Scientists Discover New Chemistry That May Help Explain Origins of Cellular Life (phys.org) 83
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained a massive number of chemicals that reacted with each other more or less randomly, and it is unclear how the complexity of cells could have emerged from such chemical chaos. Now, a team led by Tony Z. Jia at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and Kuhan Chandru of the National University of Malaysia has shown that simple a-hydroxy acids, like glycolic and lactic acid, spontaneously polymerize and self-assemble into polyester microdroplets when dried at moderate temperatures followed by rehydration. This could be what happened along primitive beaches and river banks, or in drying puddles. These form a new type of cell-like compartment that can trap and concentrate biomolecules like nucleic acids and proteins. These droplets, unlike most modern cells, are able to merge and reform easily, and thus could have hosted versatile early genetic and metabolic systems potentially critical for the origins of life.
Previous work conducted at ELSI showed that moderate temperature drying of the simple organic compounds known as alpha-hydroxy acids, which are found in meteorites and many simulations of prebiological chemistry, spontaneously polymerizes them into mixtures of long polyesters. Building on this work, Jia and colleagues took the next step and examined these reactions under the microscope, and found that these mixed polyester systems form a gel phase and spontaneously self-assemble when rewetted to form simple cell-like structures. [...] Jia and colleagues are not certain these structures are the direct ancestors of cells, but they think it is possible such droplets could have enabled the assembly of protocells on Earth. The new compartmentalization system they have found is extremely simple, they note, and could form easily in primitive environments throughout the universe. "We have this new experimental system we can now play with, so we can start to study phenomena like evolution and evolvability of these droplets. The possible combinations of structures or functions these droplets might have are almost endless. If the physical rules that govern the formation of droplets are fairly universal in nature, then we hope to study similar systems to discover whether they also can form microdroplets with novel properties," adds Jia.
The study has been published in the journal PNAS.
Previous work conducted at ELSI showed that moderate temperature drying of the simple organic compounds known as alpha-hydroxy acids, which are found in meteorites and many simulations of prebiological chemistry, spontaneously polymerizes them into mixtures of long polyesters. Building on this work, Jia and colleagues took the next step and examined these reactions under the microscope, and found that these mixed polyester systems form a gel phase and spontaneously self-assemble when rewetted to form simple cell-like structures. [...] Jia and colleagues are not certain these structures are the direct ancestors of cells, but they think it is possible such droplets could have enabled the assembly of protocells on Earth. The new compartmentalization system they have found is extremely simple, they note, and could form easily in primitive environments throughout the universe. "We have this new experimental system we can now play with, so we can start to study phenomena like evolution and evolvability of these droplets. The possible combinations of structures or functions these droplets might have are almost endless. If the physical rules that govern the formation of droplets are fairly universal in nature, then we hope to study similar systems to discover whether they also can form microdroplets with novel properties," adds Jia.
The study has been published in the journal PNAS.
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Too easy
Re:Creation (Score:4, Insightful)
"Sorry but complex life does not come from nothing"
Meaningless. There was never "nothing". There is only "everything".
"nor does life come from dead things"
But it does. Water is dead, or is it? Rain is dead, but what if you drink it? What makes the same molecule dead if it's rain, but alive if it's in your cell?
"live in fairy land"
I can see water. I can drink it.
I can't see any of your imaginary beings.
Checkmate, faithboy.
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"I can't see any of your imaginary beings."
Me either.
"Checkmate, faithboy."
Unfortunately just because your overall position may be correct, does not mean your argument is.
https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/88/Fallacy-of-Composition
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Wrong. The "leading theory" of the creation of the universe does not, and cannot, go all the way back to a point of nothing. It necessarily begins after existence exists. If there was a singularity at "the beginning", theory cannot adequately define that point.
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That is just as unlikely has all homo sapiens deriving from a single origin ape. Okay, slightly less unlikely since a single cell could reproduce asexually but still unlikely. More likely many sexually compatible apes evolved for similar reasons and interbred.
A simple fairly universal process like this seems just the trick with many examples coming into being in a parallel fashion during some window of time.
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LOL
Indeed cellular phones have a life of their own.
Re: Chicken or egg? (Score:1)
Simple cells do not have nucleus, that's not mystery, and you creationists need to keep up with the pace of a 100 years or so of scientific development.
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In case you were serious: prokaryotic cells do not have a nucleus. The genetic material is inside the cell wall and is just loose. Think like bacteria.
I don't know about life (Score:3, Funny)
I don't know about the origin of life, but it does explain the origin of my powder blue leisure suit.
Is it life Jim? Not as we know it. (Score:5, Interesting)
Spontaneous compartments are still not cellular life. A self-replicating molecule is almost there. A self-replicating molecule that can also produce other molecules that assemble as a protective membrane is even closer. I'm guessing that before the membrane producing "gene" there was some other "gene" that encoded an energy harvesting mechanism that could be used for activities such as replication.
Spontaneously-Assembling Polyester Gel (Score:4, Funny)
Life evolved from polyester?! Barbarella was right!
Was Abiogenisis a fluke? (Score:5, Interesting)
Is it something that happens in any chemical environment like the early Earth given a few million years? Or is a complete fluke that would only happen on one in a billion Earth-like planets? That is the big question.
