[__ Science __ ] WHO IS DEAD? GOD OR DARWIN?

[Dorothy Mae]

Sir Alexander Flemming, the discoverer of penicillin, predicted that careless use of the antibiotic would lead to evolution of resistant bacteria. Antibiotic protocols are designed according to evolutionary theory, to delay the evolution of such resistance.

Which seems to me to be a valuable result.

Well actually, they are designed to use the minimum concentration to achieve the desired result, as all medicine has side effects. Pain killers are also kept at a minimum dose because of side effects. Evolutionary theory plays no role. Even resistance to antibiotics doesn’t produce new bacteria.

 

[Vaccine]

What discoveries? No links?

Murchison meteorite shows abiotic amino acids and peptides with excess of L-forms necessary for life:
Extraterrestrial amino acids and L-enantiomeric excesses in the CM2 carbonaceous
chondrites Aguas Zarcas and Murchison

https://science.gsfc.nasa.gov/sed/content/uploadFiles/publication_files/Glavin2020%20AZ.pdf

Abiotic origin of nucleic acids:

Catalytic Synthesis of Polyribonucleic Acid on Prebiotic Rock Glasses​

https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/ast.2022.0027

Evidence for abiotic formation of phospholipid cell membranes:
Abiotic synthesis with plausible emergence for primitive phospholipid in aqueous microdroplets

Abiotic synthesis with plausible emergence for primitive phospholipid in aqueous microdroplets

Phospholipids are the protective layer of modern cells, but it is challenging for the formation of phospholipids that require a simple abiotic synthes…

www.sciencedirect.com

The link below shows why Miller-Urey worked: corrosion of borosilicate glass in the reaction vessel helped to catalyze the reactions. This is consistent with what is known of the early Earth.

Scientists recreated classic origin-of-life experiment and made a new discovery

1952 Miller-Urey experiment showed organic molecules forming from inorganic precursors.

arstechnica.com

I'm glad you find that research convincing but abiogenesis remains unproven.

 

[Dorothy Mae]

I'm glad you find that research convincing but abiogenesis remains unproven.

The Muller-Urey experiment required a means of immediately separating the newly formed amino acids from the rest of the material. This was impossible in nature.

 

[Barbarian]

I'm glad you find that research convincing but abiogenesis remains unproven.

Truth is a stronger thing than provability. It's still possible that the earth didn't bring forth living things. But we have all that evidence and God's word saying that it did.

What evidence says that it didn't?

 

[Barbarian]

The Muller-Urey experiment required a means of immediately separating the newly formed amino acids from the rest of the material. This was impossible in nature.

Amino acids and peptides (short proteins formed from amino acids) found in the interior of meteorites confirms Miller-Urey. Reality beats anyone's argument.

 

[Barbarian]

I believe God created life.

Apparently you just disapprove of the way He did it.

You didn't answer the question, how does "the Earth" do anything?

Let's ask God...
Gen 1:24 And God said: Let the earth bring forth the living creature in its kind, cattle and creeping things, and beasts of the earth...

He doesn't say how it did it, either. He just says that it did. But research into the issue has given us a lot of evidence as to how that happened. Would you like me to show you some of that?

 

[Barbarian]

Well, since we have life and evolution assumes life evolved from non-life

Actually, that's wrong. Darwin, for example, just supposed that God just created the first living things. Would you like to see that? The origin of life is not part of evolutionary theory, which assumes life began somehow, and describes how it changes over time.

 

[Barbarian]

It was my way of pointing out abiogenesis is an assumption.

Since a number of predictions of abiogenesis have since been validated by evidence, it is no longer a hypothesis; it is an established theory. It never was an assumption.

 

[Vaccine]

Apparently you just disapprove of the way He did it.


Let's ask God...
Gen 1:24 And God said: Let the earth bring forth the living creature in its kind, cattle and creeping things, and beasts of the earth...

He doesn't say how it did it, either. He just says that it did. But research into the issue has given us a lot of evidence as to how that happened. Would you like me to show you some of that?

Again, how does the Earth do anything?
I can say let Cleveland bring forth pizza. Then find pizza in Cleveland. It's absurd to declare that as proof Cleveland brought forth pizza.
Your interpretation of Gen 1:24 elevates the creation above the Creator.

 

[Vaccine]

Since a number of predictions of abiogenesis have since been validated by evidence, it is no longer a hypothesis; it is an established theory. It never was an assumption.

