The Genetic Code

[renniks]

The trouble with "All you need is for someone to say it happened," is that anyone can say anything, and who's to say which anything is more valid than some other anything? That makes it useless as a method for finding the truth.

So you'll forgive me if I consider that the method that can't produce truth hasn't actually provided the truth.

You mean like the theory that abiogenesis happened, which has zero evidence to support it? Anyone can say it happened, that's meaningless.

 

[Kylie]

You mean like the theory that abiogenesis happened, which has zero evidence to support it? Anyone can say it happened, that's meaningless.

Yeah, if only we'd found that complex organic molecules such as guanine, adenine, cytosine, uracil and thymine could exist in space, like on meteors. Oh wait, we have. SOURCE

I think you'll want to reconsider that whole "There's no evidence for it" idea you've got.

 

[ottawak]

You mean like the theory that abiogenesis happened, which has zero evidence to support it? Anyone can say it happened, that's meaningless.

And anybody can say it didn't happen, which is just as meaningless.

 

[AV1611VET]

Yes. You knew what my point was, yet you decided to ignore it and play games. I think you wasted my time as well.

Not completely wasted.

You'll think twice before you ask for another citation for something that is basic doctrine, won't you?

 

[Hans Blaster]

Mike makes a point about the merit of his arguments.

Someone queried why I sometimes post ahead of the quote.
Answer simple. When the quoted post has nothing of merit to the argument, for reasons given it , it should not be given more exposure.

 

[ruthiesea]

I don’t listen to disingenuous arguments no. I’m still waiting for presentation of an actual hypothesis for abiogenesis.

It is hypothesized that life formed around 3.5 to 4.3 Gya due to a combination of chemicals and heat present at that time. This is based on microfossils found to be that old. These microfossils are similar to bacteria found around deep sea hydrothermal vents today.

 

[AV1611VET]

This is based on microfossils found to be that old.

Yup -- date the rocks by the fossils and the fossils by the rocks.

 

[Bungle_Bear]

Let us clarify for those who let their faith in abiogenesis run wildly ahead of any evidence.

Great idea. Hope you're listening @Mountainmike, you might learn something.

Is a peptide live? Not by the definitions of life of NASA or Harvard.

Good start. No argument here.

So is what happens to peptides relevant in a hypothesis for abiogenesis. No.

And there's your first mistake. What happens to peptides is absolutely relevant for abiogenesis.

It has no more relevance than a simpler living cell evolving to a more complex one. That is not abiogenesis either,

Indeed, that's evolution. Abiogenesis is what happens BEFORE evolution. It happened before the formation of the simple cell.

So what is relevant?
The step from no life to life. That is what abiogenesis MEANS.

Indeed. Something it doesn't mean is formation of the first cell.

So what is needed for a hypothesis of abiogenesis? A structure for the first replicating , evolving ( and inevitable respiring) cell, and an experiment to test whether it can have happened by random chance from non living constituents.

Where did you get the idea that abiogenesis must explain the evolution of the first cell?

Only that step matters. Only a hypothesis for that step IS a hypothesis for abiogenesis.

Why? That's not part of abiogenesis, so why do you think it's the only step that matters?

But as yet there is no structure conjectured for hat cell, and certainly no experiment defined for the step of life , how it appeared from non living things. So there is no hypothesis of abiogenesis,


For sure, once such a step is proposed there is then the question as to whether the ingredients could have existed together, but unti, you know what the ingredients are, that is irrelevant.


Someone queried why I sometimes post ahead of the quote.
Answer simple. When the quoted post has nothing of merit to the argument, for reasons given it , it should not be given more exposure.

Since you demonstrably don't know what abiogenesis is, I suggest you stop arguing against it.

 

[Hans Blaster]

This is part of your problem with this topic. You set up some large leap straight to a (simple) functioning cell, when as far as I can tell, that has never been the position of scientific OOL work. (This time you've left out the canards about thousands of proteins expecting something akin the simplest cells that exist today, though you *have* included it in posts this month [perhaps this thread, I'm not going to check right now].)

From what I can tell, the path in OOL research has always been something like:

1. simple building blocks (amino acids, nucleotides, simple sugars, fatty acids) from simple molecules possibly with some sort of catalysis such as on a mineral surface, or as tested in Miller-Urey, electrical discharge.

