Re: Must have a Cyclical Energy Source to Start Life

"Tim Tyler" <seemysig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:gk8kip$6vc$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
P.I.P wrote:
[snip]
I want a demonstration of actual replicating clay
naked genes over several generations. A demonstration
which says, in effect, "Look! Here we see a mutation
occurring in generation 7 and by generation 11 we have
a total of 5 individuals in the population which bear this
mutated genetic information.

....and the moon-on-a-stick?

What we have is evidence of copying and information transmission
through multiple layers of clay. The evidence comes from the extruded
appearance of various acicular clay crystals - such as kaolinite:

http://originoflife.net/information/graphics/kaolinite.png

....and the evidence for long-range repeats in layered minerals such as
barium-ferrite - which show evidence of long-range information
transfer.

There's really no need to look for evidence of mutations. Mutations
are commonplace and given. A far bigger problem is that of
high-fidelity copying. Yes, crystal growth processes demonstrably make
thousands of sequential copies of information - but there are limits
to their fidelity, and these need to be clearly elucidated.

If we had good evidence of evolution, then we would practically be
done.

You wish! But you don't even have that.

You arm-wave your way to the position that the origin-of-genetics
is the only thing that matters. Then you arm-wave for the claim
that the original genetics will be the ultra-simplest kind of genetics
and then do further arm-waving to show that clay is that ultra-simple
kind of genetics.

And then, having defined away 98% of the problem, you tell us
that your proposed solution for the central 2% doesn't even work
yet. After 30+ years.

The point is that this existing evidence of reliable copying in
a prebiotically-plausible environment is /already/ far in advance of
that demonstrated for rival theories. Essentially, no rival theory
has been demonstrated to do any copying in a realistic environment.

But you don't even have more than one generation of copying in
your own choice of laboratory environment either.

The first organisms /must/ have self-assembled themselves naturally.
The
masters of natural self-assembly are crystals and bubbles. Bubbles are
next to useless at transmitting and preserving information -

What you mean to say is that you don't know of a way that bubbles
could transmit and preserve information. (Other than auto-catalytic
cycles which you mention below.)

and that
really just leaves crystals - which are demonstrably experts at this.

What you mean to say is that you do know of a way in which crystals
might transmit information, but no one has succeeded in setting up a
system yet in which they actually do so.

This line of reasoning seems simple, and not particularly difficult to
understand. Yet practically nobody else seems to get it.

I got it and repeated it in 5 parts above [now snipped]

They don't
seem to have a good counter-argument. They can't point at other
natural
systems that demonstrably self assemble - except for high-tech
modern living systems, which we know use techniques which are not
remotely prebiotically-plausible.

I point to bubbles - and oil slicks, and miceles, and some other systems
built from amphoteric molecules - lipids. The most interesting, of course,
being closed lipid bilayers. Interesting because they are actual plausible
precursors of modern organic life, rather than being something that
has conveniently vanished without a trace.

Also, I know of a loophole in my 5 step argument above.
While it is true that you must have some kind of genetics
to have NS-evolvable life, I think it is possible to have
a kind of autopoietic not-very-evolvable life which can
arise abiotically. And I postulate that this kind of life
produced the nucleic-acid building blocks of genetics.

Living systems are autopoietic by definition -

I think so, yes. And replicating clay naked genes are not
autopoietic.

and yes, the
first ones were probably rubbish at evolving. So, presumably
everyone agrees about this. The debate is more about what
those systems looked like.

It looks as though you are attempting to suggest life without
mechanical template copying. An old idea, possible-in-theory, but
*far* more highly speculative than traditional template copying.

Traditional template copying uses organics - nucleic acids in
particular. Or perhaps you have some other tradition in mind.
"What is Life?", after all.

The evidence seems to mostly come from computer simulations. Mixtures
of real organic chemicals typically form tars through lack of
cataltyic discrimination.

You don't get tars when the vast majority of the organic molecules are
unreactive. Long chain hydrocarbons with acid, amine, alcohol, and
thiol groups at one end are pretty unreactive and form things like
oil slicks and bubbles rather than tars. Aldehydes and imines, on the
other hand, are very reactive, so you can't have very many of them
floating around. Just enough to keep the metabolism running.

...and even if it does work, it typically
doesn't scale. If you want to store more information in a crystal, you
just make it bigger. Try that with hypothetical autocatalytic
networks, and
you very soon wind up with a big, complicated, unlikely mess.

You make an autocatalytic network bigger by adding new
molecular species organized into new cycles. And yes, if
you do this enough times, you do indeed come up with
something relatively complicated. As for "unlikely", isn't
that a synonym for "high in information content"?

It seems like a clutching-at-straws theory of life's origin to me.
Something we would choose, _only_ if we didn't have a vastly simpler,
better supported by the evidence and more beautiful theory to hand.

There is no evidence for Cairns-Smith's theory than was present
when he wrote his books. Wachtershauser, on the other hand, ...
but you are already aware of that.

HAND

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Must have a Cyclical Energy Source to Start Life
    ... However, life could have started in a cave, insulated from all this. ... What we have is evidence of copying and information transmission ... masters of natural self-assembly are crystals and bubbles. ...
    (sci.bio.evolution)
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