Does God Exist?

[Hollie]

As noted fatty acids were also produced in Miller's experiment (most sources ignore this). "
a carboxylic acid consisting of a hydrocarbon chain and a terminal carboxyl group ....
a fatty acid is a carboxylic acid with a long aliphatic chain, which is either saturated or unsaturated."

I posted above about carboxylic acids in general. The carboxyl group is a carbon atom double bonded to an Oxygen atom and single bonded to to a hydroxyl group (-OH). A hydrocarbon is a molecule with Hydrogen and Carbon (e.g. Methane = CH4). An aliphatic chain consists of hydrocarbons that form an open chain as in fatty acids and alkanes to be distinguished from hydrocarbon chains which form rings instead of open chains. Alkanes are saturated hydrocarbons like methane (CH4), ethane (C2H6) and propane (C3H8). Saturated hydrocarbons have single bonds between hydrogen atoms - the highest possible number of hydrogen atoms (e.g. methane/CH4) while unsaturated hydrocarbons have double or triple bonds between adjacent carbon atoms and thus can have hydrogen atoms added to make the compound saturated.

More from the Thaxton et al link concerning carboxylic acids from page 55:

"In a similar fashion, growing polypeptides would be terminated by reactions with amines, aldehydes, ketones, reducing sugars* or carboxylic acids. If by some remote chance a true protein did develop in the ocean, its viability would be predictably of short duration. For example, formaldehyde would readily react with free amino groups to form methylene cross-linkages between proteins.37 This would tie up certain reactive sites, and retard the reaction of protein with other chemical agents. To illustrate, "irreversible combination of formaldehyde with asparagine amide groups" would result in a compound which is "stable to dilute boiling phosphoric acid."38 This tying up process is the principle of the well-known tanning reaction, and is used similarly to retard cadaver decay. "In general, reaction with formaldehyde hardens proteins, decreases their water-sensitivity, and increases their resistance to the action of chemical reagents and enzymes."39 Survival of proteins in the soup would have been difficult indeed."

Footnote:

"It is interesting to note that in certain abnormal situations, such as diabetes, the carbonyl group of glucose will form chemical bonds with the amino group of cellular proteins, a process called glycosylation. (See A.L. Notkins, 1975. Sci. Amer. 241,62.)" [Not so good for life!]

Bottom line: carboxylic acids will react with peptides and stop further polymerization. Also the carbonyl group (CO double bonded) in sugars will react with the amino group (NH2) in peptides (and in amines in general). Both sugars (as in RNA) and amines (as in amino acids) are required for life and yet they interact and, in effect: destroy each other!

to be continued later. I'll give you all a chance to review the actual evidence in chemistry relevant to the origin of life and specifically to Miller's experiment.

Again, one needs an intelligent chemist (e.g. God) to create life - and human chemists are inferior creators and cannot create life. Some attribute the attributes of God to Chance! Not a chance!

Actually, we find that supernaturalism is not a requirement for life on the planet.

Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained a massive number of chemicals that reacted with each other more or less randomly, and it is unclear how the complexity of cells could have emerged from such chemical chaos. Now, a team led by Tony Z. Jia at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and Kuhan Chandru of the National University of Malaysia has shown that simple α-hydroxy acids, like glycolic and lactic acid, spontaneously polymerize and self-assemble into polyester microdroplets when dried at moderate temperatures followed by rehydration. This could be what happened along primitive beaches and river banks, or in drying puddles. These form a new type of cell-like compartment that can trap and concentrate biomolecules like nucleic acids and proteins. These droplets, unlike most modern cells, are able to merge and reform easily, and thus could have hosted versatile early genetic and metabolic systems potentially critical for the origins of life.


All life on Earth is made up of cells. Cells are composed of lipids, proteins and nucleic acids, with the lipid forming the cell membrane, an enclosure that keeps the other components together and interfaces with the environment, exchanging food and waste. How molecular assemblages as complex as cells originally formed remains a mystery.

Most origins of life research focuses on how the molecules and structures of life were produced by the environment, and then assembled into structures that led to the first cells. However, there were likely many other types of molecules that formed alongside biomolecules on early Earth, and it is possible that life started using very simple chemistry unrelated to modern biomolecules, then evolved through increasingly complex stages to give rise to the structures found in modern cells.

Previous work conducted at ELSI showed that moderate temperature drying of the simple organic compounds known as alpha-hydroxy acids, which are found in meteorites and many simulations of prebiological chemistry, spontaneously polymerizes them into mixtures of long polyesters. Building on this work, Jia and colleagues took the next step and examined these reactions under the microscope, and found that these mixed polyester systems form a gel phase and spontaneously self-assemble when rewetted to form simple cell-like structures.

The most challenging aspect of this work was devising new methods to characterize the droplets' properties and functions, as no one had analyzed such systems before. Jia noted that the team was fortunate to have such a diversity of multidisciplinary expertise, including chemists, biochemists, materials scientists and geologists. After determining their composition and showing their propensity to self-assemble, the next question was whether these cell-like structures might be able to do something chemically useful. Modern cell membranes perform many crucial functions that help maintain the cell, for example, retaining macromolecules and metabolites in one place, as well as providing a constant internal environment, which can be very different from the one outside the cell. They first measured how stable these structures were and found they could persist for very long periods depending on the environmental conditions, but could also be made to merge and coalesce.

They then tested the ability of these structures to sequester molecules from the environment and found they accumulated large dye molecules to a remarkable degree. They then showed that these droplets could also host RNA and protein molecules and still permit them to be functionally catalytic. Further, the team showed that the droplets could assist in the formation of a lipid layer on their surface, suggesting they could have helped scaffold protocell formation.


Jia and colleagues are not certain these structures are the direct ancestors of cells, but they think it is possible such droplets could have enabled the assembly of protocells on Earth. The new compartmentalization system they have found is extremely simple, they note, and could form easily in primitive environments throughout the universe. Says Jia, "This allows us to imagine non-biological systems on early Earth that could still have had a hand in the origins of life. This suggests there may be many other non-biological systems that should be targets of future investigations of this type." He thinks the development of these or similar model systems could allow better study of the evolution of diverse chemical systems representative of the complex chemistries likely to be found on primitive planetary bodies.

"The early Earth was certainly a messy place chemically," Jia explains, "and often, most origins of life studies focus on modern biomolecules under relatively 'clean' conditions. Perhaps it is important to take these 'messy' mixtures and see if there are interesting functions or structures that can arise from them spontaneously." The authors now think that by systematically increasing the chemical complexity of such systems, they will be able to observe how they evolve over time and possibly discover divergent and emergent properties.

"We have this new experimental system we can now play with, so we can start to study phenomena like evolution and evolvability of these droplets. The possible combinations of structures or functions these droplets might have are almost endless. If the physical rules that govern the formation of droplets are fairly universal in nature, then we hope to study similar systems to discover whether they also can form microdroplets with novel properties," adds Jia.

Finally, while the team is presently focused on understanding the origins of life, they note this basic research could have applications in other areas, for example, drug delivery and personalized medicine. "This is just a wonderful example of the unexpected ways projects can develop when a team of diverse scientists from around the world come together to try and understand new and interesting phenomena," said team member Jim Cleaves, also of ELSI.

Scientists discover new chemistry that may help explain the origins of cellular life

Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained a massive number of chemicals that reacted with each other more or less randomly, and it is unclear how the complexity of cells could have emerged from such chemical chaos. Now, a team led by Tony Z. Jia at the Tokyo Institute of...

phys.org

"Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained "
Curious...Where did the environment come from?

Amun Ra. Obviously.

Bowel cleasning?

Science has a solution for your problem.

But you don't have any Links to these "solutions"?
Fact...Every scientist on YouTube, when asked where the first piece of matter came about, always answers, "It's almost as though a god created it".
By the way, the only time anyone in a scientists audience can even ask this blasphemous question is when an atheist scientist is debating an Orthodox Jewish scientist.
If this question comes up in from of any other audience the person is jeered, ridiculed and removed from the room.

Try asking a college professor and you'll get an F.

Your facts are rather absent facts.

 

[Hollie]

As noted fatty acids were also produced in Miller's experiment (most sources ignore this). "
a carboxylic acid consisting of a hydrocarbon chain and a terminal carboxyl group ....
a fatty acid is a carboxylic acid with a long aliphatic chain, which is either saturated or unsaturated."

I posted above about carboxylic acids in general. The carboxyl group is a carbon atom double bonded to an Oxygen atom and single bonded to to a hydroxyl group (-OH). A hydrocarbon is a molecule with Hydrogen and Carbon (e.g. Methane = CH4). An aliphatic chain consists of hydrocarbons that form an open chain as in fatty acids and alkanes to be distinguished from hydrocarbon chains which form rings instead of open chains. Alkanes are saturated hydrocarbons like methane (CH4), ethane (C2H6) and propane (C3H8). Saturated hydrocarbons have single bonds between hydrogen atoms - the highest possible number of hydrogen atoms (e.g. methane/CH4) while unsaturated hydrocarbons have double or triple bonds between adjacent carbon atoms and thus can have hydrogen atoms added to make the compound saturated.

More from the Thaxton et al link concerning carboxylic acids from page 55:

"In a similar fashion, growing polypeptides would be terminated by reactions with amines, aldehydes, ketones, reducing sugars* or carboxylic acids. If by some remote chance a true protein did develop in the ocean, its viability would be predictably of short duration. For example, formaldehyde would readily react with free amino groups to form methylene cross-linkages between proteins.37 This would tie up certain reactive sites, and retard the reaction of protein with other chemical agents. To illustrate, "irreversible combination of formaldehyde with asparagine amide groups" would result in a compound which is "stable to dilute boiling phosphoric acid."38 This tying up process is the principle of the well-known tanning reaction, and is used similarly to retard cadaver decay. "In general, reaction with formaldehyde hardens proteins, decreases their water-sensitivity, and increases their resistance to the action of chemical reagents and enzymes."39 Survival of proteins in the soup would have been difficult indeed."

Footnote:

"It is interesting to note that in certain abnormal situations, such as diabetes, the carbonyl group of glucose will form chemical bonds with the amino group of cellular proteins, a process called glycosylation. (See A.L. Notkins, 1975. Sci. Amer. 241,62.)" [Not so good for life!]

Bottom line: carboxylic acids will react with peptides and stop further polymerization. Also the carbonyl group (CO double bonded) in sugars will react with the amino group (NH2) in peptides (and in amines in general). Both sugars (as in RNA) and amines (as in amino acids) are required for life and yet they interact and, in effect: destroy each other!

to be continued later. I'll give you all a chance to review the actual evidence in chemistry relevant to the origin of life and specifically to Miller's experiment.

Again, one needs an intelligent chemist (e.g. God) to create life - and human chemists are inferior creators and cannot create life. Some attribute the attributes of God to Chance! Not a chance!

Actually, we find that supernaturalism is not a requirement for life on the planet.

Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained a massive number of chemicals that reacted with each other more or less randomly, and it is unclear how the complexity of cells could have emerged from such chemical chaos. Now, a team led by Tony Z. Jia at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and Kuhan Chandru of the National University of Malaysia has shown that simple α-hydroxy acids, like glycolic and lactic acid, spontaneously polymerize and self-assemble into polyester microdroplets when dried at moderate temperatures followed by rehydration. This could be what happened along primitive beaches and river banks, or in drying puddles. These form a new type of cell-like compartment that can trap and concentrate biomolecules like nucleic acids and proteins. These droplets, unlike most modern cells, are able to merge and reform easily, and thus could have hosted versatile early genetic and metabolic systems potentially critical for the origins of life.


All life on Earth is made up of cells. Cells are composed of lipids, proteins and nucleic acids, with the lipid forming the cell membrane, an enclosure that keeps the other components together and interfaces with the environment, exchanging food and waste. How molecular assemblages as complex as cells originally formed remains a mystery.

Most origins of life research focuses on how the molecules and structures of life were produced by the environment, and then assembled into structures that led to the first cells. However, there were likely many other types of molecules that formed alongside biomolecules on early Earth, and it is possible that life started using very simple chemistry unrelated to modern biomolecules, then evolved through increasingly complex stages to give rise to the structures found in modern cells.

Previous work conducted at ELSI showed that moderate temperature drying of the simple organic compounds known as alpha-hydroxy acids, which are found in meteorites and many simulations of prebiological chemistry, spontaneously polymerizes them into mixtures of long polyesters. Building on this work, Jia and colleagues took the next step and examined these reactions under the microscope, and found that these mixed polyester systems form a gel phase and spontaneously self-assemble when rewetted to form simple cell-like structures.

The most challenging aspect of this work was devising new methods to characterize the droplets' properties and functions, as no one had analyzed such systems before. Jia noted that the team was fortunate to have such a diversity of multidisciplinary expertise, including chemists, biochemists, materials scientists and geologists. After determining their composition and showing their propensity to self-assemble, the next question was whether these cell-like structures might be able to do something chemically useful. Modern cell membranes perform many crucial functions that help maintain the cell, for example, retaining macromolecules and metabolites in one place, as well as providing a constant internal environment, which can be very different from the one outside the cell. They first measured how stable these structures were and found they could persist for very long periods depending on the environmental conditions, but could also be made to merge and coalesce.

They then tested the ability of these structures to sequester molecules from the environment and found they accumulated large dye molecules to a remarkable degree. They then showed that these droplets could also host RNA and protein molecules and still permit them to be functionally catalytic. Further, the team showed that the droplets could assist in the formation of a lipid layer on their surface, suggesting they could have helped scaffold protocell formation.


Jia and colleagues are not certain these structures are the direct ancestors of cells, but they think it is possible such droplets could have enabled the assembly of protocells on Earth. The new compartmentalization system they have found is extremely simple, they note, and could form easily in primitive environments throughout the universe. Says Jia, "This allows us to imagine non-biological systems on early Earth that could still have had a hand in the origins of life. This suggests there may be many other non-biological systems that should be targets of future investigations of this type." He thinks the development of these or similar model systems could allow better study of the evolution of diverse chemical systems representative of the complex chemistries likely to be found on primitive planetary bodies.

"The early Earth was certainly a messy place chemically," Jia explains, "and often, most origins of life studies focus on modern biomolecules under relatively 'clean' conditions. Perhaps it is important to take these 'messy' mixtures and see if there are interesting functions or structures that can arise from them spontaneously." The authors now think that by systematically increasing the chemical complexity of such systems, they will be able to observe how they evolve over time and possibly discover divergent and emergent properties.

"We have this new experimental system we can now play with, so we can start to study phenomena like evolution and evolvability of these droplets. The possible combinations of structures or functions these droplets might have are almost endless. If the physical rules that govern the formation of droplets are fairly universal in nature, then we hope to study similar systems to discover whether they also can form microdroplets with novel properties," adds Jia.

Finally, while the team is presently focused on understanding the origins of life, they note this basic research could have applications in other areas, for example, drug delivery and personalized medicine. "This is just a wonderful example of the unexpected ways projects can develop when a team of diverse scientists from around the world come together to try and understand new and interesting phenomena," said team member Jim Cleaves, also of ELSI.

Scientists discover new chemistry that may help explain the origins of cellular life

Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained a massive number of chemicals that reacted with each other more or less randomly, and it is unclear how the complexity of cells could have emerged from such chemical chaos. Now, a team led by Tony Z. Jia at the Tokyo Institute of...

phys.org

Hollie - thank you for the link - it does not address the amino acids and proportions in Miller's experiment - in fact, it is research on how a cell membrane could have been synthesized, not how proteins could be created (human chemists LI cannot do this, btw).

Long cut and paste - did you understand any of it?

Your link notes:

"Cells are composed of lipids, proteins and nucleic acids, with the lipid forming the cell membrane, an enclosure that keeps the other components together and interfaces with the environment, exchanging food and waste. How molecular assemblages as complex as cells originally formed remains a mystery."

Note also that your link does not state details about the environment needed to form simple alpha-hydroxy acids nor the chemcal reactions required for their formation. And the membrane produced does not perform the complex functions actual living cells require to be living cells rather than dead cells.

Are you familiar with how complex the simplest living cell membranes are? Like how food and waste exchanging could be created in a cell membrane?

The skill and wisdom involved to create such a cell membrane requires a superior chemist. Not to mention forming the informational molecules necessary for life and getting them, and only them, inside this cell membrane enclosure!

It might find it shocking to learn that science has accumulated knowledge since Miller-Urey. Unlike the bibles, science knowledge is not static.

"science knowledge is not static"

Correct!
Now where did the first particle come from?

I don't know.

Where did the first gods come from?

 

[BreezeWood]

As I understand it, everywhere we look in the universe, the galaxies are moving away from us. If the universe is not expanding, how would you account for what we see?

You're not going to like this answer: "Covering yourself with light as with a garment, stretching out the heavens like a tent." Psalm 104:2

True - compare Isaiah 40:22,26 which not only refers to the expansion/stretching out of the heavens but also links the existence of stars (v.26) to God's power (Hebrew singular koach) and dynamic energy (Hebrew plural ohnim). It is therefore to be expected that plural forms of God's energy are involved with the expansion rate of our universe. Also, since God is invisible it comes as no surprise (to me) that 2 forms of energy involved, gravity and dark energy, are invisible.

Concerning 'tent' it should be noted that the tent of meeting/tabernacle in Scripture is geometrically described as a rectangular prism wherein only 2 dimensions of the relatively flat tent cloths are specified. This may be a hint to how the singularity at the so-called Big Bang was formed since the corner points of the intersection of these tentcloths have no dimensions (reminds me of a singularity).
Also, these tentcloths were relatively flat which is a hint that our universe is 'flat' as many scientists are coming to believe. Quite in contrast with the earth being round (Hebrew chuwg in verse 22 = circle in 2 dimensions, sphere in 3 dimensions).

