Re: There Was No Grace Period (copy)

From: Fabrizio J. Bonsignore (fbonsignore_at_beethoven.com)
Date: 10/14/04 

Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2004 23:36:46 +0000 (UTC)

Guy Hoelzer <hoelzer@unr.edu> wrote in message news:<ck7j35$epl$1@darwin.ediacara.org>...
> in article ck4bni$2h7o$1@darwin.ediacara.org, Fabrizio J. Bonsignore at
> fbonsignore@beethoven.com wrote on 10/7/04 2:16 PM:
>
> > TomHendricks474@cs.com wrote in message
> > news:<ck2bt8$1t1f$1@darwin.ediacara.org>...
> >> Some say life 'emerged'. Then through
> >> the first replicator adapted to the environment
> >> it was in.
> >> But that supposes a 'grace' period during which
> >> the environment did not in any way hinder
> >> the replicator, until it had the needed time
> >> to adapt to it's environment.
> >>
> >> There was no 'grace' period. And any scenario
> >> that allows for one is making a mistake IMO.
> >>
> >> Comment?
> >
> > There were several replicators but we descend from the only one that
> > kept adaptaing from the beginning, either by chance or superiority.
>
> Like so much in the OOL debate, this strikes me as unjustified arm-waiving.
> My own opinion is that there must have been an enormous number of
> spontaneously generated replicators (say trillions), and they may still be
> spontaneously generating today. I know of no study attempting to address
> this issue, let alone evidence that spontaneous generation of replicators
> does not happen in the modern world.

The problem is that new replicators would readily be assimilated one
way or another by microorganisms. There are bacteria even in
underoceanic volcanoes... No chance for them to survive. Compared to a
landscape full of life, an abiotic environment can actually be
considered as a period of grace... 8)

>I also have no idea how to approach
> the question of spontaneous replicator emergence in today's world, so I
> readily admit that this is raw speculation. I find it implausible that
> replicators may have only emerged "several" times, because the chance of
> avoiding extinction by replicating lineages of naked molecules formed
> without the benefit of historical natural selection would have been
> extraordinarily small on a per lineage basis.

There has to be diversity from the very beginning or your replicators
have to anticipate many possible circumstances in their structure.