Various simulations of supposed early Earth-like chemicals have been done, and an early one added lightning which produced lots of organics. But you have to produce some complex molecule, consisting of a series of bases, that replicates itself without having complex machinery already in place. That is needed before evolution can begin.
Whether this paper adds much to the mystery is difficult to tell.
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This was a fascinating article on the topic: https://www.astrobio.net/news-exclusive/cleaning-up-the-clutter-how-proto-biology-arose-from-the-prebiotic-clutter/ [astrobio.net]
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It only happened once, in 4.5 billion years, on Earth -- a seemingly ideal environment for it.
We don't know this for certain. It sounds plausible, given that all the life we have discovered seems to have a common ancestor, but we don't know about all the extinct organisms over all this period. Also, life evolved fairly early on in earth's history, and a planet already teeming with life might disrupt further abiogenesis, since primordial soup may just be food for some of the existing organisms.
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You are of course assuming that we are the target in your anthropic principle, it may be that we are just one of a billion worlds containing food (us and the rest of life on earth) for the one single important species that is currently developing FTL travel on a planet some light years away.
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It only happened once, in 4.5 billion years, on Earth -- a seemingly ideal environment for it. Let that sink in.
Perspective: It only needs to happen once, and it happened at the very beginning of that 4.5 billion year period.
Think of the phrase "it's always in the last place you look", and this is because once you find it you stop looking.
Life formed prior to the first billion years, and we're pretty sure prior to a half-billion years.
There is a reason we round the number to 4.5 billion, so keeping the same precision, it would be mathematically accurate to say Life formed 4.5 billion years ago on Earth which itself
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"One would think it would not need to be so massive for us to exist if the odds were higher."
The anthropic principle has many critics for good reasons, especially applied in the manner in which you are applying it. Yes, the universe must allow for the observer to exist and limitations of the observer likely shape their perception of the universe but there is nothing to say the universe in any way limits itself to the observer, it if it did we wouldn't use telescopes or microscopes.
"It only happened once, in
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The anthropic principle has many critics for good reasons, especially applied in the manner in which you are applying it. Yes, the universe must allow for the observer to exist and limitations of the observer likely shape their perception of the universe but there is nothing to say the universe in any way limits itself to the observer, it if it did we wouldn't use telescopes or microscopes.
Combining the " anthropic principle" with the "Copenhagen interpretation" to produce the Conscious observer theory is taking both theories way past their bounds if not for the simple reason that what exactly entails a "observation" is unclear and wide open to interpretation
Re:Was Abiogenisis a fluke? (Score:5, Interesting)
Technically, all you need are the ability to replicate and mutate, in order to end up where we are. I recall reading (here? can't find it) that amino acids quickly self-assemble into proteins, presumably in a somewhat-random fashion. It was recently found that life arose on Earth very quickly once it'd cooled enough for life to not be destroyed right away.
(I speculate that) naked proteins assemble randomly, and one assembles that is able to attach complementary amino acids to itself to create a 'mirror' of itself, and shed the mirror, which is itself able to create mirror copies of itself. Mutation eventually leads one of these proteins to be able to build other proteins according to how itself is composed; proteins that retain the ability to replicate, yet happen to contain information that is used to build a protein which then increases the likelihood of replication, tend to proliferate, and that's the beginnings of natural selection. Organelles and cell walls came after mutation/replication/encoding came into being.
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I think one thing that we all lose sight of is how absolutely mindbogglingly vast geologic time is. A common activity in school is to map geologic time to a calendar.
Earth cools on Jan 1, oldest rocks form in mid-March, primitive life doesn't show up until November, the dinosaurs show up around the second week of December and are gone by the end of the third, and humans show up on the evening of December 31st. Everyone alive now shows up the last millisecond of the year.
Our entire humanoid existence can be
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If life was found to be existing on Mars that would settle the question. It would be the most important discovery we have ever made (next to the Jonas Brothers)
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Mars is sufficiently Earth-like (and was, particularly back in the Hesperonian and Noachian periods) that finding evidence of life there wouldn't greatly alter our knowledge of the range(s) of conditions under which life can start.
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OTOH, any blurb which claims there are "a massive number of chemicals" should immediately be shit-canned. Numbers do not have mass.
Let me be the first to note that you must be great fun at parties.
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Let me be the first to note that you must be great fun at parties
Massive fun, even.
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cetras paribas
Sigh: while painstakingly pointing out the misuse of "massive," you misspelled the Latin phrase ceteris paribus.
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They also didn't run the experiment for one billion years. Total fail! What were they thinking? They should have consulted the experts here before even trying.
Opens Up Exciting New Questions (Score:2)
Cells are not hard ... (Score:2)
Cells forming is not that hard. Specifically, forming globules of a thin membranes from fatty acids with a hydrophobic side and hydrophilic side is mostly a spontaneous thing that does not need any external factor. It has been demonstrated to happen in the labs.
What is harder is metabolism, having pores in the above membranes to ferry molecules in and out, and then the chemistry needed to extract energy from a proton gradient, storing it (e.g. sugars), and using it (e.g. in the ATP form).
The hardest part is