Self-Assembling Molecules Offer New Clues on Life's Possible Origin

[pocaracas]

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/20...ffer-.html

A pair of RNA-like molecules can spontaneously assemble into gene-length chains, chemists in the United States and Spain report. Billions of years ago, related molecules may have created a rudimentary form of genetic information that eventually led to the evolution of RNA and life itself, the researchers say.
[...]


"The nice thing [about the current study] is this is a demonstration of self-assembly in water," says Ramanarayanan Krishnamurthy, an origin of life chemist at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, California. "That is a step in the right direction."

The next step, Hud says, will be to see whether this two-component assembly can be made to encode information like a primitive gene and to evolve toward the structure of RNA. If so, that still won't settle the debate as to whether CA and TAPAS gave life its start. But it will suggest one plausible chemical route to life's origin.

[Nine]

Ramanarayanan Krishnamurthy? That's a name and a half.

[pocaracas]

hmmm.... I guess it's a full name.
http://www.scripps.edu/california/resear...shnamurthy

[Minimalist]

Ramanarayanan Krishnamurthy? That's a name and a half.

I'm glad its complicated. It will drive the creatards crazy trying to spell it.

[Finn]

More evidence for abiogenesis (which is not the same as evolution). No surprise there, and yet creationists still claim it's impossible.

[L.A.F.]

Thank you for the interesting article.
I found it very informative.

[The Grand Nudger]

More evidence for abiogenesis (which is not the same as evolution). No surprise there, and yet creationists still claim it's impossible.

No, they don't. They aren't satisfied with the notion that their god is a biological entity (by and large)- life, even in their fairy tale, comes from non-life. Of course, a more accurate view of abiogenesis as it relates to science is that it is a hypothesis that states that life arises by means of a natural process from organic compounds - I can think of a couple of creation myths that don't escape this - so I never understood what they were bitching about anyway. Clots of blood and dirt both contain plenty of organic compounds - for example. It just boils down, imho, to their god not being invited to some party.

[purplepurpose]

Lol. Self-assembled, spontaneously. There is a law of cause and effect...

[The Grand Nudger]

It's understood (and need not be stated) by those who don't default to ghosts that when we say something "self assembles" or "spontaneously occurs" it is taken to mean without top down directives or intervention. These things don't cease to conform to our mundane world and become magical in the act - they do these things precisely because- they have conformed to our mundane world and it's clockwork like ticking away-at their level.

Understand?

When you say "nothing in the universe happens by itself" in response to an article about self replicating molecules I'm tempted to say "shh, the adults are speaking".