Pax Christi everybody!
After I… witnessed that debate Professor Dave had about abiogenesis, I started to wonder what kinds of strange molecules and protocells could have formed before life began so long ago. Could protocells form colonies? Could they engulf or parasitize one another? Could they produce something like prions or viruses? What are your thoughts?
My understanding is that in prebiotic evolution we are mostly talking about chemical cycles and and self-organizing dynamic structures. We know that nucleic acids are formed rather easily in the early earth environment and thus naturally involved in such chemical processes. Thus the prebiotic evolution of RNA sequences to store information is not that great of a leap.
We have life so it must have started somehow. It is possible that God created it in a moment or that he created it through a long process. If we assume that life started through a long process of abiogenesis, we need to explain how life could start. That is not as easy as textbooks claim. In theory, the mechanisms how the needed molecules formed can be explained. As far as I have understood, the problem is that conditions needed for the formation of the molecules were hostile for the following steps needed for abiogenesis. There is still a need for much research before this problem has been solved.
Indeed. It is not yet a working theory. But I anticipate such a theory soon because it looks to me like just a matter of working out details.
I am rather enjoying investigating the new research on this subject, which I haven’t seen yet.
What textbooks claim it’s easy? Abiogenesis is an active area of research and much progress has been made.
That’s pretty much the story of science writ large. Some answers have been easier than others, but they all started with not knowing how something worked or how it came to be.
One of the big hurdles is that what we see in life today is far, far removed from what the first life was like, whether it was a creation event or abiogenesis. Even the last universal common ancestor would have been far removed from that first life. There really is very little to go from, and there is absolutely no expectation that we will find some sort of chemical fossil of that earliest life. This is going to be one of the hardest nuts to crack in science just by its very nature.
Probably no scientific textbooks claim that it is easy. I was thinking of the books used in schools, or written for the general public. At least some books used in schools have sections telling ‘this is how life started’, without telling that the information is mainly based on speculative hypotheses rather than hard scientific facts. It depends fully on the teacher whether the teacher teaches it ‘according to the school book’ or by telling that this is just one hypothesis, we do not yet have enough of information to tell how it really happened.
So what are these school books to which you are referring? I would like some verification please. Too often this sort of thing is just some rhetoric passed around without any basis in reality whatsoever.
Do you have any examples?
I only know about some books used in national schools, so cannot point to books used in other countries. I checked how the abiogenesis is described in current school material. There are competing books and each school selects the material it uses so one book does not represent all. Anyhow, the text I checked did mention in the start that there are different theories and assumptions. Thereafter, it told simply how life started, describing how organic compounds formed, then accumulated inside a cell membrane-type vesicle and this formed the first cells, probably similar kind as current archaea. In the end was a sentence saying that the origin of the first cells is a challenge to the researchers because in prevailing conditions, new cells are only born from existing cells.
When read carefully, the text told that there are several theories and that the emergence of the first cells is a challenge to the researchers but otherwise, the description was straightforward and simple. I do not know what kind of answers students write in exams but suspect that an average teen probably would only remember that simple explanation, unless the teacher stresses the uncertainty of current hyptheses and assumptions.
I could provide a link but as the text is in Finnish, it would probably not be very useful.
We may be looking at a textbook example 
of non-classical chemistry with abiogenesis on earth
This is a pretty cool video which touched on the subject of quantum tunneling with regard to organic chemistry on Titan and DNA evolution
What debate was this? The one with Dr. James Tour?
Haven’t listened to this yet, but there was an Origin of Life Speaker Series.
The first lecture was:
The emergence of RNA from prebiotic mixtures of nucleotides, by Jack Szostak
About Jack Szostak:
Nobel Laureate, 2009
Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Harvard University
Professor, Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School
Alex Rich Distinguished Investigator, Department of Molecular Biology, Massachusetts General Hospital
Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
That’s the one! Sputtering at the chalk board while his interlocutor flashes 5 abstracts and calls the audience stupid. What’s worse is that it’s not even the worst debate that’s been hosted this year!
Dave Farina referenced actual OOL papers. James Tour ignored everything. Tour has called for a temporary halt on origin of life research and has promised to go after any ool researcher that Farina promotes. Tour is part of ID and has preached against evolution.
One of my biology professors commented that the moment there was life, any remnants of what led up to it would most likely fall into the category called “food”, which means no traces are likely.
Yes. One of those rare instances where judging one as bad as the other is not a false equivalency.
For a relatively even handed and much more gracious evaluation of the debate topics, I recommend this discussion with astrochemist Paul Rimmer.
So nice to have this video; there’s no way I could have put up with the whiny and practically petulant complaints/accusations for long at all.
What really struck me was that although the details of the chemistry have certainly changed in the last thirty years the basic theme hasn’t, that sometimes the chemistry happens right and sometimes it doesn’t, and unless it continues to happen right it’s not useful.
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