2. Formation of larger biomolecules from the basic building blocks. Again likely with catalysis until some turn out to be self-catalyzing.

3. Formation of vesicles to contain these self-replicating chemicals. At this point feedback loops and limiting cycles develop of the same sort that drive nearly everything inside cells today. These would include simple chemical metabolic cycles.

4. Development of some sort of genetic code. Bits of RNA attach to amino acids and start "transcribing" proteins. At this point changes to certain bits of RNA result in changes to the proteins and evolution can really take off. Abiogenesis is complete.

Is a peptide live? Not by the definitions of life of NASA or Harvard.

So is what happens to peptides relevant in a hypothesis for abiogenesis. No.

It has no more relevance than a simpler living cell evolving to a more complex one. That is not abiogenesis either,

So what is relevant?
The step from no life to life. That is what abiogenesis MEANS.

So what is needed for a hypothesis of abiogenesis? A structure for the first replicating , evolving ( and inevitable respiring) cell, and an experiment to test whether it can have happened by random chance from non living constituents.

Only that step matters. Only a hypothesis for that step IS a hypothesis for abiogenesis.

But as yet there is no structure conjectured for hat cell, and certainly no experiment defined for the step of life , how it appeared from non living things. So there is no hypothesis of abiogenesis,


For sure, once such a step is proposed there is then the question as to whether the ingredients could have existed together, but unti, you know what the ingredients are, that is irrelevant.

 

[ottawak]

Yup -- date the rocks by the fossils and the fossils by the rocks.

You not only necro threads, you necro false, failed arguments.

 

[Mountainmike]

This is part of your problem with this topic. You set up some large leap straight to a (simple) functioning cell, when as far as I can tell, that has never been the position of scientific OOL work. (This time you've left out the canards about thousands of proteins expecting something akin the simplest cells that exist today, though you *have* included it in posts this month [perhaps this thread, I'm not going to check right now].)

From what I can tell, the path in OOL research has always been something like:

1. simple building blocks (amino acids, nucleotides, simple sugars, fatty acids) from simple molecules possibly with some sort of catalysis such as on a mineral surface, or as tested in Miller-Urey, electrical discharge.

2. Formation of larger biomolecules from the basic building blocks. Again likely with catalysis until some turn out to be self-catalyzing.

3. Formation of vesicles to contain these self-replicating chemicals. At this point feedback loops and limiting cycles develop of the same sort that drive nearly everything inside cells today. These would include simple chemical metabolic cycles.

4. Development of some sort of genetic code. Bits of RNA attach to amino acids and start "transcribing" proteins. At this point changes to certain bits of RNA result in changes to the proteins and evolution can really take off. Abiogenesis is complete.

Noting your phrase "OOL research" has status of OOL guesswork and conjecture and you would be about right. The above is precisely what people believe, mainly to avoid the problem of jumps. But that is all it is: a belief.

But There is still the speciic transition to evolving. Beforethat there is no mechanism for change, so there can only be more of the same. (Just supposing as you do , there is already replication of the more of the same, which is not a given in a complicated structure) .

But here is the philosophical problem in a nutshell: the transition to evolving IS a change in a cell which has no mechanism for change since it is not evolving till it makes the change. . That is a unique step. It is also a big step up in complexity.

Since all of the previous is assumed in conjecture to happen without guidance and by random chance with many other outcomes too, there is also the problem there is not a shred of evidence that there are or have been lesser forms or indeed that the process is still continuing. So there is no actual evidence any of this actually happened only very incomplete arguments for how some of it might have happened.

The day someone gives it a structure and does an experiment that shows how non living became living, I am all ears. Until then it is a serious conceptual problem. I am not actually against it. I am against it being presented as though it were fact, as Dawkins does.

Dawkins seems completely oblivious to his own contradiction and gibberish when he said "we have no evidence about how life started but we know what kind of step it must have been"

Ever since I saw an article in new scientist 50 (yes fifty!!!) years ago about protocel design , I have followed the area with interest. So it is unlikely you will find anything I have not seen before. As you all know I am a read-a-holic and i even get mocked for it!

Dont get me wrong it is a valid and useful area of research, just so long as the conclusions do not race ahead of the evidence.


To follow sagans folly and antithesis of science. "extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence". You can rule abiogenesis out. It clearly is extraordinary!