Also, these tentcloths were relatively flat which is a hint that our universe is 'flat' as many scientists are coming to believe. Quite in contrast with the earth being round (Hebrew chuwg in verse 22 = circle in 2 dimensions, sphere in 3 dimensions).

.
oh, it's round ...

funny how the religionist are back to a universe (is) shaped like a tent that is flat but somehow a triangle for its beginning point as though fact when in fact no such idea could ever have been imagined during the time they are referencing.

- of course who wrote what they, newtonian are referencing were playing the same game then the same religionists are playing today.

using a fabricated book for their religion rather than facing the realities of true insubstation and the satisfactions associated with true discoveries than manufactured deceptions.

Your Bias is showing, Breezewood. No problem - just so you know I noticed.

I will stick with the scientific aspect of your post - claiming our universe is round. Earth is round - that is clearly stated in Isaiah 40:22 and you are right that no humans back then could have known this, That is evidence that while the writers were human, the Author was God.

But the illustration in the latter part of verse 22, after stating the expansion of our universe like a fine gauze (with its threads and filaments as in computer simulations of the actual appearance of our universe) gives the illustration of a tent. This hints at the possibility of a flat gauze-like universe since the sacred tent of meeting was a rectangular prism - but you claim our universe is round.

Why?

but you claim our universe is round.

.
no

As I understand it, everywhere we look in the universe, the galaxies are moving away from us. If the universe is not expanding, how would you account for what we see?

You're not going to like this answer: "Covering yourself with light as with a garment, stretching out the heavens like a tent." Psalm 104:2

True - compare Isaiah 40:22,26 which not only refers to the expansion/stretching out of the heavens but also links the existence of stars (v.26) to God's power (Hebrew singular koach) and dynamic energy (Hebrew plural ohnim). It is therefore to be expected that plural forms of God's energy are involved with the expansion rate of our universe. Also, since God is invisible it comes as no surprise (to me) that 2 forms of energy involved, gravity and dark energy, are invisible.

Concerning 'tent' it should be noted that the tent of meeting/tabernacle in Scripture is geometrically described as a rectangular prism wherein only 2 dimensions of the relatively flat tent cloths are specified. This may be a hint to how the singularity at the so-called Big Bang was formed since the corner points of the intersection of these tentcloths have no dimensions (reminds me of a singularity).
Also, these tentcloths were relatively flat which is a hint that our universe is 'flat' as many scientists are coming to believe. Quite in contrast with the earth being round (Hebrew chuwg in verse 22 = circle in 2 dimensions, sphere in 3 dimensions).

Also, these tentcloths were relatively flat which is a hint that our universe is 'flat' as many scientists are coming to believe. Quite in contrast with the earth being round (Hebrew chuwg in verse 22 = circle in 2 dimensions, sphere in 3 dimensions).

.
oh, it's round ...

funny how the religionist are back to a universe (is) shaped like a tent that is flat but somehow a triangle for its beginning point as though fact when in fact no such idea could ever have been imagined during the time they are referencing.

- of course who wrote what they, newtonian are referencing were playing the same game then the same religionists are playing today.

using a fabricated book for their religion rather than facing the realities of true insubstation and the satisfactions associated with true discoveries than manufactured deceptions.

Your Bias is showing, Breezewood. No problem - just so you know I noticed.

I will stick with the scientific aspect of your post - claiming our universe is round. Earth is round - that is clearly stated in Isaiah 40:22 and you are right that no humans back then could have known this, That is evidence that while the writers were human, the Author was God.

But the illustration in the latter part of verse 22, after stating the expansion of our universe like a fine gauze (with its threads and filaments as in computer simulations of the actual appearance of our universe) gives the illustration of a tent. This hints at the possibility of a flat gauze-like universe since the sacred tent of meeting was a rectangular prism - but you claim our universe is round.

Why?

- but you claim our universe is round.

Why?

.
no, the cyclical BB when completed is represented as a sphere ... as a finite angle of trajectory forming a mathematically perfect circumference.

View attachment 330645

the image, ignoring the text, illustrates the cyclical BB where all matter is projected from the moment past singularity along a finite angle of trajectory that will return all matter at the same time to its original point of origin without changing direction as a mirror image and will again repeat the consolidation for a repeat conclusion to a new moment of singularity.

what bias is that, disdain for disinformation as a substitute for credible alternatives whether correct or not.

Read my lips: There was, there is, there won't be any evolution.

a pat on the back for one of your brethren ... surly as it is written in your book.

Breezewood - you are not alone thinking the universe may be round rather than flat - see this article for example:

What Shape Is the Universe? A New Study Suggests We’ve Got It All Wrong

Most every cosmologist believes the universe is flat. A new analysis argues that it’s closed.

www.quantamagazine.org

Note the article brings out that the conclusion reached depends on the interpretation of the date. Would you like to go into depth on this subject?

Note the article brings out that the conclusion reached depends on the interpretation of the date. Would you like to go into depth on this subject?

.
good call, exciting - they are on the right track ...

Whether the universe is flat — that is, whether two light beams shooting side by side through space will stay parallel forever, rather than eventually crossing and swinging back around to where they started, as in a closed universe — critically depends on the universe’s density.

why density - the leading edge is what is important - rather the finite angel of trajectory of the matter expelled after the moment of singularity - at least that is what the boomerang theory is based on. and maybe the density inside keeps it all together.

 

[Newtonian]

From table 3-3 on page 25 of:

https://www.krusch.com/books/evolution/Mystery_of_Lifes_Origin.pdf

This table gives more of the products produced by another experiment starting with CH4, NH3, H2 and H2O. Formic acid is, of course, the primary product - the rest of the products are numerically represented relative to formic acid (proportion 1000):

italics. •Yields are relative to formic acid and presented in descending order.
Formic acid - 1000
Glycine - 270
Glycolic acid - 240
Alanine - 146
Lactic acid - 133
beta-Alanine - 64
Acetic acid - 64 [aspartic acid]
Propionic acid - 56
Iminodiacetic acid - 24
Sarcosine - 21
a·Amino-n-butyric acid - 21
a-Hydroxybutyric acid - 21
Succinic acid - 17
Urea - 17
Iminoaceticpropionic acid - 9
N-Methyl urea - 6
N-Methylalanine - 6
Glutamic acid - 4
Aspartic acid - 3.2
a·Aminoisobutyric acid - 0.4

Only Glycine, Alanine, Aspartic acid, Glutamic acid are in proteins. Note the proportions are similar to those i figure 32

 

[Indeependent]

As noted fatty acids were also produced in Miller's experiment (most sources ignore this). "
a carboxylic acid consisting of a hydrocarbon chain and a terminal carboxyl group ....
a fatty acid is a carboxylic acid with a long aliphatic chain, which is either saturated or unsaturated."

I posted above about carboxylic acids in general. The carboxyl group is a carbon atom double bonded to an Oxygen atom and single bonded to to a hydroxyl group (-OH). A hydrocarbon is a molecule with Hydrogen and Carbon (e.g. Methane = CH4). An aliphatic chain consists of hydrocarbons that form an open chain as in fatty acids and alkanes to be distinguished from hydrocarbon chains which form rings instead of open chains. Alkanes are saturated hydrocarbons like methane (CH4), ethane (C2H6) and propane (C3H8). Saturated hydrocarbons have single bonds between hydrogen atoms - the highest possible number of hydrogen atoms (e.g. methane/CH4) while unsaturated hydrocarbons have double or triple bonds between adjacent carbon atoms and thus can have hydrogen atoms added to make the compound saturated.

More from the Thaxton et al link concerning carboxylic acids from page 55:

"In a similar fashion, growing polypeptides would be terminated by reactions with amines, aldehydes, ketones, reducing sugars* or carboxylic acids. If by some remote chance a true protein did develop in the ocean, its viability would be predictably of short duration. For example, formaldehyde would readily react with free amino groups to form methylene cross-linkages between proteins.37 This would tie up certain reactive sites, and retard the reaction of protein with other chemical agents. To illustrate, "irreversible combination of formaldehyde with asparagine amide groups" would result in a compound which is "stable to dilute boiling phosphoric acid."38 This tying up process is the principle of the well-known tanning reaction, and is used similarly to retard cadaver decay. "In general, reaction with formaldehyde hardens proteins, decreases their water-sensitivity, and increases their resistance to the action of chemical reagents and enzymes."39 Survival of proteins in the soup would have been difficult indeed."

Footnote:

"It is interesting to note that in certain abnormal situations, such as diabetes, the carbonyl group of glucose will form chemical bonds with the amino group of cellular proteins, a process called glycosylation. (See A.L. Notkins, 1975. Sci. Amer. 241,62.)" [Not so good for life!]

Bottom line: carboxylic acids will react with peptides and stop further polymerization. Also the carbonyl group (CO double bonded) in sugars will react with the amino group (NH2) in peptides (and in amines in general). Both sugars (as in RNA) and amines (as in amino acids) are required for life and yet they interact and, in effect: destroy each other!

to be continued later. I'll give you all a chance to review the actual evidence in chemistry relevant to the origin of life and specifically to Miller's experiment.

Again, one needs an intelligent chemist (e.g. God) to create life - and human chemists are inferior creators and cannot create life. Some attribute the attributes of God to Chance! Not a chance!

Actually, we find that supernaturalism is not a requirement for life on the planet.

Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained a massive number of chemicals that reacted with each other more or less randomly, and it is unclear how the complexity of cells could have emerged from such chemical chaos. Now, a team led by Tony Z. Jia at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and Kuhan Chandru of the National University of Malaysia has shown that simple α-hydroxy acids, like glycolic and lactic acid, spontaneously polymerize and self-assemble into polyester microdroplets when dried at moderate temperatures followed by rehydration. This could be what happened along primitive beaches and river banks, or in drying puddles. These form a new type of cell-like compartment that can trap and concentrate biomolecules like nucleic acids and proteins. These droplets, unlike most modern cells, are able to merge and reform easily, and thus could have hosted versatile early genetic and metabolic systems potentially critical for the origins of life.


All life on Earth is made up of cells. Cells are composed of lipids, proteins and nucleic acids, with the lipid forming the cell membrane, an enclosure that keeps the other components together and interfaces with the environment, exchanging food and waste. How molecular assemblages as complex as cells originally formed remains a mystery.

Most origins of life research focuses on how the molecules and structures of life were produced by the environment, and then assembled into structures that led to the first cells. However, there were likely many other types of molecules that formed alongside biomolecules on early Earth, and it is possible that life started using very simple chemistry unrelated to modern biomolecules, then evolved through increasingly complex stages to give rise to the structures found in modern cells.

Previous work conducted at ELSI showed that moderate temperature drying of the simple organic compounds known as alpha-hydroxy acids, which are found in meteorites and many simulations of prebiological chemistry, spontaneously polymerizes them into mixtures of long polyesters. Building on this work, Jia and colleagues took the next step and examined these reactions under the microscope, and found that these mixed polyester systems form a gel phase and spontaneously self-assemble when rewetted to form simple cell-like structures.

The most challenging aspect of this work was devising new methods to characterize the droplets' properties and functions, as no one had analyzed such systems before. Jia noted that the team was fortunate to have such a diversity of multidisciplinary expertise, including chemists, biochemists, materials scientists and geologists. After determining their composition and showing their propensity to self-assemble, the next question was whether these cell-like structures might be able to do something chemically useful. Modern cell membranes perform many crucial functions that help maintain the cell, for example, retaining macromolecules and metabolites in one place, as well as providing a constant internal environment, which can be very different from the one outside the cell. They first measured how stable these structures were and found they could persist for very long periods depending on the environmental conditions, but could also be made to merge and coalesce.

They then tested the ability of these structures to sequester molecules from the environment and found they accumulated large dye molecules to a remarkable degree. They then showed that these droplets could also host RNA and protein molecules and still permit them to be functionally catalytic. Further, the team showed that the droplets could assist in the formation of a lipid layer on their surface, suggesting they could have helped scaffold protocell formation.


Jia and colleagues are not certain these structures are the direct ancestors of cells, but they think it is possible such droplets could have enabled the assembly of protocells on Earth. The new compartmentalization system they have found is extremely simple, they note, and could form easily in primitive environments throughout the universe. Says Jia, "This allows us to imagine non-biological systems on early Earth that could still have had a hand in the origins of life. This suggests there may be many other non-biological systems that should be targets of future investigations of this type." He thinks the development of these or similar model systems could allow better study of the evolution of diverse chemical systems representative of the complex chemistries likely to be found on primitive planetary bodies.

"The early Earth was certainly a messy place chemically," Jia explains, "and often, most origins of life studies focus on modern biomolecules under relatively 'clean' conditions. Perhaps it is important to take these 'messy' mixtures and see if there are interesting functions or structures that can arise from them spontaneously." The authors now think that by systematically increasing the chemical complexity of such systems, they will be able to observe how they evolve over time and possibly discover divergent and emergent properties.

"We have this new experimental system we can now play with, so we can start to study phenomena like evolution and evolvability of these droplets. The possible combinations of structures or functions these droplets might have are almost endless. If the physical rules that govern the formation of droplets are fairly universal in nature, then we hope to study similar systems to discover whether they also can form microdroplets with novel properties," adds Jia.

Finally, while the team is presently focused on understanding the origins of life, they note this basic research could have applications in other areas, for example, drug delivery and personalized medicine. "This is just a wonderful example of the unexpected ways projects can develop when a team of diverse scientists from around the world come together to try and understand new and interesting phenomena," said team member Jim Cleaves, also of ELSI.

Scientists discover new chemistry that may help explain the origins of cellular life

Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained a massive number of chemicals that reacted with each other more or less randomly, and it is unclear how the complexity of cells could have emerged from such chemical chaos. Now, a team led by Tony Z. Jia at the Tokyo Institute of...

phys.org

"Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained "
Curious...Where did the environment come from?

Amun Ra. Obviously.

Bowel cleasning?

Science has a solution for your problem.

But you don't have any Links to these "solutions"?
Fact...Every scientist on YouTube, when asked where the first piece of matter came about, always answers, "It's almost as though a god created it".
By the way, the only time anyone in a scientists audience can even ask this blasphemous question is when an atheist scientist is debating an Orthodox Jewish scientist.
If this question comes up in from of any other audience the person is jeered, ridiculed and removed from the room.

Try asking a college professor and you'll get an F.

Your facts are rather absent facts.

I will have to presume that you have never attended college or a public lecture on the subject.
Fair enough.

 

[Indeependent]

As noted fatty acids were also produced in Miller's experiment (most sources ignore this). "
a carboxylic acid consisting of a hydrocarbon chain and a terminal carboxyl group ....
a fatty acid is a carboxylic acid with a long aliphatic chain, which is either saturated or unsaturated."

I posted above about carboxylic acids in general. The carboxyl group is a carbon atom double bonded to an Oxygen atom and single bonded to to a hydroxyl group (-OH). A hydrocarbon is a molecule with Hydrogen and Carbon (e.g. Methane = CH4). An aliphatic chain consists of hydrocarbons that form an open chain as in fatty acids and alkanes to be distinguished from hydrocarbon chains which form rings instead of open chains. Alkanes are saturated hydrocarbons like methane (CH4), ethane (C2H6) and propane (C3H8). Saturated hydrocarbons have single bonds between hydrogen atoms - the highest possible number of hydrogen atoms (e.g. methane/CH4) while unsaturated hydrocarbons have double or triple bonds between adjacent carbon atoms and thus can have hydrogen atoms added to make the compound saturated.

More from the Thaxton et al link concerning carboxylic acids from page 55:

"In a similar fashion, growing polypeptides would be terminated by reactions with amines, aldehydes, ketones, reducing sugars* or carboxylic acids. If by some remote chance a true protein did develop in the ocean, its viability would be predictably of short duration. For example, formaldehyde would readily react with free amino groups to form methylene cross-linkages between proteins.37 This would tie up certain reactive sites, and retard the reaction of protein with other chemical agents. To illustrate, "irreversible combination of formaldehyde with asparagine amide groups" would result in a compound which is "stable to dilute boiling phosphoric acid."38 This tying up process is the principle of the well-known tanning reaction, and is used similarly to retard cadaver decay. "In general, reaction with formaldehyde hardens proteins, decreases their water-sensitivity, and increases their resistance to the action of chemical reagents and enzymes."39 Survival of proteins in the soup would have been difficult indeed."

Footnote:

"It is interesting to note that in certain abnormal situations, such as diabetes, the carbonyl group of glucose will form chemical bonds with the amino group of cellular proteins, a process called glycosylation. (See A.L. Notkins, 1975. Sci. Amer. 241,62.)" [Not so good for life!]

Bottom line: carboxylic acids will react with peptides and stop further polymerization. Also the carbonyl group (CO double bonded) in sugars will react with the amino group (NH2) in peptides (and in amines in general). Both sugars (as in RNA) and amines (as in amino acids) are required for life and yet they interact and, in effect: destroy each other!

to be continued later. I'll give you all a chance to review the actual evidence in chemistry relevant to the origin of life and specifically to Miller's experiment.

Again, one needs an intelligent chemist (e.g. God) to create life - and human chemists are inferior creators and cannot create life. Some attribute the attributes of God to Chance! Not a chance!

Actually, we find that supernaturalism is not a requirement for life on the planet.

Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained a massive number of chemicals that reacted with each other more or less randomly, and it is unclear how the complexity of cells could have emerged from such chemical chaos. Now, a team led by Tony Z. Jia at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and Kuhan Chandru of the National University of Malaysia has shown that simple α-hydroxy acids, like glycolic and lactic acid, spontaneously polymerize and self-assemble into polyester microdroplets when dried at moderate temperatures followed by rehydration. This could be what happened along primitive beaches and river banks, or in drying puddles. These form a new type of cell-like compartment that can trap and concentrate biomolecules like nucleic acids and proteins. These droplets, unlike most modern cells, are able to merge and reform easily, and thus could have hosted versatile early genetic and metabolic systems potentially critical for the origins of life.


