Life From Nonlife Made Simple 03/05/2001
“Missing Links Made Simple” is the voilà! title from an article in today’s Nature, summarizing an experiment announced in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The vexing problem of the origin of proteins, specifically how to get amino acids to link up with peptide bonds, has evaded naturalistic solution for decades. But researchers from Scripps Institute have found that short segments of Transfer RNA (tRNA) assisted by puromycin molecules carrying amino acids can form peptide bonds without the assistance of ribosomes, provided some imidazole is around to help. They claim that this process also encodes some information into the chain: the tRNA bound to the puromycin better when their sequences matched. “The evolution of this control over protein manufacture holds the key to the emergence of the living from the non-living worlds.”
So the vast gulf between life and non-life has been bridged, eh? So spontaneous generation is back, eh? Not so fast. There was a lot of intelligent design in this experiment, but very little intelligence in the conclusions. These experimenters brought together three highly improbable ingredients into close quarters, which would not have occurred naturally in sufficient concentrations to provide a chance for fellowship. They also neglected the destructive effects of UV rays and oxygen, and other nefarious compounds which would act like muggers in the party. And the claim of information is a stretch: sequences that match would lead only to repetitive crystals, not complex aperiodic information that could have any bearing on the formation of functional proteins. This experiment seems like an extrapolation on the old joke about two hungry hoboes, one of which tries to cheer up his buddy by saying, “If we had ham, we could have ham and eggs, if we had eggs.”
It is conceivable that if you took apart a complex mechanism like a watch, parts of it would still work. Some of the gears and springs might still move. This is what these experimenters have done: disassembled a tRNA molecule and got parts of it to work. To have any relevance to the origin of life, they need to start with nothing, not something: get a watch to build itself without any springs and gears, and nobody around giving a hoot whether it worked or not. Anything less commits the fault of investigator interference and the fallacy of personification. And remember, until replication is nearly 100% accurate, any progress is lost when the next lightning bolt strikes.
“Missing Links Made Simple” is the voilà! title from an article in today’s Nature, summarizing an experiment announced in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The vexing problem of the origin of proteins, specifically how to get amino acids to link up with peptide bonds, has evaded naturalistic solution for decades. But researchers from Scripps Institute have found that short segments of Transfer RNA (tRNA) assisted by puromycin molecules carrying amino acids can form peptide bonds without the assistance of ribosomes, provided some imidazole is around to help. They claim that this process also encodes some information into the chain: the tRNA bound to the puromycin better when their sequences matched. “The evolution of this control over protein manufacture holds the key to the emergence of the living from the non-living worlds.”
So the vast gulf between life and non-life has been bridged, eh? So spontaneous generation is back, eh? Not so fast. There was a lot of intelligent design in this experiment, but very little intelligence in the conclusions. These experimenters brought together three highly improbable ingredients into close quarters, which would not have occurred naturally in sufficient concentrations to provide a chance for fellowship. They also neglected the destructive effects of UV rays and oxygen, and other nefarious compounds which would act like muggers in the party. And the claim of information is a stretch: sequences that match would lead only to repetitive crystals, not complex aperiodic information that could have any bearing on the formation of functional proteins. This experiment seems like an extrapolation on the old joke about two hungry hoboes, one of which tries to cheer up his buddy by saying, “If we had ham, we could have ham and eggs, if we had eggs.”
It is conceivable that if you took apart a complex mechanism like a watch, parts of it would still work. Some of the gears and springs might still move. This is what these experimenters have done: disassembled a tRNA molecule and got parts of it to work. To have any relevance to the origin of life, they need to start with nothing, not something: get a watch to build itself without any springs and gears, and nobody around giving a hoot whether it worked or not. Anything less commits the fault of investigator interference and the fallacy of personification. And remember, until replication is nearly 100% accurate, any progress is lost when the next lightning bolt strikes.
Maybe you can help me with grasping the "scientific" and especially the moral perfection of that mythical tale (even though I guess a separate thread would be needed for that). Hmm, historically there have been many who tried to take that tale seriously (well, when they didn't know it wasn't worth it), and it seems to me that the smarter of them came to the logical and moral conclusion that only a malevolent Demiurge could have come up with such a "corrupted" creation.