Re: Chemical bonding inside living vs non-living things

From: Trond Erik Vee Aune (trondaun_at_biotech.REMOVETHISBEFOREREPLYING.ntnu.no)
Date: 12/01/04 

Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 19:28:03 +0100

AA Institute wrote:

> And I'm still just as puzzled... What I find so impossible to accept
> is that you start off with a single celled egg inside a womb and then
> through some mysterious magic it turns itself into a baby over just 9
> months! *WHAT* is that mysterious force that does this? Yeah, sure
> I've read chapter and verse in the science books about how the organs
> develop, how the oxygen is drawn via the placenta from the mother's
> blood stream, how the whole thing comes together, etc. It doesn't
> really answer my question though!

This is exactly the reason why people tend to turn to gods.

What you must understand is that life isn't created on a daily basis.
Life is continuous. The sperm and egg is alive, and the zygote is
living; when it eventually transforms into a baby it's just a matter of
growth, not going from unliving to living. There aren't really
mysterious forces in play here, it's just a matter of utilizing (with
enzymes) the atoms in food to create the molecules that make up our
cells. The mechanics is well-known and characterized, but it is still
amazing, especially as you start to really dive deep into it, but it's
never so amazing that you have to create divine beings to answer it.

> So the same chemical elements (C, H, N, O and P) bond together to
> create a *living* thing as they create a piece of *plastic* that just
> sits in one place and does nothing.

Yes. The atoms are the same, the molecules, however, are not. Two
different molecules made up of the same atoms can have completely
different properties. Our basic set of atoms can in theory create an
infinite number of different molecules all with different properties. We
could even break it further down, passed the atoms down to protons and
electrons and whatever. The amount of components is lowered even
further, but they can all be arranged in a much larger repertoire to
make up our arsenal of atoms.

> Why is it that you cannot explain or model the miraculous cosmic
> forces
> which mysteriously bind atoms and molecules of non-living compounds of
> *known* structural make up into the double helix structure of the
> DNA's coded instructions purely through the random passage of time?

I don't understand this sentence. But I can comment on parts of it.
First of all, let's not use the words miraculous and cosmic. There is
nothing miraculous going on, and cosmos has really nothing to do with
it. The bonds between atoms and molecules are well-defined and
characterized, so it's inappropriate to call them mysterious. The
evolution from inert matter to catalytic organic molecules to what we
could define as living cells, is intricate and not fully understood. But
there are no steps that circumvent our understanding of chemistry.

> Electron microscopes are now so sophisticated they can image
> individual atoms, right? So what's the problem in deciding why a
> single cell starts to divide once, twice, and again toward a
> multi-cellular organism?

The cell cycle is well understood. We know the basics in why a cell
divides. and how a differentiated multicellular organism develops.
Please pick up a molecular biology book.

> Simple organisms is one thing. When you scale things up to the size of
> a human... the complexity becomes INFINITE!

The complexity is not infinite, but it's way beyond our ability to
precisely describe any organism in the most intricate detail
(positioning of every atom and so forth). What we do, though, is focus
on certain phenomena, e.g. cell division, and when this is basically
understood, we cross-link it to other phenomena and thereby gain an
integrated model.

Trond Erik 

-- 
Trond Erik Vee Aune
Department of Biotechnology
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Email: trondaun@REMOVETHISBEFOREREPLYING!!biotech.ntnu.no
http://www.biotech.ntnu.no/molgen
- Must be sad being a dyslectic, agnostic insomniac, lying
   awake during the night, wondering if there really is a dog

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