All life on Earth is made up of cells. Cells are composed of lipids, proteins and nucleic acids, with the lipid forming the cell membrane, an enclosure that keeps the other components together and interfaces with the environment, exchanging food and waste. How molecular assemblages as complex as cells originally formed remains a mystery.

Most origins of life research focuses on how the molecules and structures of life were produced by the environment, and then assembled into structures that led to the first cells. However, there were likely many other types of molecules that formed alongside biomolecules on early Earth, and it is possible that life started using very simple chemistry unrelated to modern biomolecules, then evolved through increasingly complex stages to give rise to the structures found in modern cells.

Previous work conducted at ELSI showed that moderate temperature drying of the simple organic compounds known as alpha-hydroxy acids, which are found in meteorites and many simulations of prebiological chemistry, spontaneously polymerizes them into mixtures of long polyesters. Building on this work, Jia and colleagues took the next step and examined these reactions under the microscope, and found that these mixed polyester systems form a gel phase and spontaneously self-assemble when rewetted to form simple cell-like structures.

The most challenging aspect of this work was devising new methods to characterize the droplets' properties and functions, as no one had analyzed such systems before. Jia noted that the team was fortunate to have such a diversity of multidisciplinary expertise, including chemists, biochemists, materials scientists and geologists. After determining their composition and showing their propensity to self-assemble, the next question was whether these cell-like structures might be able to do something chemically useful. Modern cell membranes perform many crucial functions that help maintain the cell, for example, retaining macromolecules and metabolites in one place, as well as providing a constant internal environment, which can be very different from the one outside the cell. They first measured how stable these structures were and found they could persist for very long periods depending on the environmental conditions, but could also be made to merge and coalesce.

They then tested the ability of these structures to sequester molecules from the environment and found they accumulated large dye molecules to a remarkable degree. They then showed that these droplets could also host RNA and protein molecules and still permit them to be functionally catalytic. Further, the team showed that the droplets could assist in the formation of a lipid layer on their surface, suggesting they could have helped scaffold protocell formation.


Jia and colleagues are not certain these structures are the direct ancestors of cells, but they think it is possible such droplets could have enabled the assembly of protocells on Earth. The new compartmentalization system they have found is extremely simple, they note, and could form easily in primitive environments throughout the universe. Says Jia, "This allows us to imagine non-biological systems on early Earth that could still have had a hand in the origins of life. This suggests there may be many other non-biological systems that should be targets of future investigations of this type." He thinks the development of these or similar model systems could allow better study of the evolution of diverse chemical systems representative of the complex chemistries likely to be found on primitive planetary bodies.

"The early Earth was certainly a messy place chemically," Jia explains, "and often, most origins of life studies focus on modern biomolecules under relatively 'clean' conditions. Perhaps it is important to take these 'messy' mixtures and see if there are interesting functions or structures that can arise from them spontaneously." The authors now think that by systematically increasing the chemical complexity of such systems, they will be able to observe how they evolve over time and possibly discover divergent and emergent properties.

"We have this new experimental system we can now play with, so we can start to study phenomena like evolution and evolvability of these droplets. The possible combinations of structures or functions these droplets might have are almost endless. If the physical rules that govern the formation of droplets are fairly universal in nature, then we hope to study similar systems to discover whether they also can form microdroplets with novel properties," adds Jia.

Finally, while the team is presently focused on understanding the origins of life, they note this basic research could have applications in other areas, for example, drug delivery and personalized medicine. "This is just a wonderful example of the unexpected ways projects can develop when a team of diverse scientists from around the world come together to try and understand new and interesting phenomena," said team member Jim Cleaves, also of ELSI.

Scientists discover new chemistry that may help explain the origins of cellular life

Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained a massive number of chemicals that reacted with each other more or less randomly, and it is unclear how the complexity of cells could have emerged from such chemical chaos. Now, a team led by Tony Z. Jia at the Tokyo Institute of...

phys.org

Hollie - thank you for the link - it does not address the amino acids and proportions in Miller's experiment - in fact, it is research on how a cell membrane could have been synthesized, not how proteins could be created (human chemists LI cannot do this, btw).

Long cut and paste - did you understand any of it?

Your link notes:

"Cells are composed of lipids, proteins and nucleic acids, with the lipid forming the cell membrane, an enclosure that keeps the other components together and interfaces with the environment, exchanging food and waste. How molecular assemblages as complex as cells originally formed remains a mystery."

Note also that your link does not state details about the environment needed to form simple alpha-hydroxy acids nor the chemcal reactions required for their formation. And the membrane produced does not perform the complex functions actual living cells require to be living cells rather than dead cells.

Are you familiar with how complex the simplest living cell membranes are? Like how food and waste exchanging could be created in a cell membrane?

The skill and wisdom involved to create such a cell membrane requires a superior chemist. Not to mention forming the informational molecules necessary for life and getting them, and only them, inside this cell membrane enclosure!

It might find it shocking to learn that science has accumulated knowledge since Miller-Urey. Unlike the bibles, science knowledge is not static.

"science knowledge is not static"

Correct!
Now where did the first particle come from?

I don't know.

Where did the first gods come from?

I'm not interjecting religion into this discussion.
Where did the first particle come from?

 

[Newtonian]

As I understand it, everywhere we look in the universe, the galaxies are moving away from us. If the universe is not expanding, how would you account for what we see?

You're not going to like this answer: "Covering yourself with light as with a garment, stretching out the heavens like a tent." Psalm 104:2

True - compare Isaiah 40:22,26 which not only refers to the expansion/stretching out of the heavens but also links the existence of stars (v.26) to God's power (Hebrew singular koach) and dynamic energy (Hebrew plural ohnim). It is therefore to be expected that plural forms of God's energy are involved with the expansion rate of our universe. Also, since God is invisible it comes as no surprise (to me) that 2 forms of energy involved, gravity and dark energy, are invisible.

Concerning 'tent' it should be noted that the tent of meeting/tabernacle in Scripture is geometrically described as a rectangular prism wherein only 2 dimensions of the relatively flat tent cloths are specified. This may be a hint to how the singularity at the so-called Big Bang was formed since the corner points of the intersection of these tentcloths have no dimensions (reminds me of a singularity).
Also, these tentcloths were relatively flat which is a hint that our universe is 'flat' as many scientists are coming to believe. Quite in contrast with the earth being round (Hebrew chuwg in verse 22 = circle in 2 dimensions, sphere in 3 dimensions).

Also, these tentcloths were relatively flat which is a hint that our universe is 'flat' as many scientists are coming to believe. Quite in contrast with the earth being round (Hebrew chuwg in verse 22 = circle in 2 dimensions, sphere in 3 dimensions).

.
oh, it's round ...

funny how the religionist are back to a universe (is) shaped like a tent that is flat but somehow a triangle for its beginning point as though fact when in fact no such idea could ever have been imagined during the time they are referencing.

- of course who wrote what they, newtonian are referencing were playing the same game then the same religionists are playing today.

using a fabricated book for their religion rather than facing the realities of true insubstation and the satisfactions associated with true discoveries than manufactured deceptions.

Your Bias is showing, Breezewood. No problem - just so you know I noticed.

I will stick with the scientific aspect of your post - claiming our universe is round. Earth is round - that is clearly stated in Isaiah 40:22 and you are right that no humans back then could have known this, That is evidence that while the writers were human, the Author was God.

But the illustration in the latter part of verse 22, after stating the expansion of our universe like a fine gauze (with its threads and filaments as in computer simulations of the actual appearance of our universe) gives the illustration of a tent. This hints at the possibility of a flat gauze-like universe since the sacred tent of meeting was a rectangular prism - but you claim our universe is round.

Why?

but you claim our universe is round.

.
no

As I understand it, everywhere we look in the universe, the galaxies are moving away from us. If the universe is not expanding, how would you account for what we see?

You're not going to like this answer: "Covering yourself with light as with a garment, stretching out the heavens like a tent." Psalm 104:2

True - compare Isaiah 40:22,26 which not only refers to the expansion/stretching out of the heavens but also links the existence of stars (v.26) to God's power (Hebrew singular koach) and dynamic energy (Hebrew plural ohnim). It is therefore to be expected that plural forms of God's energy are involved with the expansion rate of our universe. Also, since God is invisible it comes as no surprise (to me) that 2 forms of energy involved, gravity and dark energy, are invisible.

Concerning 'tent' it should be noted that the tent of meeting/tabernacle in Scripture is geometrically described as a rectangular prism wherein only 2 dimensions of the relatively flat tent cloths are specified. This may be a hint to how the singularity at the so-called Big Bang was formed since the corner points of the intersection of these tentcloths have no dimensions (reminds me of a singularity).
Also, these tentcloths were relatively flat which is a hint that our universe is 'flat' as many scientists are coming to believe. Quite in contrast with the earth being round (Hebrew chuwg in verse 22 = circle in 2 dimensions, sphere in 3 dimensions).

Also, these tentcloths were relatively flat which is a hint that our universe is 'flat' as many scientists are coming to believe. Quite in contrast with the earth being round (Hebrew chuwg in verse 22 = circle in 2 dimensions, sphere in 3 dimensions).

.
oh, it's round ...

funny how the religionist are back to a universe (is) shaped like a tent that is flat but somehow a triangle for its beginning point as though fact when in fact no such idea could ever have been imagined during the time they are referencing.

- of course who wrote what they, newtonian are referencing were playing the same game then the same religionists are playing today.

using a fabricated book for their religion rather than facing the realities of true insubstation and the satisfactions associated with true discoveries than manufactured deceptions.

Your Bias is showing, Breezewood. No problem - just so you know I noticed.

I will stick with the scientific aspect of your post - claiming our universe is round. Earth is round - that is clearly stated in Isaiah 40:22 and you are right that no humans back then could have known this, That is evidence that while the writers were human, the Author was God.

But the illustration in the latter part of verse 22, after stating the expansion of our universe like a fine gauze (with its threads and filaments as in computer simulations of the actual appearance of our universe) gives the illustration of a tent. This hints at the possibility of a flat gauze-like universe since the sacred tent of meeting was a rectangular prism - but you claim our universe is round.

Why?

- but you claim our universe is round.

Why?

.
no, the cyclical BB when completed is represented as a sphere ... as a finite angle of trajectory forming a mathematically perfect circumference.

View attachment 330645

the image, ignoring the text, illustrates the cyclical BB where all matter is projected from the moment past singularity along a finite angle of trajectory that will return all matter at the same time to its original point of origin without changing direction as a mirror image and will again repeat the consolidation for a repeat conclusion to a new moment of singularity.

what bias is that, disdain for disinformation as a substitute for credible alternatives whether correct or not.

Read my lips: There was, there is, there won't be any evolution.

a pat on the back for one of your brethren ... surly as it is written in your book.

Breezewood - you are not alone thinking the universe may be round rather than flat - see this article for example:

What Shape Is the Universe? A New Study Suggests We’ve Got It All Wrong

Most every cosmologist believes the universe is flat. A new analysis argues that it’s closed.

www.quantamagazine.org

Note the article brings out that the conclusion reached depends on the interpretation of the date. Would you like to go into depth on this subject?

Note the article brings out that the conclusion reached depends on the interpretation of the date. Would you like to go into depth on this subject?

.
good call, exciting - they are on the right track ...

Whether the universe is flat — that is, whether two light beams shooting side by side through space will stay parallel forever, rather than eventually crossing and swinging back around to where they started, as in a closed universe — critically depends on the universe’s density.

why density - the leading edge is what is important - rather the finite angel of trajectory of the matter expelled after the moment of singularity - at least that is what the boomerang theory is based on. and maybe the density inside keeps it all together.

Yes, good research if reported accurately.

Did you mean the Big Boomerang?

 

[BreezeWood]

As noted fatty acids were also produced in Miller's experiment (most sources ignore this). "
a carboxylic acid consisting of a hydrocarbon chain and a terminal carboxyl group ....
a fatty acid is a carboxylic acid with a long aliphatic chain, which is either saturated or unsaturated."

I posted above about carboxylic acids in general. The carboxyl group is a carbon atom double bonded to an Oxygen atom and single bonded to to a hydroxyl group (-OH). A hydrocarbon is a molecule with Hydrogen and Carbon (e.g. Methane = CH4). An aliphatic chain consists of hydrocarbons that form an open chain as in fatty acids and alkanes to be distinguished from hydrocarbon chains which form rings instead of open chains. Alkanes are saturated hydrocarbons like methane (CH4), ethane (C2H6) and propane (C3H8). Saturated hydrocarbons have single bonds between hydrogen atoms - the highest possible number of hydrogen atoms (e.g. methane/CH4) while unsaturated hydrocarbons have double or triple bonds between adjacent carbon atoms and thus can have hydrogen atoms added to make the compound saturated.

More from the Thaxton et al link concerning carboxylic acids from page 55:

"In a similar fashion, growing polypeptides would be terminated by reactions with amines, aldehydes, ketones, reducing sugars* or carboxylic acids. If by some remote chance a true protein did develop in the ocean, its viability would be predictably of short duration. For example, formaldehyde would readily react with free amino groups to form methylene cross-linkages between proteins.37 This would tie up certain reactive sites, and retard the reaction of protein with other chemical agents. To illustrate, "irreversible combination of formaldehyde with asparagine amide groups" would result in a compound which is "stable to dilute boiling phosphoric acid."38 This tying up process is the principle of the well-known tanning reaction, and is used similarly to retard cadaver decay. "In general, reaction with formaldehyde hardens proteins, decreases their water-sensitivity, and increases their resistance to the action of chemical reagents and enzymes."39 Survival of proteins in the soup would have been difficult indeed."

Footnote:

"It is interesting to note that in certain abnormal situations, such as diabetes, the carbonyl group of glucose will form chemical bonds with the amino group of cellular proteins, a process called glycosylation. (See A.L. Notkins, 1975. Sci. Amer. 241,62.)" [Not so good for life!]

Bottom line: carboxylic acids will react with peptides and stop further polymerization. Also the carbonyl group (CO double bonded) in sugars will react with the amino group (NH2) in peptides (and in amines in general). Both sugars (as in RNA) and amines (as in amino acids) are required for life and yet they interact and, in effect: destroy each other!

to be continued later. I'll give you all a chance to review the actual evidence in chemistry relevant to the origin of life and specifically to Miller's experiment.

Again, one needs an intelligent chemist (e.g. God) to create life - and human chemists are inferior creators and cannot create life. Some attribute the attributes of God to Chance! Not a chance!

Actually, we find that supernaturalism is not a requirement for life on the planet.

Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained a massive number of chemicals that reacted with each other more or less randomly, and it is unclear how the complexity of cells could have emerged from such chemical chaos. Now, a team led by Tony Z. Jia at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and Kuhan Chandru of the National University of Malaysia has shown that simple α-hydroxy acids, like glycolic and lactic acid, spontaneously polymerize and self-assemble into polyester microdroplets when dried at moderate temperatures followed by rehydration. This could be what happened along primitive beaches and river banks, or in drying puddles. These form a new type of cell-like compartment that can trap and concentrate biomolecules like nucleic acids and proteins. These droplets, unlike most modern cells, are able to merge and reform easily, and thus could have hosted versatile early genetic and metabolic systems potentially critical for the origins of life.


All life on Earth is made up of cells. Cells are composed of lipids, proteins and nucleic acids, with the lipid forming the cell membrane, an enclosure that keeps the other components together and interfaces with the environment, exchanging food and waste. How molecular assemblages as complex as cells originally formed remains a mystery.

Most origins of life research focuses on how the molecules and structures of life were produced by the environment, and then assembled into structures that led to the first cells. However, there were likely many other types of molecules that formed alongside biomolecules on early Earth, and it is possible that life started using very simple chemistry unrelated to modern biomolecules, then evolved through increasingly complex stages to give rise to the structures found in modern cells.

Previous work conducted at ELSI showed that moderate temperature drying of the simple organic compounds known as alpha-hydroxy acids, which are found in meteorites and many simulations of prebiological chemistry, spontaneously polymerizes them into mixtures of long polyesters. Building on this work, Jia and colleagues took the next step and examined these reactions under the microscope, and found that these mixed polyester systems form a gel phase and spontaneously self-assemble when rewetted to form simple cell-like structures.

The most challenging aspect of this work was devising new methods to characterize the droplets' properties and functions, as no one had analyzed such systems before. Jia noted that the team was fortunate to have such a diversity of multidisciplinary expertise, including chemists, biochemists, materials scientists and geologists. After determining their composition and showing their propensity to self-assemble, the next question was whether these cell-like structures might be able to do something chemically useful. Modern cell membranes perform many crucial functions that help maintain the cell, for example, retaining macromolecules and metabolites in one place, as well as providing a constant internal environment, which can be very different from the one outside the cell. They first measured how stable these structures were and found they could persist for very long periods depending on the environmental conditions, but could also be made to merge and coalesce.

They then tested the ability of these structures to sequester molecules from the environment and found they accumulated large dye molecules to a remarkable degree. They then showed that these droplets could also host RNA and protein molecules and still permit them to be functionally catalytic. Further, the team showed that the droplets could assist in the formation of a lipid layer on their surface, suggesting they could have helped scaffold protocell formation.