The research fails to explain how non-living material produced life. Should they ever discover all the building blocks necessary for life, that still doesn't explain how it came together to produce life.
As if merely discovering a planet completely covered with lumber, wiring, outlets, fixtures, windows, doors, nails, screws, and lights demonstrates how houses are built.
Finding ingredients says nothing about how something is assembled.

 

[TMal3]

The likeness to forensic science is not a good one. Abiogenesis assumes a process that never stopped. By definition forensic science never needs to observe the action and it is always finished in the past. Evolutionary process are assumed to be continuing and none of them are supposed to have stopped. So the argument against it as it cannot be observed is completely valid. Evolutionary processes are continuing and never stopped and yet we never see life from non-life.

Well, since we have life and evolution assumes life evolved from non-life it’s not an unconfirmed hypothesis. It’s like saying life is an unconfirmed hypothesis.

Often laymen confuse evolution (the observed phenomenon) with the theory that explains it, or consequences of evolution like common descent.

Vol. 22, No. 6
8 Jun 2022

Catalytic Synthesis of Polyribonucleic Acid on Prebiotic Rock Glasses​

An early episode of life on Earth likely used RNA in both genetic and catalytic roles (the “RNA World”) (White, 1976; Gilbert, 1986). This suggests, but does not require (Hud et al., 2013), an “RNA-First Model” for life's origin on Earth, proposed 60 years ago by Alexander Rich (Rich, 1962).

However, the structure of RNA, once called “a prebiotic chemist's nightmare” (Joyce and Orgel, 1999), is seen by many to be too complex to have emerged spontaneously (Shapiro, 2007). Thus, a persuasive case for the RNA-First Model requires, at a minimum (Robertson and Joyce, 2012), an experimental demonstration of an abiological process that forms oligomeric RNA molecules with lengths sufficient to support Darwinian evolution (Krishnamurthy, 2015), perhaps 50–5000 nucleotides (Joyce, 2012). Furthermore, this process must work without human intervention in an environment likely to have been found during the Hadean.

Rocks available on the Hadean surface were likely driven by the redox state of the Hadean mantle, which was likely not far from modern values (Harrison, 2009; Trail et al., 2011). The surface was likely reworked by bombardment that remelted its mostly mafic (basaltic and diabasic) materials (Pierazzo and Melosh, 2000; Arndt and Nisbet, 2012; Mojzsis et al., 2019). This, in turn, generated air- and liquid water-quenched cryptocrystalline silicates (in common language, glasses) having the diverse composition of the early crust (Melosh, 1989).

In light of this geological context, we asked whether mafic glasses could convert ribonucleosides 5′-triphosphates into polyribonucleic acid. We report here that they can.
The predicted abiotic means for RNA is confirmed.

He didn't use that term. But he described it. Abiogenesis is indeed life being brought forth by the Earth.


They proved it could happen in the lab with conditions thought to exist on the early Earth. The Murchison meteorite confirmed the prediction, containing abiotic amino acids and peptides (short proteins).

Murchison Meteorite - an overview | ScienceDirect Topics

www.sciencedirect.com

The basic cell membrane is extraordinarily simple...

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fd20khd7ddkh5ls.cloudfront.net%2Flipids_phospholipids.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=908ece85c1b3ce64f79e67643baa5e6f033bf8c01626abd31960cf2b515e4cb0&ipo=images

And it spontaneously forms into sheets and vesicles. The fact that the one absolutely essential organelle for cellular life is so simple, is a huge clue.

And as evolutionary theory predicts, such a basic feature has never been replaced. Natural selection merely added things to it over time.


The evidence increasingly shows that God was right; life emerged from non-life, as He created it to do. The evidence has even swayed many IDers and former creationists to that conclusion. Michael Denton, author of Evolution; a Theory in Crisis now acknowledges (in Nature's Destiny) that the evidence shows the universe was made to produce living things.


True, but of course, natural laws aren't about luck. The evidence continues to show that while God did create the first life, He did it in a way creationists consider unapproved.

Barbarian

The article you cite does not "prove [abiogenesis] could happen in the lab with conditions thought to exist on the early earth."

The "catalytic synthesis of polyribonucleic acid" experiment is little different from commercial solid state synthesis of polymers on glass beads by humans, not nature.

