Abiogenesis

Posted originally by Kelly Jay

The event of abiogenesis?

How do you know how abiogenesis works, when you talk about it,
are you referring to something you have witnessed, recorded, or
tested, or are we referring to your beliefs surrounding something
imagined that possibly did occur, because if is just ‘believed.’

Since as it has been pointed out to me what people believe about
science is different than what people believe about God, just
because we see life isn’t an acceptable answer for abiogenesis
any more, because I see life I can now count that for God, since I
believe God created life and the results would be equally valid if that
is all there to it. If that is all there is to it, than the beliefs about
abiogenesis are no different than the beliefs about God, they are
just beliefs, period. They can be true or not, the reality of either
rests beyond man's ability to know for sure.

Do you know the conditions surrounding the event of
life’s beginning?


What was the favorable temperature surrounding that event? Was
that temperature constant year round? These change you don’t get
a second chance to keep what was done right, you would now have
all life dying.

What was the food supply for the life after that event? If life starved
after it was put together; you don’t get a second chance, all the life
dies.

Life had to start with the ability to multiply, just being alive isn’t
good enough if it cannot reproduce no second chance after the first
generation it all dies off and no life.

I can give you a list a mile long on if you get any thing wrong, or get
them right but have them change, you don’t get a second chance!
No, you have to over come some major odds, and all your ducks need
to be in a row! If you are telling me ‘the theory of evolution or
abiogenesis says this’ then we are no longer talking about reality are
we? We are now molding the belief to over come reality, which is not
the same things as, this is reality and seeing it makes us believe this
is what occurred. Molding the belief to over come reality is what people
who believe in God are accused of doing, we don't understand so God
did it, now it would be, we don't understand so evolution did it.
Kelly

What exactly did you want to discuss? Are you trying to get KJ to debate this with other people or do you have something to say for yourself?

KellyJay,

If you mean was I there personally, then no I wasn't. Does that matter? No, I don't think it does. Can we infer the conditions from the available evidence? Yes, we can. We can analyse rocks which were there at the time, look at their chemical properties and infer the conditions prevalent in the oceans and the atmosphere. Physicists can tell us about solar input and, along with solar output work out the temperature. Can we tell if that was year round constant? No, we can't. Does it matter? Perhaps for some molecules yes, but not DNA or RNA within the ranges of temperature that we're talking about. Macromolecules would have been relatively common in the environment, there was quite a bit of energy abound, and no oxygen to break chemical bonds.

Abiogenesis probably started with simple chemical replicators. Has anyone seen one, or seen it happening? No (although virus' come close, as do some naturally occurring molecules). Does this matter? No.

Abiogenesis is a THEORY, as it is an explanation of all available data. That doesn't make it a "fact", quite whatever one of those is, but it certainly doesn't make it wrong either.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
What exactly did you want to discuss? Are you trying to get KJ to debate this with other people or do you have something to say for yourself?

i just wanted to differentiate this potential discussion from the (rather long getting) thread on evolution per se.

Originally posted by scottishinnz

Abiogenesis is a THEORY, as it is an explanation of all available data. That doesn't make it a "fact", quite whatever one of those is, but it certainly doesn't make it wrong either.

Its also a very good theory.

Well, here's what I have to say about abiogenesis:

The Earth probably formed about 4.5 billions years ago. It was a hot, inorganic ball of rock with oceans and an atmosphere containing nitrogen, carbon and hydrogen atoms in some gaseous form or another, but no oxygen gas (O2). I don't really know what molecules these atoms were organized into, but it doesn't really matter. When gasses of made up of these elements are exposed to lightning, ultraviolet light or heat, simple organic molecules will form, as demonstrated by Stanley Miller and Harold Urey in 1953, and I believe others since.

Amino acids, short proteins, nucleotides, ATP (and probably other nucleoside triphosphates), and other molecules characteristic of living things are some of the organic molecules that have been observed to form in laboratory recreations of these conditions. In addition, we know from present day meteorites that such meteorites often cary such simple organic molecules with them. Such molecules are vulnerable to uv radiation exposure from the sun (no ozone layer yet) but some places, like tidal pools hidden under rocky shelfs, would be shielded from uv exposure.