Jia and colleagues are not certain these structures are the direct ancestors of cells, but they think it is possible such droplets could have enabled the assembly of protocells on Earth. The new compartmentalization system they have found is extremely simple, they note, and could form easily in primitive environments throughout the universe. Says Jia, "This allows us to imagine non-biological systems on early Earth that could still have had a hand in the origins of life. This suggests there may be many other non-biological systems that should be targets of future investigations of this type." He thinks the development of these or similar model systems could allow better study of the evolution of diverse chemical systems representative of the complex chemistries likely to be found on primitive planetary bodies.

"The early Earth was certainly a messy place chemically," Jia explains, "and often, most origins of life studies focus on modern biomolecules under relatively 'clean' conditions. Perhaps it is important to take these 'messy' mixtures and see if there are interesting functions or structures that can arise from them spontaneously." The authors now think that by systematically increasing the chemical complexity of such systems, they will be able to observe how they evolve over time and possibly discover divergent and emergent properties.

"We have this new experimental system we can now play with, so we can start to study phenomena like evolution and evolvability of these droplets. The possible combinations of structures or functions these droplets might have are almost endless. If the physical rules that govern the formation of droplets are fairly universal in nature, then we hope to study similar systems to discover whether they also can form microdroplets with novel properties," adds Jia.

Finally, while the team is presently focused on understanding the origins of life, they note this basic research could have applications in other areas, for example, drug delivery and personalized medicine. "This is just a wonderful example of the unexpected ways projects can develop when a team of diverse scientists from around the world come together to try and understand new and interesting phenomena," said team member Jim Cleaves, also of ELSI.

Scientists discover new chemistry that may help explain the origins of cellular life

Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained a massive number of chemicals that reacted with each other more or less randomly, and it is unclear how the complexity of cells could have emerged from such chemical chaos. Now, a team led by Tony Z. Jia at the Tokyo Institute of...

phys.org

"Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained "
Curious...Where did the environment come from?

Curious...Where did the environment come from?

.
one thing is certain, there was not a lack of light ...

primordial Earth. not a lot of water either. maybe it came in stages. oh, that must be the hours in a day. is that written in hebrew too.

 

[Indeependent]

As noted fatty acids were also produced in Miller's experiment (most sources ignore this). "
a carboxylic acid consisting of a hydrocarbon chain and a terminal carboxyl group ....
a fatty acid is a carboxylic acid with a long aliphatic chain, which is either saturated or unsaturated."

I posted above about carboxylic acids in general. The carboxyl group is a carbon atom double bonded to an Oxygen atom and single bonded to to a hydroxyl group (-OH). A hydrocarbon is a molecule with Hydrogen and Carbon (e.g. Methane = CH4). An aliphatic chain consists of hydrocarbons that form an open chain as in fatty acids and alkanes to be distinguished from hydrocarbon chains which form rings instead of open chains. Alkanes are saturated hydrocarbons like methane (CH4), ethane (C2H6) and propane (C3H8). Saturated hydrocarbons have single bonds between hydrogen atoms - the highest possible number of hydrogen atoms (e.g. methane/CH4) while unsaturated hydrocarbons have double or triple bonds between adjacent carbon atoms and thus can have hydrogen atoms added to make the compound saturated.

More from the Thaxton et al link concerning carboxylic acids from page 55:

"In a similar fashion, growing polypeptides would be terminated by reactions with amines, aldehydes, ketones, reducing sugars* or carboxylic acids. If by some remote chance a true protein did develop in the ocean, its viability would be predictably of short duration. For example, formaldehyde would readily react with free amino groups to form methylene cross-linkages between proteins.37 This would tie up certain reactive sites, and retard the reaction of protein with other chemical agents. To illustrate, "irreversible combination of formaldehyde with asparagine amide groups" would result in a compound which is "stable to dilute boiling phosphoric acid."38 This tying up process is the principle of the well-known tanning reaction, and is used similarly to retard cadaver decay. "In general, reaction with formaldehyde hardens proteins, decreases their water-sensitivity, and increases their resistance to the action of chemical reagents and enzymes."39 Survival of proteins in the soup would have been difficult indeed."

Footnote:

"It is interesting to note that in certain abnormal situations, such as diabetes, the carbonyl group of glucose will form chemical bonds with the amino group of cellular proteins, a process called glycosylation. (See A.L. Notkins, 1975. Sci. Amer. 241,62.)" [Not so good for life!]

Bottom line: carboxylic acids will react with peptides and stop further polymerization. Also the carbonyl group (CO double bonded) in sugars will react with the amino group (NH2) in peptides (and in amines in general). Both sugars (as in RNA) and amines (as in amino acids) are required for life and yet they interact and, in effect: destroy each other!

to be continued later. I'll give you all a chance to review the actual evidence in chemistry relevant to the origin of life and specifically to Miller's experiment.

Again, one needs an intelligent chemist (e.g. God) to create life - and human chemists are inferior creators and cannot create life. Some attribute the attributes of God to Chance! Not a chance!

Actually, we find that supernaturalism is not a requirement for life on the planet.

Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained a massive number of chemicals that reacted with each other more or less randomly, and it is unclear how the complexity of cells could have emerged from such chemical chaos. Now, a team led by Tony Z. Jia at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and Kuhan Chandru of the National University of Malaysia has shown that simple α-hydroxy acids, like glycolic and lactic acid, spontaneously polymerize and self-assemble into polyester microdroplets when dried at moderate temperatures followed by rehydration. This could be what happened along primitive beaches and river banks, or in drying puddles. These form a new type of cell-like compartment that can trap and concentrate biomolecules like nucleic acids and proteins. These droplets, unlike most modern cells, are able to merge and reform easily, and thus could have hosted versatile early genetic and metabolic systems potentially critical for the origins of life.


All life on Earth is made up of cells. Cells are composed of lipids, proteins and nucleic acids, with the lipid forming the cell membrane, an enclosure that keeps the other components together and interfaces with the environment, exchanging food and waste. How molecular assemblages as complex as cells originally formed remains a mystery.

Most origins of life research focuses on how the molecules and structures of life were produced by the environment, and then assembled into structures that led to the first cells. However, there were likely many other types of molecules that formed alongside biomolecules on early Earth, and it is possible that life started using very simple chemistry unrelated to modern biomolecules, then evolved through increasingly complex stages to give rise to the structures found in modern cells.

Previous work conducted at ELSI showed that moderate temperature drying of the simple organic compounds known as alpha-hydroxy acids, which are found in meteorites and many simulations of prebiological chemistry, spontaneously polymerizes them into mixtures of long polyesters. Building on this work, Jia and colleagues took the next step and examined these reactions under the microscope, and found that these mixed polyester systems form a gel phase and spontaneously self-assemble when rewetted to form simple cell-like structures.

The most challenging aspect of this work was devising new methods to characterize the droplets' properties and functions, as no one had analyzed such systems before. Jia noted that the team was fortunate to have such a diversity of multidisciplinary expertise, including chemists, biochemists, materials scientists and geologists. After determining their composition and showing their propensity to self-assemble, the next question was whether these cell-like structures might be able to do something chemically useful. Modern cell membranes perform many crucial functions that help maintain the cell, for example, retaining macromolecules and metabolites in one place, as well as providing a constant internal environment, which can be very different from the one outside the cell. They first measured how stable these structures were and found they could persist for very long periods depending on the environmental conditions, but could also be made to merge and coalesce.

They then tested the ability of these structures to sequester molecules from the environment and found they accumulated large dye molecules to a remarkable degree. They then showed that these droplets could also host RNA and protein molecules and still permit them to be functionally catalytic. Further, the team showed that the droplets could assist in the formation of a lipid layer on their surface, suggesting they could have helped scaffold protocell formation.


Jia and colleagues are not certain these structures are the direct ancestors of cells, but they think it is possible such droplets could have enabled the assembly of protocells on Earth. The new compartmentalization system they have found is extremely simple, they note, and could form easily in primitive environments throughout the universe. Says Jia, "This allows us to imagine non-biological systems on early Earth that could still have had a hand in the origins of life. This suggests there may be many other non-biological systems that should be targets of future investigations of this type." He thinks the development of these or similar model systems could allow better study of the evolution of diverse chemical systems representative of the complex chemistries likely to be found on primitive planetary bodies.

"The early Earth was certainly a messy place chemically," Jia explains, "and often, most origins of life studies focus on modern biomolecules under relatively 'clean' conditions. Perhaps it is important to take these 'messy' mixtures and see if there are interesting functions or structures that can arise from them spontaneously." The authors now think that by systematically increasing the chemical complexity of such systems, they will be able to observe how they evolve over time and possibly discover divergent and emergent properties.

"We have this new experimental system we can now play with, so we can start to study phenomena like evolution and evolvability of these droplets. The possible combinations of structures or functions these droplets might have are almost endless. If the physical rules that govern the formation of droplets are fairly universal in nature, then we hope to study similar systems to discover whether they also can form microdroplets with novel properties," adds Jia.

Finally, while the team is presently focused on understanding the origins of life, they note this basic research could have applications in other areas, for example, drug delivery and personalized medicine. "This is just a wonderful example of the unexpected ways projects can develop when a team of diverse scientists from around the world come together to try and understand new and interesting phenomena," said team member Jim Cleaves, also of ELSI.

Scientists discover new chemistry that may help explain the origins of cellular life

Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained a massive number of chemicals that reacted with each other more or less randomly, and it is unclear how the complexity of cells could have emerged from such chemical chaos. Now, a team led by Tony Z. Jia at the Tokyo Institute of...

phys.org

"Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained "
Curious...Where did the environment come from?

Curious...Where did the environment come from?

.
one thing is certain, there was not a lack of light ...

View attachment 331846

primordial Earth. not a lot of water either. maybe it came in stages. oh, that must be the hours in a day. is that written in hebrew too.

In deference to Hollie, I will address this issue from the POV of science.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

Fact...Every scientist on YouTube, when asked where the first piece of matter came about, always answers, "It's almost as though a god created it"

Hahahaha


Dude.

That is not a "fact". You literally just pulled that right out of your ass.

 

[Indeependent]

Fact...Every scientist on YouTube, when asked where the first piece of matter came about, always answers, "It's almost as though a god created it"

Hahahaha


Dude.

That is not a "fact". You literally just pulled that right out of your ass.

How many lectures on this subject and how many YouTube videos have you watched where someone asked this question.
It's a simple question...answer it.

 

[Hollie]

As noted fatty acids were also produced in Miller's experiment (most sources ignore this). "
a carboxylic acid consisting of a hydrocarbon chain and a terminal carboxyl group ....
a fatty acid is a carboxylic acid with a long aliphatic chain, which is either saturated or unsaturated."

I posted above about carboxylic acids in general. The carboxyl group is a carbon atom double bonded to an Oxygen atom and single bonded to to a hydroxyl group (-OH). A hydrocarbon is a molecule with Hydrogen and Carbon (e.g. Methane = CH4). An aliphatic chain consists of hydrocarbons that form an open chain as in fatty acids and alkanes to be distinguished from hydrocarbon chains which form rings instead of open chains. Alkanes are saturated hydrocarbons like methane (CH4), ethane (C2H6) and propane (C3H8). Saturated hydrocarbons have single bonds between hydrogen atoms - the highest possible number of hydrogen atoms (e.g. methane/CH4) while unsaturated hydrocarbons have double or triple bonds between adjacent carbon atoms and thus can have hydrogen atoms added to make the compound saturated.

More from the Thaxton et al link concerning carboxylic acids from page 55:

"In a similar fashion, growing polypeptides would be terminated by reactions with amines, aldehydes, ketones, reducing sugars* or carboxylic acids. If by some remote chance a true protein did develop in the ocean, its viability would be predictably of short duration. For example, formaldehyde would readily react with free amino groups to form methylene cross-linkages between proteins.37 This would tie up certain reactive sites, and retard the reaction of protein with other chemical agents. To illustrate, "irreversible combination of formaldehyde with asparagine amide groups" would result in a compound which is "stable to dilute boiling phosphoric acid."38 This tying up process is the principle of the well-known tanning reaction, and is used similarly to retard cadaver decay. "In general, reaction with formaldehyde hardens proteins, decreases their water-sensitivity, and increases their resistance to the action of chemical reagents and enzymes."39 Survival of proteins in the soup would have been difficult indeed."

Footnote:

"It is interesting to note that in certain abnormal situations, such as diabetes, the carbonyl group of glucose will form chemical bonds with the amino group of cellular proteins, a process called glycosylation. (See A.L. Notkins, 1975. Sci. Amer. 241,62.)" [Not so good for life!]

Bottom line: carboxylic acids will react with peptides and stop further polymerization. Also the carbonyl group (CO double bonded) in sugars will react with the amino group (NH2) in peptides (and in amines in general). Both sugars (as in RNA) and amines (as in amino acids) are required for life and yet they interact and, in effect: destroy each other!

to be continued later. I'll give you all a chance to review the actual evidence in chemistry relevant to the origin of life and specifically to Miller's experiment.

Again, one needs an intelligent chemist (e.g. God) to create life - and human chemists are inferior creators and cannot create life. Some attribute the attributes of God to Chance! Not a chance!

Actually, we find that supernaturalism is not a requirement for life on the planet.

Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained a massive number of chemicals that reacted with each other more or less randomly, and it is unclear how the complexity of cells could have emerged from such chemical chaos. Now, a team led by Tony Z. Jia at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and Kuhan Chandru of the National University of Malaysia has shown that simple α-hydroxy acids, like glycolic and lactic acid, spontaneously polymerize and self-assemble into polyester microdroplets when dried at moderate temperatures followed by rehydration. This could be what happened along primitive beaches and river banks, or in drying puddles. These form a new type of cell-like compartment that can trap and concentrate biomolecules like nucleic acids and proteins. These droplets, unlike most modern cells, are able to merge and reform easily, and thus could have hosted versatile early genetic and metabolic systems potentially critical for the origins of life.


All life on Earth is made up of cells. Cells are composed of lipids, proteins and nucleic acids, with the lipid forming the cell membrane, an enclosure that keeps the other components together and interfaces with the environment, exchanging food and waste. How molecular assemblages as complex as cells originally formed remains a mystery.

Most origins of life research focuses on how the molecules and structures of life were produced by the environment, and then assembled into structures that led to the first cells. However, there were likely many other types of molecules that formed alongside biomolecules on early Earth, and it is possible that life started using very simple chemistry unrelated to modern biomolecules, then evolved through increasingly complex stages to give rise to the structures found in modern cells.

Previous work conducted at ELSI showed that moderate temperature drying of the simple organic compounds known as alpha-hydroxy acids, which are found in meteorites and many simulations of prebiological chemistry, spontaneously polymerizes them into mixtures of long polyesters. Building on this work, Jia and colleagues took the next step and examined these reactions under the microscope, and found that these mixed polyester systems form a gel phase and spontaneously self-assemble when rewetted to form simple cell-like structures.

The most challenging aspect of this work was devising new methods to characterize the droplets' properties and functions, as no one had analyzed such systems before. Jia noted that the team was fortunate to have such a diversity of multidisciplinary expertise, including chemists, biochemists, materials scientists and geologists. After determining their composition and showing their propensity to self-assemble, the next question was whether these cell-like structures might be able to do something chemically useful. Modern cell membranes perform many crucial functions that help maintain the cell, for example, retaining macromolecules and metabolites in one place, as well as providing a constant internal environment, which can be very different from the one outside the cell. They first measured how stable these structures were and found they could persist for very long periods depending on the environmental conditions, but could also be made to merge and coalesce.

They then tested the ability of these structures to sequester molecules from the environment and found they accumulated large dye molecules to a remarkable degree. They then showed that these droplets could also host RNA and protein molecules and still permit them to be functionally catalytic. Further, the team showed that the droplets could assist in the formation of a lipid layer on their surface, suggesting they could have helped scaffold protocell formation.


Jia and colleagues are not certain these structures are the direct ancestors of cells, but they think it is possible such droplets could have enabled the assembly of protocells on Earth. The new compartmentalization system they have found is extremely simple, they note, and could form easily in primitive environments throughout the universe. Says Jia, "This allows us to imagine non-biological systems on early Earth that could still have had a hand in the origins of life. This suggests there may be many other non-biological systems that should be targets of future investigations of this type." He thinks the development of these or similar model systems could allow better study of the evolution of diverse chemical systems representative of the complex chemistries likely to be found on primitive planetary bodies.

"The early Earth was certainly a messy place chemically," Jia explains, "and often, most origins of life studies focus on modern biomolecules under relatively 'clean' conditions. Perhaps it is important to take these 'messy' mixtures and see if there are interesting functions or structures that can arise from them spontaneously." The authors now think that by systematically increasing the chemical complexity of such systems, they will be able to observe how they evolve over time and possibly discover divergent and emergent properties.

"We have this new experimental system we can now play with, so we can start to study phenomena like evolution and evolvability of these droplets. The possible combinations of structures or functions these droplets might have are almost endless. If the physical rules that govern the formation of droplets are fairly universal in nature, then we hope to study similar systems to discover whether they also can form microdroplets with novel properties," adds Jia.

Finally, while the team is presently focused on understanding the origins of life, they note this basic research could have applications in other areas, for example, drug delivery and personalized medicine. "This is just a wonderful example of the unexpected ways projects can develop when a team of diverse scientists from around the world come together to try and understand new and interesting phenomena," said team member Jim Cleaves, also of ELSI.

Scientists discover new chemistry that may help explain the origins of cellular life

Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained a massive number of chemicals that reacted with each other more or less randomly, and it is unclear how the complexity of cells could have emerged from such chemical chaos. Now, a team led by Tony Z. Jia at the Tokyo Institute of...

phys.org

"Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained "
Curious...Where did the environment come from?

Amun Ra. Obviously.

Bowel cleasning?

Science has a solution for your problem.

