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Yep, you are 100% correct. In fact, it is much more likely they were originating on Earth itself than a random hobo asteroid. > The missing part is how do they
by shevy-java 7mo ago
Yep, you are 100% correct. In fact, it is much more likely they were originating on Earth itself than a random hobo asteroid.
> The missing part is how do they form self-replicating mechanisms capable of evolution.
Well, there are some missing parts, yes, but RNA can self-replicate already; at the least some RNA can. Ribosomes also contain RNA so its is a ribozyme.
- pfdietz 7mo agoRNA can replicate in highly artificial conditions that would seem to already require life to occur.
- asdff 7mo agohttps://chemistry-europe.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/chem.202103672 https://chemistry-europe.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002...
- pfdietz 7mo agoThat's not replication, that's polymerization. There's nothing template-directed about it, and as far as I can tell the experiment depends on pure initial conditions (the guanosine monophosphate is not mixed with a plethora of other chemicals that could copolymerize with it.) That purity is the kind of artificiality I was talking about. A bad habit of OoL research is to show that some chemical shows up in trace amounts, then starting the next stage of experiments with a pure batch of that chemical. Robert Shapiro in his 1986 book "Origins" had some very biting things to say about this (the book is not nice to creationists either, btw.)
- asdff 7mo agoOnce you have that initial polymerization, thats it, game over, now you can template right off that. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7496532/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7496532/
- pfdietz 7mo agoAgain, implausible purity there. I'll add the tetramers used as the components are also much larger than the nucleotides in the Ryugu paper, so would be present in much lower concentrations.