Some such pools would have had ocean water splashing into them during high tide, bringing with it the organic molecules in it, and during low tide some of the water in the pool might have evaporated. By this or some other mechanism pools of water sheltered from uv radiation would become highly enriched in the organic molecules. As there was not yet any life and no free oxygen, these molecules had no environmental influences that would break them down.

When organic molecules like these are placed in concentrated enough solutions, they spontaneously react to form more complex organic molecules, such as RNA.

RNA molecules with all kinds of random sequences would spontaneously form. Now we know that RNA, like proteins, folds into specific configurations depending on the sequence of bases it is made up of. Sometimes the folded RNA is catalytic; that is, it makes an enzyme. Such RNA enzymes are called ribozymes.

Now RNA, like DNA, already has an obvious mechanism by which it could replicate itself. This is the point at which substances began to catalyze the synthesis of smaller molecules into copies of themselves; that is, they reproduced. Being genetic material with no proofreading systems with the potential to be exposed to uv light, such RNA chains began to mutate into chains with slightly different base sequences. Any of these which folded into enzymes that catalyzed their own reproduction would begin to out compete the other RNA chains in terms of reproduction and using up the raw materials for reproduction. The process of evolution has begun, even before life existed.

Now, it's been shown that amphipathic molecules like phospholipids will tend to aggregate and form one of three different formations depending on the conditions; micelles, solid molecular sized balls of phospholipid molecules, a bilayer, or flat sheet (which would need to be anchored on the edges away from water), or a combination of the two, a vesicle. A vesicle is lipid bilayer bent into a spherical shape and closed upon itself. Such vesicles trap water and the contents of water in their cavities when they form. Small molecules can pass through the phospholipid bilayers of such vesicles far more easily than larger molecules.

Some of these vesicles probably formed around RNA which was already evolved into a form that catalyzed it's own reproduction quite effectively. Such RNA still had access to the small molecules it needed as raw material for self reproduction, but large molecules that might damage it or otherwise interfere were kept out. The RNA would reproduce and reproduce, and the new ribozymes wouldn't be able to get out of the vesicle. Maybe more than one kind of self replicating RNA would get trapped inside the vesicle and begin to reproduce.

This stage of prebiotic evolution is known as the protocell. Such protocells could collect more and more phospholipid molecules and keep reproducing the RNA inside, causing the protocell to grow.

At this point, a number of the characteristics of life have come into being. The protocell has begun to aquire and use materials and energy from it's environment and to convert them into different forms. It was growing. It had the capacity to evolve. And, once these things grew big enough, and possibly with the help of the ribozymes inside, they would divide. This is reproduction of the entire protocell.

Now, sometimes more than one molecule of RNA would get trapped inside and begin to self-replicate; sometimes some copies of the RNA inside the protocell would mutate into different forms. In this way different enzymes would come into being, providing a more varied environment inside the protocell. Sometimes these various chains of RNA would begin to specialize into symbiotic relationships, helping one another reproduce and do other things.

As you can see, it makes perfect sense based on much experiment that such a pattern of change from inorganic, simple molecules to complexity in the form of protocells could plausibly come into being. Any entropy lessened in the formation and reproduction of these ordered objects would be compensated for by breakup of nucleoside triphosphates. This effectively changes sunlight or other ordered forms of energy to heat, which I think counts as increased entropy. So, unlike what some creationists suggest, the Second Law of Thermodynamics is not broken by this proposed mechanism.

Some of these ribozymes would begin to assemble amino acids into short chains through catalysis of dehydration reactions. Once proteins were being formed, similar evolution would produce protein catalysts or enzymes. At some point some RNA would catalyze the formation of the more stable DNA molecules, which would take over as the genetic material of these protocells.