But you don't have any Links to these "solutions"?
Fact...Every scientist on YouTube, when asked where the first piece of matter came about, always answers, "It's almost as though a god created it".
By the way, the only time anyone in a scientists audience can even ask this blasphemous question is when an atheist scientist is debating an Orthodox Jewish scientist.
If this question comes up in from of any other audience the person is jeered, ridiculed and removed from the room.

Try asking a college professor and you'll get an F.

Your facts are rather absent facts.

I will have to presume that you have never attended college or a public lecture on the subject.
Fair enough.

If you say so.

 

[Hollie]

As noted fatty acids were also produced in Miller's experiment (most sources ignore this). "
a carboxylic acid consisting of a hydrocarbon chain and a terminal carboxyl group ....
a fatty acid is a carboxylic acid with a long aliphatic chain, which is either saturated or unsaturated."

I posted above about carboxylic acids in general. The carboxyl group is a carbon atom double bonded to an Oxygen atom and single bonded to to a hydroxyl group (-OH). A hydrocarbon is a molecule with Hydrogen and Carbon (e.g. Methane = CH4). An aliphatic chain consists of hydrocarbons that form an open chain as in fatty acids and alkanes to be distinguished from hydrocarbon chains which form rings instead of open chains. Alkanes are saturated hydrocarbons like methane (CH4), ethane (C2H6) and propane (C3H8). Saturated hydrocarbons have single bonds between hydrogen atoms - the highest possible number of hydrogen atoms (e.g. methane/CH4) while unsaturated hydrocarbons have double or triple bonds between adjacent carbon atoms and thus can have hydrogen atoms added to make the compound saturated.

More from the Thaxton et al link concerning carboxylic acids from page 55:

"In a similar fashion, growing polypeptides would be terminated by reactions with amines, aldehydes, ketones, reducing sugars* or carboxylic acids. If by some remote chance a true protein did develop in the ocean, its viability would be predictably of short duration. For example, formaldehyde would readily react with free amino groups to form methylene cross-linkages between proteins.37 This would tie up certain reactive sites, and retard the reaction of protein with other chemical agents. To illustrate, "irreversible combination of formaldehyde with asparagine amide groups" would result in a compound which is "stable to dilute boiling phosphoric acid."38 This tying up process is the principle of the well-known tanning reaction, and is used similarly to retard cadaver decay. "In general, reaction with formaldehyde hardens proteins, decreases their water-sensitivity, and increases their resistance to the action of chemical reagents and enzymes."39 Survival of proteins in the soup would have been difficult indeed."

Footnote:

"It is interesting to note that in certain abnormal situations, such as diabetes, the carbonyl group of glucose will form chemical bonds with the amino group of cellular proteins, a process called glycosylation. (See A.L. Notkins, 1975. Sci. Amer. 241,62.)" [Not so good for life!]

Bottom line: carboxylic acids will react with peptides and stop further polymerization. Also the carbonyl group (CO double bonded) in sugars will react with the amino group (NH2) in peptides (and in amines in general). Both sugars (as in RNA) and amines (as in amino acids) are required for life and yet they interact and, in effect: destroy each other!

to be continued later. I'll give you all a chance to review the actual evidence in chemistry relevant to the origin of life and specifically to Miller's experiment.

Again, one needs an intelligent chemist (e.g. God) to create life - and human chemists are inferior creators and cannot create life. Some attribute the attributes of God to Chance! Not a chance!

Actually, we find that supernaturalism is not a requirement for life on the planet.

Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained a massive number of chemicals that reacted with each other more or less randomly, and it is unclear how the complexity of cells could have emerged from such chemical chaos. Now, a team led by Tony Z. Jia at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and Kuhan Chandru of the National University of Malaysia has shown that simple α-hydroxy acids, like glycolic and lactic acid, spontaneously polymerize and self-assemble into polyester microdroplets when dried at moderate temperatures followed by rehydration. This could be what happened along primitive beaches and river banks, or in drying puddles. These form a new type of cell-like compartment that can trap and concentrate biomolecules like nucleic acids and proteins. These droplets, unlike most modern cells, are able to merge and reform easily, and thus could have hosted versatile early genetic and metabolic systems potentially critical for the origins of life.


All life on Earth is made up of cells. Cells are composed of lipids, proteins and nucleic acids, with the lipid forming the cell membrane, an enclosure that keeps the other components together and interfaces with the environment, exchanging food and waste. How molecular assemblages as complex as cells originally formed remains a mystery.

Most origins of life research focuses on how the molecules and structures of life were produced by the environment, and then assembled into structures that led to the first cells. However, there were likely many other types of molecules that formed alongside biomolecules on early Earth, and it is possible that life started using very simple chemistry unrelated to modern biomolecules, then evolved through increasingly complex stages to give rise to the structures found in modern cells.

Previous work conducted at ELSI showed that moderate temperature drying of the simple organic compounds known as alpha-hydroxy acids, which are found in meteorites and many simulations of prebiological chemistry, spontaneously polymerizes them into mixtures of long polyesters. Building on this work, Jia and colleagues took the next step and examined these reactions under the microscope, and found that these mixed polyester systems form a gel phase and spontaneously self-assemble when rewetted to form simple cell-like structures.

The most challenging aspect of this work was devising new methods to characterize the droplets' properties and functions, as no one had analyzed such systems before. Jia noted that the team was fortunate to have such a diversity of multidisciplinary expertise, including chemists, biochemists, materials scientists and geologists. After determining their composition and showing their propensity to self-assemble, the next question was whether these cell-like structures might be able to do something chemically useful. Modern cell membranes perform many crucial functions that help maintain the cell, for example, retaining macromolecules and metabolites in one place, as well as providing a constant internal environment, which can be very different from the one outside the cell. They first measured how stable these structures were and found they could persist for very long periods depending on the environmental conditions, but could also be made to merge and coalesce.

They then tested the ability of these structures to sequester molecules from the environment and found they accumulated large dye molecules to a remarkable degree. They then showed that these droplets could also host RNA and protein molecules and still permit them to be functionally catalytic. Further, the team showed that the droplets could assist in the formation of a lipid layer on their surface, suggesting they could have helped scaffold protocell formation.


Jia and colleagues are not certain these structures are the direct ancestors of cells, but they think it is possible such droplets could have enabled the assembly of protocells on Earth. The new compartmentalization system they have found is extremely simple, they note, and could form easily in primitive environments throughout the universe. Says Jia, "This allows us to imagine non-biological systems on early Earth that could still have had a hand in the origins of life. This suggests there may be many other non-biological systems that should be targets of future investigations of this type." He thinks the development of these or similar model systems could allow better study of the evolution of diverse chemical systems representative of the complex chemistries likely to be found on primitive planetary bodies.

"The early Earth was certainly a messy place chemically," Jia explains, "and often, most origins of life studies focus on modern biomolecules under relatively 'clean' conditions. Perhaps it is important to take these 'messy' mixtures and see if there are interesting functions or structures that can arise from them spontaneously." The authors now think that by systematically increasing the chemical complexity of such systems, they will be able to observe how they evolve over time and possibly discover divergent and emergent properties.

"We have this new experimental system we can now play with, so we can start to study phenomena like evolution and evolvability of these droplets. The possible combinations of structures or functions these droplets might have are almost endless. If the physical rules that govern the formation of droplets are fairly universal in nature, then we hope to study similar systems to discover whether they also can form microdroplets with novel properties," adds Jia.

Finally, while the team is presently focused on understanding the origins of life, they note this basic research could have applications in other areas, for example, drug delivery and personalized medicine. "This is just a wonderful example of the unexpected ways projects can develop when a team of diverse scientists from around the world come together to try and understand new and interesting phenomena," said team member Jim Cleaves, also of ELSI.

Scientists discover new chemistry that may help explain the origins of cellular life

Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained a massive number of chemicals that reacted with each other more or less randomly, and it is unclear how the complexity of cells could have emerged from such chemical chaos. Now, a team led by Tony Z. Jia at the Tokyo Institute of...

phys.org

"Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained "
Curious...Where did the environment come from?

Curious...Where did the environment come from?

.
one thing is certain, there was not a lack of light ...

View attachment 331846

primordial Earth. not a lot of water either. maybe it came in stages. oh, that must be the hours in a day. is that written in hebrew too.

In deference to Hollie, I will address this issue from the POV of science.

You mean YouTube?

 

[Indeependent]

As noted fatty acids were also produced in Miller's experiment (most sources ignore this). "
a carboxylic acid consisting of a hydrocarbon chain and a terminal carboxyl group ....
a fatty acid is a carboxylic acid with a long aliphatic chain, which is either saturated or unsaturated."

I posted above about carboxylic acids in general. The carboxyl group is a carbon atom double bonded to an Oxygen atom and single bonded to to a hydroxyl group (-OH). A hydrocarbon is a molecule with Hydrogen and Carbon (e.g. Methane = CH4). An aliphatic chain consists of hydrocarbons that form an open chain as in fatty acids and alkanes to be distinguished from hydrocarbon chains which form rings instead of open chains. Alkanes are saturated hydrocarbons like methane (CH4), ethane (C2H6) and propane (C3H8). Saturated hydrocarbons have single bonds between hydrogen atoms - the highest possible number of hydrogen atoms (e.g. methane/CH4) while unsaturated hydrocarbons have double or triple bonds between adjacent carbon atoms and thus can have hydrogen atoms added to make the compound saturated.

More from the Thaxton et al link concerning carboxylic acids from page 55:

"In a similar fashion, growing polypeptides would be terminated by reactions with amines, aldehydes, ketones, reducing sugars* or carboxylic acids. If by some remote chance a true protein did develop in the ocean, its viability would be predictably of short duration. For example, formaldehyde would readily react with free amino groups to form methylene cross-linkages between proteins.37 This would tie up certain reactive sites, and retard the reaction of protein with other chemical agents. To illustrate, "irreversible combination of formaldehyde with asparagine amide groups" would result in a compound which is "stable to dilute boiling phosphoric acid."38 This tying up process is the principle of the well-known tanning reaction, and is used similarly to retard cadaver decay. "In general, reaction with formaldehyde hardens proteins, decreases their water-sensitivity, and increases their resistance to the action of chemical reagents and enzymes."39 Survival of proteins in the soup would have been difficult indeed."

Footnote:

"It is interesting to note that in certain abnormal situations, such as diabetes, the carbonyl group of glucose will form chemical bonds with the amino group of cellular proteins, a process called glycosylation. (See A.L. Notkins, 1975. Sci. Amer. 241,62.)" [Not so good for life!]

Bottom line: carboxylic acids will react with peptides and stop further polymerization. Also the carbonyl group (CO double bonded) in sugars will react with the amino group (NH2) in peptides (and in amines in general). Both sugars (as in RNA) and amines (as in amino acids) are required for life and yet they interact and, in effect: destroy each other!

to be continued later. I'll give you all a chance to review the actual evidence in chemistry relevant to the origin of life and specifically to Miller's experiment.

Again, one needs an intelligent chemist (e.g. God) to create life - and human chemists are inferior creators and cannot create life. Some attribute the attributes of God to Chance! Not a chance!

Actually, we find that supernaturalism is not a requirement for life on the planet.

Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained a massive number of chemicals that reacted with each other more or less randomly, and it is unclear how the complexity of cells could have emerged from such chemical chaos. Now, a team led by Tony Z. Jia at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and Kuhan Chandru of the National University of Malaysia has shown that simple α-hydroxy acids, like glycolic and lactic acid, spontaneously polymerize and self-assemble into polyester microdroplets when dried at moderate temperatures followed by rehydration. This could be what happened along primitive beaches and river banks, or in drying puddles. These form a new type of cell-like compartment that can trap and concentrate biomolecules like nucleic acids and proteins. These droplets, unlike most modern cells, are able to merge and reform easily, and thus could have hosted versatile early genetic and metabolic systems potentially critical for the origins of life.


All life on Earth is made up of cells. Cells are composed of lipids, proteins and nucleic acids, with the lipid forming the cell membrane, an enclosure that keeps the other components together and interfaces with the environment, exchanging food and waste. How molecular assemblages as complex as cells originally formed remains a mystery.

Most origins of life research focuses on how the molecules and structures of life were produced by the environment, and then assembled into structures that led to the first cells. However, there were likely many other types of molecules that formed alongside biomolecules on early Earth, and it is possible that life started using very simple chemistry unrelated to modern biomolecules, then evolved through increasingly complex stages to give rise to the structures found in modern cells.

Previous work conducted at ELSI showed that moderate temperature drying of the simple organic compounds known as alpha-hydroxy acids, which are found in meteorites and many simulations of prebiological chemistry, spontaneously polymerizes them into mixtures of long polyesters. Building on this work, Jia and colleagues took the next step and examined these reactions under the microscope, and found that these mixed polyester systems form a gel phase and spontaneously self-assemble when rewetted to form simple cell-like structures.

The most challenging aspect of this work was devising new methods to characterize the droplets' properties and functions, as no one had analyzed such systems before. Jia noted that the team was fortunate to have such a diversity of multidisciplinary expertise, including chemists, biochemists, materials scientists and geologists. After determining their composition and showing their propensity to self-assemble, the next question was whether these cell-like structures might be able to do something chemically useful. Modern cell membranes perform many crucial functions that help maintain the cell, for example, retaining macromolecules and metabolites in one place, as well as providing a constant internal environment, which can be very different from the one outside the cell. They first measured how stable these structures were and found they could persist for very long periods depending on the environmental conditions, but could also be made to merge and coalesce.

They then tested the ability of these structures to sequester molecules from the environment and found they accumulated large dye molecules to a remarkable degree. They then showed that these droplets could also host RNA and protein molecules and still permit them to be functionally catalytic. Further, the team showed that the droplets could assist in the formation of a lipid layer on their surface, suggesting they could have helped scaffold protocell formation.


Jia and colleagues are not certain these structures are the direct ancestors of cells, but they think it is possible such droplets could have enabled the assembly of protocells on Earth. The new compartmentalization system they have found is extremely simple, they note, and could form easily in primitive environments throughout the universe. Says Jia, "This allows us to imagine non-biological systems on early Earth that could still have had a hand in the origins of life. This suggests there may be many other non-biological systems that should be targets of future investigations of this type." He thinks the development of these or similar model systems could allow better study of the evolution of diverse chemical systems representative of the complex chemistries likely to be found on primitive planetary bodies.

"The early Earth was certainly a messy place chemically," Jia explains, "and often, most origins of life studies focus on modern biomolecules under relatively 'clean' conditions. Perhaps it is important to take these 'messy' mixtures and see if there are interesting functions or structures that can arise from them spontaneously." The authors now think that by systematically increasing the chemical complexity of such systems, they will be able to observe how they evolve over time and possibly discover divergent and emergent properties.

"We have this new experimental system we can now play with, so we can start to study phenomena like evolution and evolvability of these droplets. The possible combinations of structures or functions these droplets might have are almost endless. If the physical rules that govern the formation of droplets are fairly universal in nature, then we hope to study similar systems to discover whether they also can form microdroplets with novel properties," adds Jia.

Finally, while the team is presently focused on understanding the origins of life, they note this basic research could have applications in other areas, for example, drug delivery and personalized medicine. "This is just a wonderful example of the unexpected ways projects can develop when a team of diverse scientists from around the world come together to try and understand new and interesting phenomena," said team member Jim Cleaves, also of ELSI.

Scientists discover new chemistry that may help explain the origins of cellular life

Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained a massive number of chemicals that reacted with each other more or less randomly, and it is unclear how the complexity of cells could have emerged from such chemical chaos. Now, a team led by Tony Z. Jia at the Tokyo Institute of...

phys.org

"Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained "
Curious...Where did the environment come from?

Amun Ra. Obviously.

Bowel cleasning?

Science has a solution for your problem.

But you don't have any Links to these "solutions"?
Fact...Every scientist on YouTube, when asked where the first piece of matter came about, always answers, "It's almost as though a god created it".
By the way, the only time anyone in a scientists audience can even ask this blasphemous question is when an atheist scientist is debating an Orthodox Jewish scientist.
If this question comes up in from of any other audience the person is jeered, ridiculed and removed from the room.

Try asking a college professor and you'll get an F.

Your facts are rather absent facts.

I will have to presume that you have never attended college or a public lecture on the subject.
Fair enough.

If you say so.

Ad hominem...
What process, devoid of any matter whatsoever, produced the first particle?

 

[Indeependent]

As noted fatty acids were also produced in Miller's experiment (most sources ignore this). "
a carboxylic acid consisting of a hydrocarbon chain and a terminal carboxyl group ....
a fatty acid is a carboxylic acid with a long aliphatic chain, which is either saturated or unsaturated."

I posted above about carboxylic acids in general. The carboxyl group is a carbon atom double bonded to an Oxygen atom and single bonded to to a hydroxyl group (-OH). A hydrocarbon is a molecule with Hydrogen and Carbon (e.g. Methane = CH4). An aliphatic chain consists of hydrocarbons that form an open chain as in fatty acids and alkanes to be distinguished from hydrocarbon chains which form rings instead of open chains. Alkanes are saturated hydrocarbons like methane (CH4), ethane (C2H6) and propane (C3H8). Saturated hydrocarbons have single bonds between hydrogen atoms - the highest possible number of hydrogen atoms (e.g. methane/CH4) while unsaturated hydrocarbons have double or triple bonds between adjacent carbon atoms and thus can have hydrogen atoms added to make the compound saturated.

