temperature heat at deep-sea volcanic vents. They don't use oxygen in their catabolism. I'm not sure if their waste products include oxygen, but I don't think so.

                            K54

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Originally posted by klaus54 View Post
                              Using oxygen or releasing oxygen?

                              1) Fermentation obtains energy from carbohydrates with using oxygen. Of course glucose contains oxygen and must be made by photosynthesis.

                              2) Thermophiles (mostly Archaeobacteria) have a metabolism driven by high temperature heat at deep-sea volcanic vents. They don't use oxygen in their catabolism. I'm not sure if their waste products include oxygen, but I don't think so.

                              K54
                              Releasing oxygen. I think I have part of my answer, though. It seems that releasing oxygen isn't necessary, and that there were (are?) anoxygenic photosynthetic processes. Now I wonder how advanced anaerobic lifeforms could get.
                              I'm not here anymore.

                              Comment

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