At this point we pretty much have a primitive cell, or something close to it. Life is a poorly defined word, so there isn't any exact moment at which one could say it has been crossed. It's more of a long process full of small changes that caused the protocell - not alive - to the cell - alive. The cell then began to evolve, but that's beyond the scope of the question asked here.

http://www.redhotpawn.com/board/showthread.php?threadid=20290

Here's another good source which discusses abiogenesis:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(biology)#Origins_of_cells
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_life

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
Well, here's what I have to say about abiogenesis:

The Earth probably formed about 4.5 billions years ago. It was a hot, inorganic ball of rock with oceans and an atmosphere containing nitrogen, carbon and hydrogen atoms in some gaseous form or another, but no oxygen gas (O2). I don't really know what molecules these atoms were organized into, but ...[text shortened]... rg/wiki/Cell_(biology)#Origins_of_cells
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_life

Nice post. Recc'd.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
Well, here's what I have to say about abiogenesis:

The Earth probably formed about 4.5 billions years ago. It was a hot, inorganic ball of rock with oceans and an atmosphere containing nitrogen, carbon and hydrogen atoms in some gaseous form or another, but no oxygen gas (O2). I don't really know what molecules these atoms were organized into, but rg/wiki/Cell_(biology)#Origins_of_cells
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_life

Now if we can only come up with a theory to explain where matter came from. Maybe Abibigbangesis? It might go something like this. The universe formed about 15 bilion years ago. There you had a black vacume of emptiness...................thats as far as I got. If we can just transform it into a mass of somethingness that felt compelled to explode we will have a theory!!!!!!! Perhaps it all was started by an Abigod?

Originally posted by whodey
Now if we can only come up with a theory to explain where matter came from. Maybe Abibigbangesis? It might go something like this. The universe formed about 15 bilion years ago. There you had a black vacume of emptiness...................thats as far as I got. If we can just transform it into a mass of somethingness that felt compelled to explode we will have a theory!!!!!!! Perhaps it all was started by an Abigod?

The world was void and the lord Abiyoyo called the universe into being by blowing a bubble into the void, yea verily I say unto you, it was thus.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
Well, here's what I have to say about abiogenesis:

The Earth probably formed about 4.5 billions years ago. It was a hot, inorganic ball of rock with oceans and an atmosphere containing nitrogen, carbon and hydrogen atoms in some gaseous form or another, but no oxygen gas (O2). I don't really know what molecules these atoms were organized into, but ...[text shortened]... rg/wiki/Cell_(biology)#Origins_of_cells
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_life

In addition, we know from present day meteorites that such meteorites often cary such simple organic molecules with them...
When all else fails, there's always the 'evolution works in mysterious ways' card upon which to fall.

Originally posted by sonhouse
The world was void and the lord Abiyoyo called the universe into being by blowing a bubble into the void, yea verily I say unto you, it was thus.

Now your talkin!!! This can be the first verse in the Atheist Abibible. Call it Abegenisis chapter one verse one. You have a ways to go my freind. Link it up to Darwins origins somehow and save yourself some writing.

Originally posted by FreakyKBH
[b] In addition, we know from present day meteorites that such meteorites often cary such simple organic molecules with them...
When all else fails, there's always the 'evolution works in mysterious ways' card upon which to fall.[/b]

I saw a meteor the other day falling from the sky. No joke. I tracked it down but by the time I got there it had already evolved into an ant farm.

Originally posted by FreakyKBH
[b] In addition, we know from present day meteorites that such meteorites often cary such simple organic molecules with them...
When all else fails, there's always the 'evolution works in mysterious ways' card upon which to fall.[/b]

No, it doesn't. It works in inherently sensible ways.

Originally posted by whodey
I saw a meteor the other day falling from the sky. No joke. I tracked it down but by the time I got there it had already evolved into an ant farm.

You're an idiot whodey. Maybe given enough evolutionary time christians will abort their brains physically as well.

Originally posted by whodey
Now if we can only come up with a theory to explain where matter came from. Maybe Abibigbangesis? It might go something like this. The universe formed about 15 bilion years ago. There you had a black vacume of emptiness...................thats as far as I got. If we can just transform it into a mass of somethingness that felt compelled to explode we will have a theory!!!!!!! Perhaps it all was started by an Abigod?

Cause and effect only happen within the universe. You don't require a cause for the universe.