More from the Thaxton et al link concerning carboxylic acids from page 55:

"In a similar fashion, growing polypeptides would be terminated by reactions with amines, aldehydes, ketones, reducing sugars* or carboxylic acids. If by some remote chance a true protein did develop in the ocean, its viability would be predictably of short duration. For example, formaldehyde would readily react with free amino groups to form methylene cross-linkages between proteins.37 This would tie up certain reactive sites, and retard the reaction of protein with other chemical agents. To illustrate, "irreversible combination of formaldehyde with asparagine amide groups" would result in a compound which is "stable to dilute boiling phosphoric acid."38 This tying up process is the principle of the well-known tanning reaction, and is used similarly to retard cadaver decay. "In general, reaction with formaldehyde hardens proteins, decreases their water-sensitivity, and increases their resistance to the action of chemical reagents and enzymes."39 Survival of proteins in the soup would have been difficult indeed."

Footnote:

"It is interesting to note that in certain abnormal situations, such as diabetes, the carbonyl group of glucose will form chemical bonds with the amino group of cellular proteins, a process called glycosylation. (See A.L. Notkins, 1975. Sci. Amer. 241,62.)" [Not so good for life!]

Bottom line: carboxylic acids will react with peptides and stop further polymerization. Also the carbonyl group (CO double bonded) in sugars will react with the amino group (NH2) in peptides (and in amines in general). Both sugars (as in RNA) and amines (as in amino acids) are required for life and yet they interact and, in effect: destroy each other!

to be continued later. I'll give you all a chance to review the actual evidence in chemistry relevant to the origin of life and specifically to Miller's experiment.

Again, one needs an intelligent chemist (e.g. God) to create life - and human chemists are inferior creators and cannot create life. Some attribute the attributes of God to Chance! Not a chance!

Actually, we find that supernaturalism is not a requirement for life on the planet.

Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained a massive number of chemicals that reacted with each other more or less randomly, and it is unclear how the complexity of cells could have emerged from such chemical chaos. Now, a team led by Tony Z. Jia at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and Kuhan Chandru of the National University of Malaysia has shown that simple α-hydroxy acids, like glycolic and lactic acid, spontaneously polymerize and self-assemble into polyester microdroplets when dried at moderate temperatures followed by rehydration. This could be what happened along primitive beaches and river banks, or in drying puddles. These form a new type of cell-like compartment that can trap and concentrate biomolecules like nucleic acids and proteins. These droplets, unlike most modern cells, are able to merge and reform easily, and thus could have hosted versatile early genetic and metabolic systems potentially critical for the origins of life.


All life on Earth is made up of cells. Cells are composed of lipids, proteins and nucleic acids, with the lipid forming the cell membrane, an enclosure that keeps the other components together and interfaces with the environment, exchanging food and waste. How molecular assemblages as complex as cells originally formed remains a mystery.

Most origins of life research focuses on how the molecules and structures of life were produced by the environment, and then assembled into structures that led to the first cells. However, there were likely many other types of molecules that formed alongside biomolecules on early Earth, and it is possible that life started using very simple chemistry unrelated to modern biomolecules, then evolved through increasingly complex stages to give rise to the structures found in modern cells.

Previous work conducted at ELSI showed that moderate temperature drying of the simple organic compounds known as alpha-hydroxy acids, which are found in meteorites and many simulations of prebiological chemistry, spontaneously polymerizes them into mixtures of long polyesters. Building on this work, Jia and colleagues took the next step and examined these reactions under the microscope, and found that these mixed polyester systems form a gel phase and spontaneously self-assemble when rewetted to form simple cell-like structures.

The most challenging aspect of this work was devising new methods to characterize the droplets' properties and functions, as no one had analyzed such systems before. Jia noted that the team was fortunate to have such a diversity of multidisciplinary expertise, including chemists, biochemists, materials scientists and geologists. After determining their composition and showing their propensity to self-assemble, the next question was whether these cell-like structures might be able to do something chemically useful. Modern cell membranes perform many crucial functions that help maintain the cell, for example, retaining macromolecules and metabolites in one place, as well as providing a constant internal environment, which can be very different from the one outside the cell. They first measured how stable these structures were and found they could persist for very long periods depending on the environmental conditions, but could also be made to merge and coalesce.

They then tested the ability of these structures to sequester molecules from the environment and found they accumulated large dye molecules to a remarkable degree. They then showed that these droplets could also host RNA and protein molecules and still permit them to be functionally catalytic. Further, the team showed that the droplets could assist in the formation of a lipid layer on their surface, suggesting they could have helped scaffold protocell formation.


Jia and colleagues are not certain these structures are the direct ancestors of cells, but they think it is possible such droplets could have enabled the assembly of protocells on Earth. The new compartmentalization system they have found is extremely simple, they note, and could form easily in primitive environments throughout the universe. Says Jia, "This allows us to imagine non-biological systems on early Earth that could still have had a hand in the origins of life. This suggests there may be many other non-biological systems that should be targets of future investigations of this type." He thinks the development of these or similar model systems could allow better study of the evolution of diverse chemical systems representative of the complex chemistries likely to be found on primitive planetary bodies.

"The early Earth was certainly a messy place chemically," Jia explains, "and often, most origins of life studies focus on modern biomolecules under relatively 'clean' conditions. Perhaps it is important to take these 'messy' mixtures and see if there are interesting functions or structures that can arise from them spontaneously." The authors now think that by systematically increasing the chemical complexity of such systems, they will be able to observe how they evolve over time and possibly discover divergent and emergent properties.

"We have this new experimental system we can now play with, so we can start to study phenomena like evolution and evolvability of these droplets. The possible combinations of structures or functions these droplets might have are almost endless. If the physical rules that govern the formation of droplets are fairly universal in nature, then we hope to study similar systems to discover whether they also can form microdroplets with novel properties," adds Jia.

Finally, while the team is presently focused on understanding the origins of life, they note this basic research could have applications in other areas, for example, drug delivery and personalized medicine. "This is just a wonderful example of the unexpected ways projects can develop when a team of diverse scientists from around the world come together to try and understand new and interesting phenomena," said team member Jim Cleaves, also of ELSI.

Scientists discover new chemistry that may help explain the origins of cellular life

Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained a massive number of chemicals that reacted with each other more or less randomly, and it is unclear how the complexity of cells could have emerged from such chemical chaos. Now, a team led by Tony Z. Jia at the Tokyo Institute of...

phys.org

"Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained "
Curious...Where did the environment come from?

Curious...Where did the environment come from?

.
one thing is certain, there was not a lack of light ...

View attachment 331846

primordial Earth. not a lot of water either. maybe it came in stages. oh, that must be the hours in a day. is that written in hebrew too.

In deference to Hollie, I will address this issue from the POV of science.

You mean YouTube?

No...science.
I will presume you have a PhD in some realm of hard science.
I do no, and I won't pretend on any message board that I do.

 

[Hollie]

As noted fatty acids were also produced in Miller's experiment (most sources ignore this). "
a carboxylic acid consisting of a hydrocarbon chain and a terminal carboxyl group ....
a fatty acid is a carboxylic acid with a long aliphatic chain, which is either saturated or unsaturated."

I posted above about carboxylic acids in general. The carboxyl group is a carbon atom double bonded to an Oxygen atom and single bonded to to a hydroxyl group (-OH). A hydrocarbon is a molecule with Hydrogen and Carbon (e.g. Methane = CH4). An aliphatic chain consists of hydrocarbons that form an open chain as in fatty acids and alkanes to be distinguished from hydrocarbon chains which form rings instead of open chains. Alkanes are saturated hydrocarbons like methane (CH4), ethane (C2H6) and propane (C3H8). Saturated hydrocarbons have single bonds between hydrogen atoms - the highest possible number of hydrogen atoms (e.g. methane/CH4) while unsaturated hydrocarbons have double or triple bonds between adjacent carbon atoms and thus can have hydrogen atoms added to make the compound saturated.

More from the Thaxton et al link concerning carboxylic acids from page 55:

"In a similar fashion, growing polypeptides would be terminated by reactions with amines, aldehydes, ketones, reducing sugars* or carboxylic acids. If by some remote chance a true protein did develop in the ocean, its viability would be predictably of short duration. For example, formaldehyde would readily react with free amino groups to form methylene cross-linkages between proteins.37 This would tie up certain reactive sites, and retard the reaction of protein with other chemical agents. To illustrate, "irreversible combination of formaldehyde with asparagine amide groups" would result in a compound which is "stable to dilute boiling phosphoric acid."38 This tying up process is the principle of the well-known tanning reaction, and is used similarly to retard cadaver decay. "In general, reaction with formaldehyde hardens proteins, decreases their water-sensitivity, and increases their resistance to the action of chemical reagents and enzymes."39 Survival of proteins in the soup would have been difficult indeed."

Footnote:

"It is interesting to note that in certain abnormal situations, such as diabetes, the carbonyl group of glucose will form chemical bonds with the amino group of cellular proteins, a process called glycosylation. (See A.L. Notkins, 1975. Sci. Amer. 241,62.)" [Not so good for life!]

Bottom line: carboxylic acids will react with peptides and stop further polymerization. Also the carbonyl group (CO double bonded) in sugars will react with the amino group (NH2) in peptides (and in amines in general). Both sugars (as in RNA) and amines (as in amino acids) are required for life and yet they interact and, in effect: destroy each other!

to be continued later. I'll give you all a chance to review the actual evidence in chemistry relevant to the origin of life and specifically to Miller's experiment.

Again, one needs an intelligent chemist (e.g. God) to create life - and human chemists are inferior creators and cannot create life. Some attribute the attributes of God to Chance! Not a chance!

Actually, we find that supernaturalism is not a requirement for life on the planet.

Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained a massive number of chemicals that reacted with each other more or less randomly, and it is unclear how the complexity of cells could have emerged from such chemical chaos. Now, a team led by Tony Z. Jia at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and Kuhan Chandru of the National University of Malaysia has shown that simple α-hydroxy acids, like glycolic and lactic acid, spontaneously polymerize and self-assemble into polyester microdroplets when dried at moderate temperatures followed by rehydration. This could be what happened along primitive beaches and river banks, or in drying puddles. These form a new type of cell-like compartment that can trap and concentrate biomolecules like nucleic acids and proteins. These droplets, unlike most modern cells, are able to merge and reform easily, and thus could have hosted versatile early genetic and metabolic systems potentially critical for the origins of life.


All life on Earth is made up of cells. Cells are composed of lipids, proteins and nucleic acids, with the lipid forming the cell membrane, an enclosure that keeps the other components together and interfaces with the environment, exchanging food and waste. How molecular assemblages as complex as cells originally formed remains a mystery.

Most origins of life research focuses on how the molecules and structures of life were produced by the environment, and then assembled into structures that led to the first cells. However, there were likely many other types of molecules that formed alongside biomolecules on early Earth, and it is possible that life started using very simple chemistry unrelated to modern biomolecules, then evolved through increasingly complex stages to give rise to the structures found in modern cells.

Previous work conducted at ELSI showed that moderate temperature drying of the simple organic compounds known as alpha-hydroxy acids, which are found in meteorites and many simulations of prebiological chemistry, spontaneously polymerizes them into mixtures of long polyesters. Building on this work, Jia and colleagues took the next step and examined these reactions under the microscope, and found that these mixed polyester systems form a gel phase and spontaneously self-assemble when rewetted to form simple cell-like structures.

The most challenging aspect of this work was devising new methods to characterize the droplets' properties and functions, as no one had analyzed such systems before. Jia noted that the team was fortunate to have such a diversity of multidisciplinary expertise, including chemists, biochemists, materials scientists and geologists. After determining their composition and showing their propensity to self-assemble, the next question was whether these cell-like structures might be able to do something chemically useful. Modern cell membranes perform many crucial functions that help maintain the cell, for example, retaining macromolecules and metabolites in one place, as well as providing a constant internal environment, which can be very different from the one outside the cell. They first measured how stable these structures were and found they could persist for very long periods depending on the environmental conditions, but could also be made to merge and coalesce.

They then tested the ability of these structures to sequester molecules from the environment and found they accumulated large dye molecules to a remarkable degree. They then showed that these droplets could also host RNA and protein molecules and still permit them to be functionally catalytic. Further, the team showed that the droplets could assist in the formation of a lipid layer on their surface, suggesting they could have helped scaffold protocell formation.


Jia and colleagues are not certain these structures are the direct ancestors of cells, but they think it is possible such droplets could have enabled the assembly of protocells on Earth. The new compartmentalization system they have found is extremely simple, they note, and could form easily in primitive environments throughout the universe. Says Jia, "This allows us to imagine non-biological systems on early Earth that could still have had a hand in the origins of life. This suggests there may be many other non-biological systems that should be targets of future investigations of this type." He thinks the development of these or similar model systems could allow better study of the evolution of diverse chemical systems representative of the complex chemistries likely to be found on primitive planetary bodies.

"The early Earth was certainly a messy place chemically," Jia explains, "and often, most origins of life studies focus on modern biomolecules under relatively 'clean' conditions. Perhaps it is important to take these 'messy' mixtures and see if there are interesting functions or structures that can arise from them spontaneously." The authors now think that by systematically increasing the chemical complexity of such systems, they will be able to observe how they evolve over time and possibly discover divergent and emergent properties.

"We have this new experimental system we can now play with, so we can start to study phenomena like evolution and evolvability of these droplets. The possible combinations of structures or functions these droplets might have are almost endless. If the physical rules that govern the formation of droplets are fairly universal in nature, then we hope to study similar systems to discover whether they also can form microdroplets with novel properties," adds Jia.

Finally, while the team is presently focused on understanding the origins of life, they note this basic research could have applications in other areas, for example, drug delivery and personalized medicine. "This is just a wonderful example of the unexpected ways projects can develop when a team of diverse scientists from around the world come together to try and understand new and interesting phenomena," said team member Jim Cleaves, also of ELSI.

Scientists discover new chemistry that may help explain the origins of cellular life

Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained a massive number of chemicals that reacted with each other more or less randomly, and it is unclear how the complexity of cells could have emerged from such chemical chaos. Now, a team led by Tony Z. Jia at the Tokyo Institute of...

phys.org

"Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained "
Curious...Where did the environment come from?

Amun Ra. Obviously.

Bowel cleasning?

Science has a solution for your problem.

But you don't have any Links to these "solutions"?
Fact...Every scientist on YouTube, when asked where the first piece of matter came about, always answers, "It's almost as though a god created it".
By the way, the only time anyone in a scientists audience can even ask this blasphemous question is when an atheist scientist is debating an Orthodox Jewish scientist.
If this question comes up in from of any other audience the person is jeered, ridiculed and removed from the room.

Try asking a college professor and you'll get an F.

Your facts are rather absent facts.

I will have to presume that you have never attended college or a public lecture on the subject.
Fair enough.

If you say so.

Ad hominem...
What process, devoid of any matter whatsoever, produced the first particle?

I don't know.

What process, assuming magic, produced the first gods?

 

[Indeependent]

As noted fatty acids were also produced in Miller's experiment (most sources ignore this). "
a carboxylic acid consisting of a hydrocarbon chain and a terminal carboxyl group ....
a fatty acid is a carboxylic acid with a long aliphatic chain, which is either saturated or unsaturated."

I posted above about carboxylic acids in general. The carboxyl group is a carbon atom double bonded to an Oxygen atom and single bonded to to a hydroxyl group (-OH). A hydrocarbon is a molecule with Hydrogen and Carbon (e.g. Methane = CH4). An aliphatic chain consists of hydrocarbons that form an open chain as in fatty acids and alkanes to be distinguished from hydrocarbon chains which form rings instead of open chains. Alkanes are saturated hydrocarbons like methane (CH4), ethane (C2H6) and propane (C3H8). Saturated hydrocarbons have single bonds between hydrogen atoms - the highest possible number of hydrogen atoms (e.g. methane/CH4) while unsaturated hydrocarbons have double or triple bonds between adjacent carbon atoms and thus can have hydrogen atoms added to make the compound saturated.

More from the Thaxton et al link concerning carboxylic acids from page 55:

"In a similar fashion, growing polypeptides would be terminated by reactions with amines, aldehydes, ketones, reducing sugars* or carboxylic acids. If by some remote chance a true protein did develop in the ocean, its viability would be predictably of short duration. For example, formaldehyde would readily react with free amino groups to form methylene cross-linkages between proteins.37 This would tie up certain reactive sites, and retard the reaction of protein with other chemical agents. To illustrate, "irreversible combination of formaldehyde with asparagine amide groups" would result in a compound which is "stable to dilute boiling phosphoric acid."38 This tying up process is the principle of the well-known tanning reaction, and is used similarly to retard cadaver decay. "In general, reaction with formaldehyde hardens proteins, decreases their water-sensitivity, and increases their resistance to the action of chemical reagents and enzymes."39 Survival of proteins in the soup would have been difficult indeed."

Footnote:

"It is interesting to note that in certain abnormal situations, such as diabetes, the carbonyl group of glucose will form chemical bonds with the amino group of cellular proteins, a process called glycosylation. (See A.L. Notkins, 1975. Sci. Amer. 241,62.)" [Not so good for life!]

Bottom line: carboxylic acids will react with peptides and stop further polymerization. Also the carbonyl group (CO double bonded) in sugars will react with the amino group (NH2) in peptides (and in amines in general). Both sugars (as in RNA) and amines (as in amino acids) are required for life and yet they interact and, in effect: destroy each other!

to be continued later. I'll give you all a chance to review the actual evidence in chemistry relevant to the origin of life and specifically to Miller's experiment.

Again, one needs an intelligent chemist (e.g. God) to create life - and human chemists are inferior creators and cannot create life. Some attribute the attributes of God to Chance! Not a chance!

Actually, we find that supernaturalism is not a requirement for life on the planet.

Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained a massive number of chemicals that reacted with each other more or less randomly, and it is unclear how the complexity of cells could have emerged from such chemical chaos. Now, a team led by Tony Z. Jia at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and Kuhan Chandru of the National University of Malaysia has shown that simple α-hydroxy acids, like glycolic and lactic acid, spontaneously polymerize and self-assemble into polyester microdroplets when dried at moderate temperatures followed by rehydration. This could be what happened along primitive beaches and river banks, or in drying puddles. These form a new type of cell-like compartment that can trap and concentrate biomolecules like nucleic acids and proteins. These droplets, unlike most modern cells, are able to merge and reform easily, and thus could have hosted versatile early genetic and metabolic systems potentially critical for the origins of life.


All life on Earth is made up of cells. Cells are composed of lipids, proteins and nucleic acids, with the lipid forming the cell membrane, an enclosure that keeps the other components together and interfaces with the environment, exchanging food and waste. How molecular assemblages as complex as cells originally formed remains a mystery.

Most origins of life research focuses on how the molecules and structures of life were produced by the environment, and then assembled into structures that led to the first cells. However, there were likely many other types of molecules that formed alongside biomolecules on early Earth, and it is possible that life started using very simple chemistry unrelated to modern biomolecules, then evolved through increasingly complex stages to give rise to the structures found in modern cells.

Previous work conducted at ELSI showed that moderate temperature drying of the simple organic compounds known as alpha-hydroxy acids, which are found in meteorites and many simulations of prebiological chemistry, spontaneously polymerizes them into mixtures of long polyesters. Building on this work, Jia and colleagues took the next step and examined these reactions under the microscope, and found that these mixed polyester systems form a gel phase and spontaneously self-assemble when rewetted to form simple cell-like structures.

The most challenging aspect of this work was devising new methods to characterize the droplets' properties and functions, as no one had analyzed such systems before. Jia noted that the team was fortunate to have such a diversity of multidisciplinary expertise, including chemists, biochemists, materials scientists and geologists. After determining their composition and showing their propensity to self-assemble, the next question was whether these cell-like structures might be able to do something chemically useful. Modern cell membranes perform many crucial functions that help maintain the cell, for example, retaining macromolecules and metabolites in one place, as well as providing a constant internal environment, which can be very different from the one outside the cell. They first measured how stable these structures were and found they could persist for very long periods depending on the environmental conditions, but could also be made to merge and coalesce.

They then tested the ability of these structures to sequester molecules from the environment and found they accumulated large dye molecules to a remarkable degree. They then showed that these droplets could also host RNA and protein molecules and still permit them to be functionally catalytic. Further, the team showed that the droplets could assist in the formation of a lipid layer on their surface, suggesting they could have helped scaffold protocell formation.


Jia and colleagues are not certain these structures are the direct ancestors of cells, but they think it is possible such droplets could have enabled the assembly of protocells on Earth. The new compartmentalization system they have found is extremely simple, they note, and could form easily in primitive environments throughout the universe. Says Jia, "This allows us to imagine non-biological systems on early Earth that could still have had a hand in the origins of life. This suggests there may be many other non-biological systems that should be targets of future investigations of this type." He thinks the development of these or similar model systems could allow better study of the evolution of diverse chemical systems representative of the complex chemistries likely to be found on primitive planetary bodies.

"The early Earth was certainly a messy place chemically," Jia explains, "and often, most origins of life studies focus on modern biomolecules under relatively 'clean' conditions. Perhaps it is important to take these 'messy' mixtures and see if there are interesting functions or structures that can arise from them spontaneously." The authors now think that by systematically increasing the chemical complexity of such systems, they will be able to observe how they evolve over time and possibly discover divergent and emergent properties.

"We have this new experimental system we can now play with, so we can start to study phenomena like evolution and evolvability of these droplets. The possible combinations of structures or functions these droplets might have are almost endless. If the physical rules that govern the formation of droplets are fairly universal in nature, then we hope to study similar systems to discover whether they also can form microdroplets with novel properties," adds Jia.

Finally, while the team is presently focused on understanding the origins of life, they note this basic research could have applications in other areas, for example, drug delivery and personalized medicine. "This is just a wonderful example of the unexpected ways projects can develop when a team of diverse scientists from around the world come together to try and understand new and interesting phenomena," said team member Jim Cleaves, also of ELSI.

Scientists discover new chemistry that may help explain the origins of cellular life

Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained a massive number of chemicals that reacted with each other more or less randomly, and it is unclear how the complexity of cells could have emerged from such chemical chaos. Now, a team led by Tony Z. Jia at the Tokyo Institute of...

phys.org

"Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained "
Curious...Where did the environment come from?

Amun Ra. Obviously.

Bowel cleasning?

Science has a solution for your problem.

But you don't have any Links to these "solutions"?
Fact...Every scientist on YouTube, when asked where the first piece of matter came about, always answers, "It's almost as though a god created it".
By the way, the only time anyone in a scientists audience can even ask this blasphemous question is when an atheist scientist is debating an Orthodox Jewish scientist.
If this question comes up in from of any other audience the person is jeered, ridiculed and removed from the room.

Try asking a college professor and you'll get an F.

Your facts are rather absent facts.

I will have to presume that you have never attended college or a public lecture on the subject.
Fair enough.

If you say so.

Ad hominem...
What process, devoid of any matter whatsoever, produced the first particle?

I don't know.

What process, assuming magic, produced the first gods?

Why "gods"?
Why plural?
Why does it occur to you that an existence outside of our realm of existence is a plurality?
I think I know why...
You can't imagine "Something from what humans define as Nothing".

The essence of this discussion is that science is no closer to understanding matter from a compete absence of matter than it was yesterday or 1,000 years ago.
And science refuses to address that issue.

 

[Hollie]

As noted fatty acids were also produced in Miller's experiment (most sources ignore this). "
a carboxylic acid consisting of a hydrocarbon chain and a terminal carboxyl group ....
a fatty acid is a carboxylic acid with a long aliphatic chain, which is either saturated or unsaturated."

I posted above about carboxylic acids in general. The carboxyl group is a carbon atom double bonded to an Oxygen atom and single bonded to to a hydroxyl group (-OH). A hydrocarbon is a molecule with Hydrogen and Carbon (e.g. Methane = CH4). An aliphatic chain consists of hydrocarbons that form an open chain as in fatty acids and alkanes to be distinguished from hydrocarbon chains which form rings instead of open chains. Alkanes are saturated hydrocarbons like methane (CH4), ethane (C2H6) and propane (C3H8). Saturated hydrocarbons have single bonds between hydrogen atoms - the highest possible number of hydrogen atoms (e.g. methane/CH4) while unsaturated hydrocarbons have double or triple bonds between adjacent carbon atoms and thus can have hydrogen atoms added to make the compound saturated.

More from the Thaxton et al link concerning carboxylic acids from page 55:

"In a similar fashion, growing polypeptides would be terminated by reactions with amines, aldehydes, ketones, reducing sugars* or carboxylic acids. If by some remote chance a true protein did develop in the ocean, its viability would be predictably of short duration. For example, formaldehyde would readily react with free amino groups to form methylene cross-linkages between proteins.37 This would tie up certain reactive sites, and retard the reaction of protein with other chemical agents. To illustrate, "irreversible combination of formaldehyde with asparagine amide groups" would result in a compound which is "stable to dilute boiling phosphoric acid."38 This tying up process is the principle of the well-known tanning reaction, and is used similarly to retard cadaver decay. "In general, reaction with formaldehyde hardens proteins, decreases their water-sensitivity, and increases their resistance to the action of chemical reagents and enzymes."39 Survival of proteins in the soup would have been difficult indeed."

Footnote:

"It is interesting to note that in certain abnormal situations, such as diabetes, the carbonyl group of glucose will form chemical bonds with the amino group of cellular proteins, a process called glycosylation. (See A.L. Notkins, 1975. Sci. Amer. 241,62.)" [Not so good for life!]

Bottom line: carboxylic acids will react with peptides and stop further polymerization. Also the carbonyl group (CO double bonded) in sugars will react with the amino group (NH2) in peptides (and in amines in general). Both sugars (as in RNA) and amines (as in amino acids) are required for life and yet they interact and, in effect: destroy each other!

to be continued later. I'll give you all a chance to review the actual evidence in chemistry relevant to the origin of life and specifically to Miller's experiment.

Again, one needs an intelligent chemist (e.g. God) to create life - and human chemists are inferior creators and cannot create life. Some attribute the attributes of God to Chance! Not a chance!

Actually, we find that supernaturalism is not a requirement for life on the planet.

Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained a massive number of chemicals that reacted with each other more or less randomly, and it is unclear how the complexity of cells could have emerged from such chemical chaos. Now, a team led by Tony Z. Jia at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and Kuhan Chandru of the National University of Malaysia has shown that simple α-hydroxy acids, like glycolic and lactic acid, spontaneously polymerize and self-assemble into polyester microdroplets when dried at moderate temperatures followed by rehydration. This could be what happened along primitive beaches and river banks, or in drying puddles. These form a new type of cell-like compartment that can trap and concentrate biomolecules like nucleic acids and proteins. These droplets, unlike most modern cells, are able to merge and reform easily, and thus could have hosted versatile early genetic and metabolic systems potentially critical for the origins of life.


All life on Earth is made up of cells. Cells are composed of lipids, proteins and nucleic acids, with the lipid forming the cell membrane, an enclosure that keeps the other components together and interfaces with the environment, exchanging food and waste. How molecular assemblages as complex as cells originally formed remains a mystery.

Most origins of life research focuses on how the molecules and structures of life were produced by the environment, and then assembled into structures that led to the first cells. However, there were likely many other types of molecules that formed alongside biomolecules on early Earth, and it is possible that life started using very simple chemistry unrelated to modern biomolecules, then evolved through increasingly complex stages to give rise to the structures found in modern cells.

Previous work conducted at ELSI showed that moderate temperature drying of the simple organic compounds known as alpha-hydroxy acids, which are found in meteorites and many simulations of prebiological chemistry, spontaneously polymerizes them into mixtures of long polyesters. Building on this work, Jia and colleagues took the next step and examined these reactions under the microscope, and found that these mixed polyester systems form a gel phase and spontaneously self-assemble when rewetted to form simple cell-like structures.

The most challenging aspect of this work was devising new methods to characterize the droplets' properties and functions, as no one had analyzed such systems before. Jia noted that the team was fortunate to have such a diversity of multidisciplinary expertise, including chemists, biochemists, materials scientists and geologists. After determining their composition and showing their propensity to self-assemble, the next question was whether these cell-like structures might be able to do something chemically useful. Modern cell membranes perform many crucial functions that help maintain the cell, for example, retaining macromolecules and metabolites in one place, as well as providing a constant internal environment, which can be very different from the one outside the cell. They first measured how stable these structures were and found they could persist for very long periods depending on the environmental conditions, but could also be made to merge and coalesce.

They then tested the ability of these structures to sequester molecules from the environment and found they accumulated large dye molecules to a remarkable degree. They then showed that these droplets could also host RNA and protein molecules and still permit them to be functionally catalytic. Further, the team showed that the droplets could assist in the formation of a lipid layer on their surface, suggesting they could have helped scaffold protocell formation.


Jia and colleagues are not certain these structures are the direct ancestors of cells, but they think it is possible such droplets could have enabled the assembly of protocells on Earth. The new compartmentalization system they have found is extremely simple, they note, and could form easily in primitive environments throughout the universe. Says Jia, "This allows us to imagine non-biological systems on early Earth that could still have had a hand in the origins of life. This suggests there may be many other non-biological systems that should be targets of future investigations of this type." He thinks the development of these or similar model systems could allow better study of the evolution of diverse chemical systems representative of the complex chemistries likely to be found on primitive planetary bodies.

"The early Earth was certainly a messy place chemically," Jia explains, "and often, most origins of life studies focus on modern biomolecules under relatively 'clean' conditions. Perhaps it is important to take these 'messy' mixtures and see if there are interesting functions or structures that can arise from them spontaneously." The authors now think that by systematically increasing the chemical complexity of such systems, they will be able to observe how they evolve over time and possibly discover divergent and emergent properties.

"We have this new experimental system we can now play with, so we can start to study phenomena like evolution and evolvability of these droplets. The possible combinations of structures or functions these droplets might have are almost endless. If the physical rules that govern the formation of droplets are fairly universal in nature, then we hope to study similar systems to discover whether they also can form microdroplets with novel properties," adds Jia.

Finally, while the team is presently focused on understanding the origins of life, they note this basic research could have applications in other areas, for example, drug delivery and personalized medicine. "This is just a wonderful example of the unexpected ways projects can develop when a team of diverse scientists from around the world come together to try and understand new and interesting phenomena," said team member Jim Cleaves, also of ELSI.

Scientists discover new chemistry that may help explain the origins of cellular life

Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained a massive number of chemicals that reacted with each other more or less randomly, and it is unclear how the complexity of cells could have emerged from such chemical chaos. Now, a team led by Tony Z. Jia at the Tokyo Institute of...

phys.org

"Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained "
Curious...Where did the environment come from?

Curious...Where did the environment come from?

.
one thing is certain, there was not a lack of light ...

View attachment 331846

primordial Earth. not a lot of water either. maybe it came in stages. oh, that must be the hours in a day. is that written in hebrew too.

In deference to Hollie, I will address this issue from the POV of science.

You mean YouTube?

No...science.
I will presume you have a PhD in some realm of hard science.
I do no, and I won't pretend on any message board that I do.

As noted fatty acids were also produced in Miller's experiment (most sources ignore this). "
a carboxylic acid consisting of a hydrocarbon chain and a terminal carboxyl group ....
a fatty acid is a carboxylic acid with a long aliphatic chain, which is either saturated or unsaturated."

I posted above about carboxylic acids in general. The carboxyl group is a carbon atom double bonded to an Oxygen atom and single bonded to to a hydroxyl group (-OH). A hydrocarbon is a molecule with Hydrogen and Carbon (e.g. Methane = CH4). An aliphatic chain consists of hydrocarbons that form an open chain as in fatty acids and alkanes to be distinguished from hydrocarbon chains which form rings instead of open chains. Alkanes are saturated hydrocarbons like methane (CH4), ethane (C2H6) and propane (C3H8). Saturated hydrocarbons have single bonds between hydrogen atoms - the highest possible number of hydrogen atoms (e.g. methane/CH4) while unsaturated hydrocarbons have double or triple bonds between adjacent carbon atoms and thus can have hydrogen atoms added to make the compound saturated.

More from the Thaxton et al link concerning carboxylic acids from page 55:

"In a similar fashion, growing polypeptides would be terminated by reactions with amines, aldehydes, ketones, reducing sugars* or carboxylic acids. If by some remote chance a true protein did develop in the ocean, its viability would be predictably of short duration. For example, formaldehyde would readily react with free amino groups to form methylene cross-linkages between proteins.37 This would tie up certain reactive sites, and retard the reaction of protein with other chemical agents. To illustrate, "irreversible combination of formaldehyde with asparagine amide groups" would result in a compound which is "stable to dilute boiling phosphoric acid."38 This tying up process is the principle of the well-known tanning reaction, and is used similarly to retard cadaver decay. "In general, reaction with formaldehyde hardens proteins, decreases their water-sensitivity, and increases their resistance to the action of chemical reagents and enzymes."39 Survival of proteins in the soup would have been difficult indeed."

Footnote:

"It is interesting to note that in certain abnormal situations, such as diabetes, the carbonyl group of glucose will form chemical bonds with the amino group of cellular proteins, a process called glycosylation. (See A.L. Notkins, 1975. Sci. Amer. 241,62.)" [Not so good for life!]

Bottom line: carboxylic acids will react with peptides and stop further polymerization. Also the carbonyl group (CO double bonded) in sugars will react with the amino group (NH2) in peptides (and in amines in general). Both sugars (as in RNA) and amines (as in amino acids) are required for life and yet they interact and, in effect: destroy each other!

to be continued later. I'll give you all a chance to review the actual evidence in chemistry relevant to the origin of life and specifically to Miller's experiment.

Again, one needs an intelligent chemist (e.g. God) to create life - and human chemists are inferior creators and cannot create life. Some attribute the attributes of God to Chance! Not a chance!

Actually, we find that supernaturalism is not a requirement for life on the planet.

Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained a massive number of chemicals that reacted with each other more or less randomly, and it is unclear how the complexity of cells could have emerged from such chemical chaos. Now, a team led by Tony Z. Jia at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and Kuhan Chandru of the National University of Malaysia has shown that simple α-hydroxy acids, like glycolic and lactic acid, spontaneously polymerize and self-assemble into polyester microdroplets when dried at moderate temperatures followed by rehydration. This could be what happened along primitive beaches and river banks, or in drying puddles. These form a new type of cell-like compartment that can trap and concentrate biomolecules like nucleic acids and proteins. These droplets, unlike most modern cells, are able to merge and reform easily, and thus could have hosted versatile early genetic and metabolic systems potentially critical for the origins of life.


All life on Earth is made up of cells. Cells are composed of lipids, proteins and nucleic acids, with the lipid forming the cell membrane, an enclosure that keeps the other components together and interfaces with the environment, exchanging food and waste. How molecular assemblages as complex as cells originally formed remains a mystery.

Most origins of life research focuses on how the molecules and structures of life were produced by the environment, and then assembled into structures that led to the first cells. However, there were likely many other types of molecules that formed alongside biomolecules on early Earth, and it is possible that life started using very simple chemistry unrelated to modern biomolecules, then evolved through increasingly complex stages to give rise to the structures found in modern cells.

Previous work conducted at ELSI showed that moderate temperature drying of the simple organic compounds known as alpha-hydroxy acids, which are found in meteorites and many simulations of prebiological chemistry, spontaneously polymerizes them into mixtures of long polyesters. Building on this work, Jia and colleagues took the next step and examined these reactions under the microscope, and found that these mixed polyester systems form a gel phase and spontaneously self-assemble when rewetted to form simple cell-like structures.