I can only contrast that status of guessing, with actual forensic evidence that shows recently live cardiac tissue in eucharistic miracles mingled at the edges with bread , that cannot be faked by any mechanism so far proposed, that has far more scientific evidence as an origin of life. I dont need that evidence to be true, but it is next to impossible to falsify. Yet none of you so much as study that evidence.

There is little point in repeating any of this again. The "conjecture" in abiogenesis runs way ahead of the evidence.

 

[Bungle_Bear]

Noting your phrase "OOL research" has status of OOL guesswork and conjecture and you would be about right. The above is precisely what people believe, mainly to avoid the problem of jumps. But that is all it is: a belief.

But There is still the speciic transition to evolving. Beforethat there is no mechanism for change, so there can only be more of the same. (Just supposing as you do , there is already replication of the more of the same, which is not a given in a complicated structure) .

But here is the philosophical problem in a nutshell: the transition to evolving IS a change in a cell which has no mechanism for change since it is not evolving till it makes the change. . That is a unique step. It is also a big step up in complexity.

Since all of the previous is assumed in conjecture to happen without guidance and by random chance with many other outcomes too, there is also the problem there is not a shred of evidence that there are or have been lesser forms or indeed that the process is still continuing. So there is no actual evidence any of this actually happened only very incomplete arguments for how some of it might have happened.

The day someone gives it a structure and does an experiment that shows how non living became living, I am all ears. Until then it is a serious conceptual problem. I am not actually against it. I am against it being presented as though it were fact, as Dawkins does.

Dawkins seems completely oblivious to his own contradiction and gibberish when he said "we have no evidence about how life started but we know what kind of step it must have been"

Ever since I saw an article in new scientist 50 (yes fifty!!!) years ago about protocel design , I have followed the area with interest. So it is unlikely you will find anything I have not seen before. As you all know I am a read-a-holic and even get mocked for it!

To follow sagans folly and antithesis of science. "extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence". You can rule abiogenesis out. It clearly is extraordinary!

I can only contrast that status of guessing, with actual forensic evidence that shows recently live cardiac tissue in eucharistic miracles mingled at the edges with bread , that cannot be faked by any mechanism so far proposed, that has far more scientific evidence as an origin of life. I dont need that evidence to be true, but it is next to impossible to falsify. Yet none of you so much as study that evidence.

There is little point in repeating any of this again. The "conjecture" in abiogenesis runs way ahead of the evidence.

You have things spoon-fed to you, but you just ignore them and keep blurting out the same refuted claims.

 

[ottawak]

Noting your phrase "OOL research" has status of OOL guesswork and conjecture and you would be about right. The above is precisely what people believe, mainly to avoid the problem of jumps. But that is all it is: a belief.

But There is still the speciic transition to evolving. Beforethat there is no mechanism for change, so there can only be more of the same. (Just supposing as you do , there is already replication of the more of the same, which is not a given in a complicated structure) .

But here is the philosophical problem in a nutshell: the transition to evolving IS a change in a cell which has no mechanism for change since it is not evolving till it makes the change. . That is a unique step. It is also a big step up in complexity.

Since all of the previous is assumed in conjecture to happen without guidance and by random chance with many other outcomes too, there is also the problem there is not a shred of evidence that there are or have been lesser forms or indeed that the process is still continuing. So there is no actual evidence any of this actually happened only very incomplete arguments for how some of it might have happened.

The day someone gives it a structure and does an experiment that shows how non living became living, I am all ears. Until then it is a serious conceptual problem. I am not actually against it. I am against it being presented as though it were fact, as Dawkins does.

Dawkins seems completely oblivious to his own contradiction and gibberish when he said "we have no evidence about how life started but we know what kind of step it must have been"

Ever since I saw an article in new scientist 50 (yes fifty!!!) years ago about protocel design , I have followed the area with interest. So it is unlikely you will find anything I have not seen before. As you all know I am a read-a-holic and even get mocked for it!

To follow sagans folly and antithesis of science. "extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence". You can rule abiogenesis out. It clearly is extraordinary!

I can only contrast that status of guessing, with actual forensic evidence that shows recently live cardiac tissue in eucharistic miracles mingled at the edges with bread , that cannot be faked by any mechanism so far proposed, that has far more scientific evidence as an origin of life. I dont need that evidence to be true, but it is next to impossible to falsify. Yet none of you so much as study that evidence.