The RNA they produced was not 3'5' linkages only throughout, but contained non-helpful 2'5' linkages, and branching. The well polished glass silica and igneous rocks they used represent and idealized system unlikely to exist on the earth. Sure, the existence of basalt, gabbro, diabase is expected, but such rocks polished to smooth glass even smoother than naturally occurring obsidian is unrealistic (as are the well controlled temp and pH laboratory conditions). Quartz "glass" is more realistic, but they found nominal results with the quartz.

But the real "catch" and Achilles Heel is what the researchers acknowledge themselves:

"These results suggest that polyribonucleotides were available to Hadean environments IF [energetically activated] triphosphates were."

And there's the problem: they weren't! We have no evidence that unstable activated nucleotides existed nor can exist for any length of time in nature. Just getting the nucleotides themselves is problematic (much less phosphates to energetically activate the nucleotides; the insolubility of phosphates is a huge problem).

What people don't understand is that all these experiments are "proof of concept/principle" experiments that show such a thing could happen in theory, but not necessarily in reality. All these experiments use prebiotically implausible concentrations of purified stock solutions.

This experiment used 3-12 uM solutions of activated nucleotides with an average 1-8 quadrillion activated nucleotide molecules per milliliter! No such concentration of energetically activated nucleotides exists in nature.

*They used prebiotically implausible 'building blocks' to build their RNA. That's a non-starter from the start.

 

[TMal3]

But again, that's because all these experiments are "proof of concept/principle" experiments. This includes peptide polymerization (which also use prebiotically implausible concentrations of purified activated amino acid stock solutions, with chemically protected R-groups to avoid unwanted cross-reactions). People read the headlines and assume scientists have demonstrated that 'warm little ponds' full of the 20 amino acids can abiotically polymerize into high diversity heteropolypeptides, and therefore that getting a functional protein is just a simple matter of rolling the dice enough times, but that's not reality. No such environment exists where the 20 amino acids (or even 10 of the 20) can abiotically participate in combinatorial chemistry to give you something like this:

GKATPQLYDNSFIMVC...
( heteropeptides)

Chemically impossible, because the different chemical reactivities of amino acids require conditions that are mutually exclusive. And that’s why we never see that in the research literature (or in nature). People read the headlines 'scientists show polypeptides can form prebiotically' and imagine the above scenario when instead those experiments produce homopeptides and copeptides/dipeptides (and the occasional tripeptide) like this:

GA, KG, TA, AGA, GGGGGGGGGGG...

And *that* is the type of thing we find in the Murchison meteorite (I'm glad you brought that up). Like the Miller-Urey experiment, 99% of the organics are useless kerogen type asphatized ("tar") compounds (the well known "Tar Paradox" commonly observed in Strecker-type syntheses). ~1% amino acids (and like the experiments, not all 20 types of amino acids are available). Then even rarer <<0.001% trace amounts of short length copeptides, homeopeptides, and trace amounts of sugars and nucleobases, but no heteropeptides, and no nucleotides (much less energetically activated nucleotides). So, yes, natural laboratories like the Murchison meteorite confirm the experiments but not in the way you think. If the Murchison meteorite shows the best case scenario, then like I said: we don't have empirical backing for abiogenesis.

*Even if abiogenesis is a simple matter of rolling the dice enough times (which it's not), you can't win the lottery if you don't buy a ticket, and natural laboratories like the Murchison meteorite show that Nature isn't rolling the dice. It's not even at the table.

 

[TMal3]

Barbarian, I agree with you that there is substantial empirical evidence confirming biological evolution, speciation, common ancestry and the like. But the same can't be said for abiogenesis.

 

[Dorothy Mae]

“Evolution explains the survival of the fittest. It doesn’t explain the arrival of the fittest.”

 

[Dorothy Mae]

Barbarian

The article you cite does not "prove [abiogenesis] could happen in the lab with conditions thought to exist on the early earth."

The "catalytic synthesis of polyribonucleic acid" experiment is little different from commercial solid state synthesis of polymers on glass beads by humans, not nature.

The RNA they produced was not 3'5' linkages only throughout, but contained non-helpful 2'5' linkages, and branching. The well polished glass silica and igneous rocks they used represent and idealized system unlikely to exist on the earth. Sure, the existence of basalt, gabbro, diabase is expected, but such rocks polished to smooth glass even smoother than naturally occurring obsidian is unrealistic (as are the well controlled temp and pH laboratory conditions). Quartz "glass" is more realistic, but they found nominal results with the quartz.

