RNA - the first battery? or "I told you So"
- From: TomHendricks474@xxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 14 Sep 2005 20:23:39 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Perplexed in Peoria"
<TomHendricks474@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:dg4r7r$19s2$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Here is yet more on what I think is a key to breaking the
> impasse on the origin. It also supports many of my ideas
> that I've championed on SBE about life as that which adapts
> to a sun/heat cycle.
> Comment?
> http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2148/3/12
> It is hard to believe that evolution has not
> used the opportunity to drive the primordial
> condensation by energy of light, with nitrogenous
> bases working as light-absorbing antenna.
[snip]
PIP:
They are not talking about a battery, really. They are talking
about a photocell. And that may be even more exciting.
Tom, hadn't you quoted and discussed this paper before? It's
funny, but I had never noticed the sentence about the role
as light-absorbing antennae leading to synthesis.
Tom
Yes, a couple of times. But this was the first time I had
read the full paper. All the other times it was articles about
the paper.
PIP
The curious (and exciting) thing is that they are talking about
the condensation of the base to the sugar - not the condensation
of sugar and phosphate that you might expect.
In my OOL series, I suggested that nucleic acids might have
originated as teichoic-acid-like fibers whose original function
was structural - cell wall reinforcers. That suggestion was
weak because it didn't provide a good explanation of the nitrogenous
bases and base pairing. But the suggestion of the paper fills
that hole in my theory. The sugar-phosphate backbone came first,
as I had suggested, and the attachment of bases (and perhaps the
synthesis of bases) was driven by light energy. The only problem
is that there is no 'precedent' in modern biochemistry for the
transfer of condesation energy from the sugar-base bond to anything
else. That is, if the process was once common, it has left no
fossils.
Tom
It's still closer to both our ideas. I think it is going in the right
direction for more discoveries. I do have an email of one of the
researchers, if you would like to share your ideas directly with
him. Let me know.
PIP
Well, Tom, you are welcome to say "I told you so" regarding the
portions of the paper that explicitly support you - such as their
suggestion of semi-dry land for the site of the origin, or their
talk about selection for surviving uv. But I will say "Thank you
for calling this to my attention" regarding the part about the
antenna and sugar-base condensations.
Tom
Yeah, let's see where it takes us.
PIP
Of course, the whole paper is simply an in-silico simulation and
must be taken with several grains of salt. But it will be
interesting to see whether any of their ideas can be replicated by
chemists working with real molecules.
Tom
Yes that's the rub. And it seems that doing the real testing is not
all that easy to do.
.
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