Natural Affinities of RNA Components Could Have Led To Life 30
vinces99 writes "The chemical components crucial to the start of life on Earth may have primed and protected each other in never-before-realized ways, according to new research led by University of Washington scientists. That could mean a simpler scenario for how that first spark of life on the planet came about. Scientists have long thought that life started when the right combination of bases and sugars produced self-replicating ribonucleic acid, or RNA, inside a rudimentary 'cell' composed of fatty acids. Under the right conditions, fatty acids naturally form into bag-like structures similar to today's cell membranes. In testing one of the fatty acids representative of those found before life began – decanoic acid – the scientists discovered that the four bases in RNA bound more readily to the decanoic acid than did the other seven bases tested. By concentrating more of the bases and sugar that are the building blocks of RNA, the system would have been primed for the next steps, reactions that led to RNA inside a bag."
Re:Fools (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I'll wait for the next headline (Score:5, Insightful)
You're forgetting that our immune system blocks the vast, vast majority of bacteria, viruses, etc from doing anything at all. The ones that can have found explicit "hacks" that leverage vulnerabilities in the immune system. I suspect we'll have to agree to disagree on this one but if you can make a case about what the 'something completely different' would be that a) is compatible enough with our biology to infect us, and b) able to bypass our immune system entirely I would love to hear it.
Default == Unknown; Default != God (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed, it's a common fallacy that if you are having trouble applying an existing natural theory to a specific puzzle, then the default is a deity. The real default of any puzzle is "unknown".