But the real "catch" and Achilles Heel is what the researchers acknowledge themselves:

"These results suggest that polyribonucleotides were available to Hadean environments IF [energetically activated] triphosphates were."

And there's the problem: they weren't! We have no evidence that unstable activated nucleotides existed nor can exist for any length of time in nature. Just getting the nucleotides themselves is problematic (much less phosphates to energetically activate the nucleotides; the insolubility of phosphates is a huge problem).

What people don't understand is that all these experiments are "proof of concept/principle" experiments that show such a thing could happen in theory, but not necessarily in reality. All these experiments use prebiotically implausible concentrations of purified stock solutions.

This experiment used 3-12 uM solutions of activated nucleotides with an average 1-8 quadrillion activated nucleotide molecules per milliliter! No such concentration of energetically activated nucleotides exists in nature.

*They used prebiotically implausible 'building blocks' to build their RNA. That's a non-starter from the start.

One can through all the building blocks together and still no life will be the outcome.

 

[Barbarian]

But again, that's because all these experiments are "proof of concept/principle" experiments. This includes peptide polymerization (which also use prebiotically implausible concentrations of purified activated amino acid stock solutions, with chemically protected R-groups to avoid unwanted cross-reactions).

PNAS
June 11, 2004
101 (25) 9182-9186

Identification of diamino acids in the Murchison meteorite​

Abstract​

Amino acids identified in the Murchison chondritic meteorite by molecular and isotopic analysis are thought to have been delivered to the early Earth by asteroids, comets, and interplanetary dust particles where they may have triggered the appearance of life by assisting in the synthesis of proteins via prebiotic polycondensation reactions [Oró, J. (1961) Nature 190, 389–390; Chyba, C. F. & Sagan, C. (1992) Nature 355, 125–132]. We report the identification of diamino acids in the Murchison meteorite by new enantioselective GC-MS analyses. dl-2,3-diaminopropanoic acid, dl-2,4-diaminobutanoic acid, 4,4′-diaminoisopentanoic acid, 3,3′-diaminoisobutanoic acid, and 2,3-diaminobutanoic acid were detected in the parts per billion range after chemical transformation into N,N-diethoxycarbonyl ethyl ester derivatives. The chiral diamino acids show a racemic ratio. Laboratory data indicate that diamino acids support the formation of polypeptide structures under primitive Earth conditions [Brack, A. & Orgel, L. E. (1975) Nature 256, 383–387] and suggest polycondensation reactions of diamino acids into early peptide nucleic acid material as one feasible pathway for the prebiotic evolution of DNA and RNA genomes [Joyce, G. F. (2002) Nature 418, 214–221]. The results obtained in this study favor the assumption that not only amino acids (as the required monomers of proteins) form in interstellar/circumstellar environments, but also the family of diamino monocarboxylic acids, which might have been relevant in prebiotic chemistry.
Reality.

Even if abiogenesis is a simple matter of rolling the dice enough times (which it's not), you can't win the lottery if you don't buy a ticket, and natural laboratories like the Murchison meteorite show that Nature isn't rolling the dice. It's not even at the table.

When I started studying biology, a long time ago, all we had was Oparin and Miller-Urey. Now, there's more and more predictions being confirmed. It could still be wrong, but in the perspective of all those decades, the evidence is much stronger now, than when I was an undergraduate.

and like the experiments, not all 20 types of amino acids are available

And some that are, are not found in living things on Earth. Which is not to say that there was never a time when they were, or that the first forms of life required all 20 amino acids seen today in living things.

Interestingly, there is an excess of L-forms in the meteorite, which is another prediction of abiogenesis. There's a reason for the L-form preference...

Nature
26 January, 2022

Amino acid gas phase circular dichroism and implications for the origin of biomolecular asymmetry​

...The chiral diamino acids show a racemic ratio. Laboratory data indicate that diamino acids support the formation of polypeptide structures under primitive Earth conditions [Brack, A. & Orgel, L. E. (1975) Nature 256, 383–387] and suggest polycondensation reactions of diamino acids into early peptide nucleic acid material as one feasible pathway for the prebiotic evolution of DNA and RNA genomes [Joyce, G. F. (2002) Nature 418, 214–221]. The results obtained in this study favor the assumption that not only amino acids (as the required monomers of proteins) form in interstellar/circumstellar environments, but also the family of diamino monocarboxylic acids, which might have been relevant in prebiotic chemistry.

