Spark of life: metabolism appears in lab without cells

Scientists are getting closer and closer to discovering just how life on Earth began. Facinting stuff!

http://www.newscientist.com/article...ppears-in-lab-without-cells.html#.U1_tzSm9Kc2

 

This is nothing. In essense, this just reinforces the concept that chemical reactions occur in nature. It isn't a big step or even a step at all.

 

There's a reason so many are scared of modernity and want to retreat from both science and yearn to go back to some "simpler age"....in other words, today's modern conservatives.

 

BURN IT! IT GOES AGAINST GOD!

Honestly though I dont get why the religious right fights so vehemently against science. If anything they should go with it and explain how it's the way God decided to do things. I knkw their story writers died over a thousand years ago (dont think any gospels were written in the pas thousand years) but Im sure they can come up with something. Theyre goung to have to now that science seems to be chasing people away from the church with its damn logic and reasonable explainations.

 

Because many of them are taught and actually believe (regardless of proof to the contrary) that the Bible is the literal, infallible word of their God. So it causes great cognitive dissonance when something contradicts it. Which, of course, has happened with great regularity since the Bible was cobbled together. In order to remove the cognitive dissonance they simply deny reality and keep believing what they have always believed. I grant you, that is no way to live, but there you have it.......

 

Precisely. That the early cells encased some of those catalytic ions which existed in nature means nothing unless perhaps a mechanism was imprinted in the early genetic material for concentrating both the ions and the substrate. Alternatively, the cells may have been better off having a genetic material coding for an enzyme that would import ATPs across the membrane against the gradient, and the ATPs would then power the synthesis of a polymerase enzyme. Moreover, it is no brainer that enzymes may have started out as simple catalytic ions since such ions sit at the catalytic centers of most of them, and then the elaborate protein structure which comprises the rest of the enzyme and which helps to bring the substrates together and align them properly for the reactions facilitated by the ion core, could not have been added without the contribution of the genetic material. All in all, mitochondrias were probably the earliest cells since all they do is to pump ATPs against the gradient.

 

And I meant to say that mitochondria pump protons against the gradient which they then use to make ATPs, and the earliest cells may have done the same utilizing the advanced products of glycolysis and the Krebs Cycle which today occur in the cytoplasm but back then may have occurred in nature as demonstrated, or perhaps in a more primitive form they even pumped the ATPs against the gradient if those were synthesized in non-living nature back then as well. And that last point can be dismissed of course given how reactive the ATPs really are, and so even if they were spontaneously synthesized by non-living nature, they would not persist for long in nature.

 

My point to all of this was that nothing shown really brings us closer to creating a living organism and of doubtful help going forward IMHO.

 

You are showing your ignorance with this comment. This is not proving chem reactions, we've known that for centuries. This is proving how something can come from the "nothing."

 

Excuse me, chemicals came from chemicals not something from nothing. Just what show up from no where exactly? Reactions from heat. This is a chemical process nothing more.

 

This is a chicken and an egg situation, what came first, chemical reactions or the cell? I would lean towards the cell, assuming protons or chemical compounds which readily gave off protons were plentiful in the early oceans, and now all you needed was an RNA plasmid which coded for three enzymes, one being its polymerase, 2 - a membrane bound proton pump, and 3 - a membrane bound ion channel which utilized the established proton gradient to add phosphates to an energy carrier molecule, an ATP or an ATP precursor. The RNA molecule would have also needed to fulfill the catalytic function of the ribosomes by having the plasmid assume a certain shape with a catalytic surface, initially on its own in a very slow process regulated randomly by the environment, which would then speed up aided by the ATP precursor when it became available. From there more complex processes evolved over time.

 

It could be said that you are the product of chemical reactions and nothing more.

Biology spends a lot of time in the study of chemical reactions.

 

Oh I agree, and I am willing to conced this does appear to move closer to cellular wall development however, it is still a long way from life processing or even true cellular wall creation. I am just not willing to jump down a path which may turn into nothing just a few steps in.

 

Selective reading I suppose.

Another rabbit hole to nowhere.

Well at least the article gives the atheist fan boys something to circle jerk around...never mind the leap of faith it requires to say this proves anything regarding the origins of life occurring spontaneously.

It is impossible to replicate, in a modern laboratory what conditions existed...precisely...4 billion years ago when the Earth formed and life first appeared. The best science can do is provide conjecture and theory..certainly not incontestable proof.

Remember the big celebration for the BICEP2 results of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB).
BICEP is an acronym for Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization by the way.

Peer review indicates microwave emissions from our galaxy can simulate readings of B-Mode polarizations. Do you want to know what one scientist suggested...that allow for one day, a 24 hour period where no one on the planet...on the Globe...on Earth...uses a product which emits microwaves. Whether it's a microwave oven or a cell phone tower. We all turn off our devices so a more accurate reading of B-Mode polarizations can occur free of any false positive measurements.

Good luck with that.

 

Yes, selective reading indeed.

This shows that biotic processes can spontaneously occur from non organic matter. Proof that such substances can form in the primordial oceans or not, it is a huge step in abiogenises. Creationists however still have absolutely no evidence or research what so ever. Nothing.

 

There is no force in physical nature that breaks the Law of Conservation of Energy. Period.

Anything that does, is done by God. Period.

 

Uh, how would any of this break the law of the conservation of energy?

He didn literally mean something came from nothing, he meant something organic came from something abiotic.

 

He is not that smart. He meant what he said.

 

No, he really didn't. Hence the "nothing" in quotation marks. Only a Mod edit,,flounder would think he actually meant it. You just desperately wish it was true so you could have something to cling to in this thread.

 

Interesting stuff but the origin of life is still far from complete.

For example, a lot of people think that a "pool of goo" was "shocked" to create the first amino acids but that theory was actually disproven because no organic amino acids can seemingly be created by such a process. The origin of metabolism is just one of many missing puzzle pieces and I am not confident that we will ever figure it out completely.

 

Cell walls came only with plants or fungi. Cell membranes were derived from micelles which preceded the development of life.

 

You can't look at the rocks from 3.8 billion years ago to see what conditions existed?

 

Yes,yes,

 

Well then, get your names straight.

 

Mea Culpa