There is little point in repeating any of this again. The "conjecture" in abiogenesis runs way ahead of the evidence.

The way to deal with Dawkins is to realize that scientific epistomoloy does not, can not yield absolute certainly. Whether Dawkins states it or not, even realizes it or not, the highest status which can be granted to abiogenesis hypotheses is that they are the best explanation which science has come up with to date and there is no credible alternative. Dawkins rails against explanations offered by religious enthusiasts with a political axe to grind--that is, mostly biblical creationists. He doesn't know enough about religion to understand that not all theists believe that the theory of evolution denies the existence of God. The only "certainty" he offers is the certainty that biblical creationism has been off the table scientifically for over two hundred years and the certainty that the abiogensis hypothesis, weak and conjectural as it is, is the only credible explanation currently avilable.

 

[Belk]

You mean like the theory that abiogenesis happened, which has zero evidence to support it? Anyone can say it happened, that's meaningless.

<Looks around at the life all over the planet>

If you see zero evidence you are not looking very hard. Abiogenesis happened. That is an undeniable fact. How it happened is a completely different matter. You do realize that even if the bible is literal truth and God formed Adam from the dust on the ground that is abiogenisis?

 

[renniks]

Yeah, if only we'd found that complex organic molecules such as guanine, adenine, cytosine, uracil and thymine could exist in space, like on meteors. Oh wait, we have. SOURCE

I think you'll want to reconsider that whole "There's no evidence for it" idea you've got.

How is that evidence that random chemicals combined to create life?

 

[renniks]

And anybody can say it didn't happen, which is just as meaningless.

Ok as long as you understand that the same logic applies to fairys.

 

[SelfSim]

How is that evidence that random chemicals combined to create life?

How do you think they ended up in your own body .. and that they are critical for your abilities to move, breathe, sense, grow, reproduce, excrete and metabolise?
Your existence is the evidence, for goodness sake!

 

[SelfSim]

.. He doesn't know enough about religion to understand that not all theists believe that the theory of evolution denies the existence of God.

Dawkins' arguments also display a vigorous defence of the scientific method. Science handles all beliefs with neutrality (by discarding them). In the midst of tedious debates, that neutrality often merges with frustration induced by those who falsely equate their beliefs with any inferences drawn from science's meticulously produced objective results.
'Believing the theory of evolution denies the existence of God' is thus irrelevant .. because it is still just another belief.

 

[SelfSim]

But There is still the speciic transition to evolving. Beforethat there is no mechanism for change,

This statement again displays your ignorance of the hyperbolic 'explosion' in chemical diversity which happens with only modest length peptides having some probability of catalysing eachother in an autocatalytic set of reactions.

You are simply grossly incorrect in saying there is no mechanism for change prior to evolutionary changes. In fact, the diversity numbers involved are astronomical in magnitude during the autocatalysis phase.

I can supply the model .. but its obviously pointless .. Its thus sufficient to dismiss your claim without that objective evidence in this case, because you haven't supported it in any way, whatsoever.

But here is the philosophical problem in a nutshell: the transition to evolving IS a change in a cell which has no mechanism for change since it is not evolving till it makes the change. . That is a unique step. It is also a big step up in complexity.

The complexity is already there, before the self-replicating cellular evolution phase.
You are mistaken.

The rest of what you have to say is just mumbo-jumbo nonsense because your premise is totally (ignorantly) false.

 

[renniks]

How do you think they ended up in your own body .. and that they are critical for your abilities to move, breathe, sense, grow, reproduce, excrete and metabolise?
Your existence is the evidence, for goodness sake!

Lol, the existence of chemicals in us doesn't tell us how we were created. What we know is that we are wonderfully complex creations

For 13 years (2000–2013) the Origin-of-Life Science Foundation offered a $1 million prize to anyone providing a chemically plausible naturalistic solution for the origin of the genetic code and life. And yet, as stated on their web site:

Over the 13 years since The Origin of Life Prize was first announced in NATURE and SCIENCE, no submission has ever made it past the screening judges to higher-level judges. No submission has ever addressed, let alone answered, any of the questions below, for which the Prize offer was instituted. Most of these Prize-offer questions centered on: “How did inanimate, prebiotic nature prescribe or program the first genome?” (Origin of Life Prize)