 

[Barbarian]

“Evolution explains the survival of the fittest. It doesn’t explain the arrival of the fittest.”

Evolutionary theory explains this. Darwin's second and third points explain how it happens.

2. Every organism is slightly different than its parents.
3. Some of these differences affect the likelihood of the organism living long enough to reproduce.

That's how the fittest arrive.

 

[Barbarian]

The research fails to explain how non-living material produced life. Should they ever discover all the building blocks necessary for life, that still doesn't explain how it came together to produce life.

So far, we know that amino acids, nucleic acids, and cell membranes can form abiotically. So it's looking more and more that God had it right when He said the earth brought forth living things.

 

[Barbarian]

Again, how does the Earth do anything?

God created it to do things.

I can say let Cleveland bring forth pizza.

Turns out Cleveland wasn't created to do pizza.
But if God intended it so, then it would have done so, just as the earth brought forth life. He's God, you know.

And we aren't.

 

[TMal3]

PNAS
June 11, 2004
101 (25) 9182-9186

Identification of diamino acids in the Murchison meteorite​

Abstract​

Amino acids identified in the Murchison chondritic meteorite by molecular and isotopic analysis are thought to have been delivered to the early Earth by asteroids, comets, and interplanetary dust particles where they may have triggered the appearance of life by assisting in the synthesis of proteins via prebiotic polycondensation reactions [Oró, J. (1961) Nature 190, 389–390; Chyba, C. F. & Sagan, C. (1992) Nature 355, 125–132]. We report the identification of diamino acids in the Murchison meteorite by new enantioselective GC-MS analyses. dl-2,3-diaminopropanoic acid, dl-2,4-diaminobutanoic acid, 4,4′-diaminoisopentanoic acid, 3,3′-diaminoisobutanoic acid, and 2,3-diaminobutanoic acid were detected in the parts per billion range after chemical transformation into N,N-diethoxycarbonyl ethyl ester derivatives. The chiral diamino acids show a racemic ratio. Laboratory data indicate that diamino acids support the formation of polypeptide structures under primitive Earth conditions [Brack, A. & Orgel, L. E. (1975) Nature 256, 383–387] and suggest polycondensation reactions of diamino acids into early peptide nucleic acid material as one feasible pathway for the prebiotic evolution of DNA and RNA genomes [Joyce, G. F. (2002) Nature 418, 214–221]. The results obtained in this study favor the assumption that not only amino acids (as the required monomers of proteins) form in interstellar/circumstellar environments, but also the family of diamino monocarboxylic acids, which might have been relevant in prebiotic chemistry.
Reality.

When I started studying biology, a long time ago, all we had was Oparin and Miller-Urey. Now, there's more and more predictions being confirmed. It could still be wrong, but in the perspective of all those decades, the evidence is much stronger now, than when I was an undergraduate.

And some that are, are not found in living things on Earth. Which is not to say that there was never a time when they were, or that the first forms of life required all 20 amino acids seen today in living things.

Interestingly, there is an excess of L-forms in the meteorite, which is another prediction of abiogenesis. There's a reason for the L-form preference...

Nature
26 January, 2022

Amino acid gas phase circular dichroism and implications for the origin of biomolecular asymmetry​

...The chiral diamino acids show a racemic ratio. Laboratory data indicate that diamino acids support the formation of polypeptide structures under primitive Earth conditions [Brack, A. & Orgel, L. E. (1975) Nature 256, 383–387] and suggest polycondensation reactions of diamino acids into early peptide nucleic acid material as one feasible pathway for the prebiotic evolution of DNA and RNA genomes [Joyce, G. F. (2002) Nature 418, 214–221]. The results obtained in this study favor the assumption that not only amino acids (as the required monomers of proteins) form in interstellar/circumstellar environments, but also the family of diamino monocarboxylic acids, which might have been relevant in prebiotic chemistry.

You literally just said what I said. Yes, diamino acids. That's what I said. That's the same as dipeptides/copeptides just as I said. Those are the types of peptides found in the Murchison, and produced in experiments: diamino acids/dipeptides, copeptides, homeopeptides, and the occasional tripeptide, like I said. Like this:

GG, GA, AGA, GGGGGG...

*You can't build biologically relevant proteins from such peptides.