The most challenging aspect of this work was devising new methods to characterize the droplets' properties and functions, as no one had analyzed such systems before. Jia noted that the team was fortunate to have such a diversity of multidisciplinary expertise, including chemists, biochemists, materials scientists and geologists. After determining their composition and showing their propensity to self-assemble, the next question was whether these cell-like structures might be able to do something chemically useful. Modern cell membranes perform many crucial functions that help maintain the cell, for example, retaining macromolecules and metabolites in one place, as well as providing a constant internal environment, which can be very different from the one outside the cell. They first measured how stable these structures were and found they could persist for very long periods depending on the environmental conditions, but could also be made to merge and coalesce.

They then tested the ability of these structures to sequester molecules from the environment and found they accumulated large dye molecules to a remarkable degree. They then showed that these droplets could also host RNA and protein molecules and still permit them to be functionally catalytic. Further, the team showed that the droplets could assist in the formation of a lipid layer on their surface, suggesting they could have helped scaffold protocell formation.


Jia and colleagues are not certain these structures are the direct ancestors of cells, but they think it is possible such droplets could have enabled the assembly of protocells on Earth. The new compartmentalization system they have found is extremely simple, they note, and could form easily in primitive environments throughout the universe. Says Jia, "This allows us to imagine non-biological systems on early Earth that could still have had a hand in the origins of life. This suggests there may be many other non-biological systems that should be targets of future investigations of this type." He thinks the development of these or similar model systems could allow better study of the evolution of diverse chemical systems representative of the complex chemistries likely to be found on primitive planetary bodies.

"The early Earth was certainly a messy place chemically," Jia explains, "and often, most origins of life studies focus on modern biomolecules under relatively 'clean' conditions. Perhaps it is important to take these 'messy' mixtures and see if there are interesting functions or structures that can arise from them spontaneously." The authors now think that by systematically increasing the chemical complexity of such systems, they will be able to observe how they evolve over time and possibly discover divergent and emergent properties.

"We have this new experimental system we can now play with, so we can start to study phenomena like evolution and evolvability of these droplets. The possible combinations of structures or functions these droplets might have are almost endless. If the physical rules that govern the formation of droplets are fairly universal in nature, then we hope to study similar systems to discover whether they also can form microdroplets with novel properties," adds Jia.

Finally, while the team is presently focused on understanding the origins of life, they note this basic research could have applications in other areas, for example, drug delivery and personalized medicine. "This is just a wonderful example of the unexpected ways projects can develop when a team of diverse scientists from around the world come together to try and understand new and interesting phenomena," said team member Jim Cleaves, also of ELSI.

Scientists discover new chemistry that may help explain the origins of cellular life

Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained a massive number of chemicals that reacted with each other more or less randomly, and it is unclear how the complexity of cells could have emerged from such chemical chaos. Now, a team led by Tony Z. Jia at the Tokyo Institute of...

phys.org

"Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained "
Curious...Where did the environment come from?

Amun Ra. Obviously.

Bowel cleasning?

Science has a solution for your problem.

But you don't have any Links to these "solutions"?
Fact...Every scientist on YouTube, when asked where the first piece of matter came about, always answers, "It's almost as though a god created it".
By the way, the only time anyone in a scientists audience can even ask this blasphemous question is when an atheist scientist is debating an Orthodox Jewish scientist.
If this question comes up in from of any other audience the person is jeered, ridiculed and removed from the room.

Try asking a college professor and you'll get an F.

Your facts are rather absent facts.

I will have to presume that you have never attended college or a public lecture on the subject.
Fair enough.

If you say so.

Ad hominem...
What process, devoid of any matter whatsoever, produced the first particle?

I don't know.

What process, assuming magic, produced the first gods?

Why "gods"?
Why plural?
Why does it occur to you that an existence outside of our realm of existence is a plurality?
I think I know why...
You can't imagine "Something from what humans define as Nothing".

The essence of this discussion is that science is no closer to understanding matter from a compete absence of matter than it was yesterday or 1,000 years ago.
And science refuses to address that issue.

No need to concern yourself. The gawds did it. End of discussion.

 

[Indeependent]

As noted fatty acids were also produced in Miller's experiment (most sources ignore this). "
a carboxylic acid consisting of a hydrocarbon chain and a terminal carboxyl group ....
a fatty acid is a carboxylic acid with a long aliphatic chain, which is either saturated or unsaturated."

I posted above about carboxylic acids in general. The carboxyl group is a carbon atom double bonded to an Oxygen atom and single bonded to to a hydroxyl group (-OH). A hydrocarbon is a molecule with Hydrogen and Carbon (e.g. Methane = CH4). An aliphatic chain consists of hydrocarbons that form an open chain as in fatty acids and alkanes to be distinguished from hydrocarbon chains which form rings instead of open chains. Alkanes are saturated hydrocarbons like methane (CH4), ethane (C2H6) and propane (C3H8). Saturated hydrocarbons have single bonds between hydrogen atoms - the highest possible number of hydrogen atoms (e.g. methane/CH4) while unsaturated hydrocarbons have double or triple bonds between adjacent carbon atoms and thus can have hydrogen atoms added to make the compound saturated.

More from the Thaxton et al link concerning carboxylic acids from page 55:

"In a similar fashion, growing polypeptides would be terminated by reactions with amines, aldehydes, ketones, reducing sugars* or carboxylic acids. If by some remote chance a true protein did develop in the ocean, its viability would be predictably of short duration. For example, formaldehyde would readily react with free amino groups to form methylene cross-linkages between proteins.37 This would tie up certain reactive sites, and retard the reaction of protein with other chemical agents. To illustrate, "irreversible combination of formaldehyde with asparagine amide groups" would result in a compound which is "stable to dilute boiling phosphoric acid."38 This tying up process is the principle of the well-known tanning reaction, and is used similarly to retard cadaver decay. "In general, reaction with formaldehyde hardens proteins, decreases their water-sensitivity, and increases their resistance to the action of chemical reagents and enzymes."39 Survival of proteins in the soup would have been difficult indeed."

Footnote:

"It is interesting to note that in certain abnormal situations, such as diabetes, the carbonyl group of glucose will form chemical bonds with the amino group of cellular proteins, a process called glycosylation. (See A.L. Notkins, 1975. Sci. Amer. 241,62.)" [Not so good for life!]

Bottom line: carboxylic acids will react with peptides and stop further polymerization. Also the carbonyl group (CO double bonded) in sugars will react with the amino group (NH2) in peptides (and in amines in general). Both sugars (as in RNA) and amines (as in amino acids) are required for life and yet they interact and, in effect: destroy each other!

to be continued later. I'll give you all a chance to review the actual evidence in chemistry relevant to the origin of life and specifically to Miller's experiment.

Again, one needs an intelligent chemist (e.g. God) to create life - and human chemists are inferior creators and cannot create life. Some attribute the attributes of God to Chance! Not a chance!

Actually, we find that supernaturalism is not a requirement for life on the planet.

Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained a massive number of chemicals that reacted with each other more or less randomly, and it is unclear how the complexity of cells could have emerged from such chemical chaos. Now, a team led by Tony Z. Jia at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and Kuhan Chandru of the National University of Malaysia has shown that simple α-hydroxy acids, like glycolic and lactic acid, spontaneously polymerize and self-assemble into polyester microdroplets when dried at moderate temperatures followed by rehydration. This could be what happened along primitive beaches and river banks, or in drying puddles. These form a new type of cell-like compartment that can trap and concentrate biomolecules like nucleic acids and proteins. These droplets, unlike most modern cells, are able to merge and reform easily, and thus could have hosted versatile early genetic and metabolic systems potentially critical for the origins of life.


All life on Earth is made up of cells. Cells are composed of lipids, proteins and nucleic acids, with the lipid forming the cell membrane, an enclosure that keeps the other components together and interfaces with the environment, exchanging food and waste. How molecular assemblages as complex as cells originally formed remains a mystery.

Most origins of life research focuses on how the molecules and structures of life were produced by the environment, and then assembled into structures that led to the first cells. However, there were likely many other types of molecules that formed alongside biomolecules on early Earth, and it is possible that life started using very simple chemistry unrelated to modern biomolecules, then evolved through increasingly complex stages to give rise to the structures found in modern cells.

Previous work conducted at ELSI showed that moderate temperature drying of the simple organic compounds known as alpha-hydroxy acids, which are found in meteorites and many simulations of prebiological chemistry, spontaneously polymerizes them into mixtures of long polyesters. Building on this work, Jia and colleagues took the next step and examined these reactions under the microscope, and found that these mixed polyester systems form a gel phase and spontaneously self-assemble when rewetted to form simple cell-like structures.

The most challenging aspect of this work was devising new methods to characterize the droplets' properties and functions, as no one had analyzed such systems before. Jia noted that the team was fortunate to have such a diversity of multidisciplinary expertise, including chemists, biochemists, materials scientists and geologists. After determining their composition and showing their propensity to self-assemble, the next question was whether these cell-like structures might be able to do something chemically useful. Modern cell membranes perform many crucial functions that help maintain the cell, for example, retaining macromolecules and metabolites in one place, as well as providing a constant internal environment, which can be very different from the one outside the cell. They first measured how stable these structures were and found they could persist for very long periods depending on the environmental conditions, but could also be made to merge and coalesce.

They then tested the ability of these structures to sequester molecules from the environment and found they accumulated large dye molecules to a remarkable degree. They then showed that these droplets could also host RNA and protein molecules and still permit them to be functionally catalytic. Further, the team showed that the droplets could assist in the formation of a lipid layer on their surface, suggesting they could have helped scaffold protocell formation.


Jia and colleagues are not certain these structures are the direct ancestors of cells, but they think it is possible such droplets could have enabled the assembly of protocells on Earth. The new compartmentalization system they have found is extremely simple, they note, and could form easily in primitive environments throughout the universe. Says Jia, "This allows us to imagine non-biological systems on early Earth that could still have had a hand in the origins of life. This suggests there may be many other non-biological systems that should be targets of future investigations of this type." He thinks the development of these or similar model systems could allow better study of the evolution of diverse chemical systems representative of the complex chemistries likely to be found on primitive planetary bodies.

"The early Earth was certainly a messy place chemically," Jia explains, "and often, most origins of life studies focus on modern biomolecules under relatively 'clean' conditions. Perhaps it is important to take these 'messy' mixtures and see if there are interesting functions or structures that can arise from them spontaneously." The authors now think that by systematically increasing the chemical complexity of such systems, they will be able to observe how they evolve over time and possibly discover divergent and emergent properties.

"We have this new experimental system we can now play with, so we can start to study phenomena like evolution and evolvability of these droplets. The possible combinations of structures or functions these droplets might have are almost endless. If the physical rules that govern the formation of droplets are fairly universal in nature, then we hope to study similar systems to discover whether they also can form microdroplets with novel properties," adds Jia.

Finally, while the team is presently focused on understanding the origins of life, they note this basic research could have applications in other areas, for example, drug delivery and personalized medicine. "This is just a wonderful example of the unexpected ways projects can develop when a team of diverse scientists from around the world come together to try and understand new and interesting phenomena," said team member Jim Cleaves, also of ELSI.

Scientists discover new chemistry that may help explain the origins of cellular life

Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained a massive number of chemicals that reacted with each other more or less randomly, and it is unclear how the complexity of cells could have emerged from such chemical chaos. Now, a team led by Tony Z. Jia at the Tokyo Institute of...

phys.org

"Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained "
Curious...Where did the environment come from?

Curious...Where did the environment come from?

.
one thing is certain, there was not a lack of light ...

View attachment 331846

primordial Earth. not a lot of water either. maybe it came in stages. oh, that must be the hours in a day. is that written in hebrew too.

In deference to Hollie, I will address this issue from the POV of science.

You mean YouTube?

No...science.
I will presume you have a PhD in some realm of hard science.
I do no, and I won't pretend on any message board that I do.

As noted fatty acids were also produced in Miller's experiment (most sources ignore this). "
a carboxylic acid consisting of a hydrocarbon chain and a terminal carboxyl group ....
a fatty acid is a carboxylic acid with a long aliphatic chain, which is either saturated or unsaturated."

I posted above about carboxylic acids in general. The carboxyl group is a carbon atom double bonded to an Oxygen atom and single bonded to to a hydroxyl group (-OH). A hydrocarbon is a molecule with Hydrogen and Carbon (e.g. Methane = CH4). An aliphatic chain consists of hydrocarbons that form an open chain as in fatty acids and alkanes to be distinguished from hydrocarbon chains which form rings instead of open chains. Alkanes are saturated hydrocarbons like methane (CH4), ethane (C2H6) and propane (C3H8). Saturated hydrocarbons have single bonds between hydrogen atoms - the highest possible number of hydrogen atoms (e.g. methane/CH4) while unsaturated hydrocarbons have double or triple bonds between adjacent carbon atoms and thus can have hydrogen atoms added to make the compound saturated.

More from the Thaxton et al link concerning carboxylic acids from page 55:

"In a similar fashion, growing polypeptides would be terminated by reactions with amines, aldehydes, ketones, reducing sugars* or carboxylic acids. If by some remote chance a true protein did develop in the ocean, its viability would be predictably of short duration. For example, formaldehyde would readily react with free amino groups to form methylene cross-linkages between proteins.37 This would tie up certain reactive sites, and retard the reaction of protein with other chemical agents. To illustrate, "irreversible combination of formaldehyde with asparagine amide groups" would result in a compound which is "stable to dilute boiling phosphoric acid."38 This tying up process is the principle of the well-known tanning reaction, and is used similarly to retard cadaver decay. "In general, reaction with formaldehyde hardens proteins, decreases their water-sensitivity, and increases their resistance to the action of chemical reagents and enzymes."39 Survival of proteins in the soup would have been difficult indeed."

Footnote:

"It is interesting to note that in certain abnormal situations, such as diabetes, the carbonyl group of glucose will form chemical bonds with the amino group of cellular proteins, a process called glycosylation. (See A.L. Notkins, 1975. Sci. Amer. 241,62.)" [Not so good for life!]

Bottom line: carboxylic acids will react with peptides and stop further polymerization. Also the carbonyl group (CO double bonded) in sugars will react with the amino group (NH2) in peptides (and in amines in general). Both sugars (as in RNA) and amines (as in amino acids) are required for life and yet they interact and, in effect: destroy each other!

to be continued later. I'll give you all a chance to review the actual evidence in chemistry relevant to the origin of life and specifically to Miller's experiment.

Again, one needs an intelligent chemist (e.g. God) to create life - and human chemists are inferior creators and cannot create life. Some attribute the attributes of God to Chance! Not a chance!

Actually, we find that supernaturalism is not a requirement for life on the planet.

Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained a massive number of chemicals that reacted with each other more or less randomly, and it is unclear how the complexity of cells could have emerged from such chemical chaos. Now, a team led by Tony Z. Jia at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and Kuhan Chandru of the National University of Malaysia has shown that simple α-hydroxy acids, like glycolic and lactic acid, spontaneously polymerize and self-assemble into polyester microdroplets when dried at moderate temperatures followed by rehydration. This could be what happened along primitive beaches and river banks, or in drying puddles. These form a new type of cell-like compartment that can trap and concentrate biomolecules like nucleic acids and proteins. These droplets, unlike most modern cells, are able to merge and reform easily, and thus could have hosted versatile early genetic and metabolic systems potentially critical for the origins of life.


All life on Earth is made up of cells. Cells are composed of lipids, proteins and nucleic acids, with the lipid forming the cell membrane, an enclosure that keeps the other components together and interfaces with the environment, exchanging food and waste. How molecular assemblages as complex as cells originally formed remains a mystery.

Most origins of life research focuses on how the molecules and structures of life were produced by the environment, and then assembled into structures that led to the first cells. However, there were likely many other types of molecules that formed alongside biomolecules on early Earth, and it is possible that life started using very simple chemistry unrelated to modern biomolecules, then evolved through increasingly complex stages to give rise to the structures found in modern cells.

Previous work conducted at ELSI showed that moderate temperature drying of the simple organic compounds known as alpha-hydroxy acids, which are found in meteorites and many simulations of prebiological chemistry, spontaneously polymerizes them into mixtures of long polyesters. Building on this work, Jia and colleagues took the next step and examined these reactions under the microscope, and found that these mixed polyester systems form a gel phase and spontaneously self-assemble when rewetted to form simple cell-like structures.

The most challenging aspect of this work was devising new methods to characterize the droplets' properties and functions, as no one had analyzed such systems before. Jia noted that the team was fortunate to have such a diversity of multidisciplinary expertise, including chemists, biochemists, materials scientists and geologists. After determining their composition and showing their propensity to self-assemble, the next question was whether these cell-like structures might be able to do something chemically useful. Modern cell membranes perform many crucial functions that help maintain the cell, for example, retaining macromolecules and metabolites in one place, as well as providing a constant internal environment, which can be very different from the one outside the cell. They first measured how stable these structures were and found they could persist for very long periods depending on the environmental conditions, but could also be made to merge and coalesce.

They then tested the ability of these structures to sequester molecules from the environment and found they accumulated large dye molecules to a remarkable degree. They then showed that these droplets could also host RNA and protein molecules and still permit them to be functionally catalytic. Further, the team showed that the droplets could assist in the formation of a lipid layer on their surface, suggesting they could have helped scaffold protocell formation.


Jia and colleagues are not certain these structures are the direct ancestors of cells, but they think it is possible such droplets could have enabled the assembly of protocells on Earth. The new compartmentalization system they have found is extremely simple, they note, and could form easily in primitive environments throughout the universe. Says Jia, "This allows us to imagine non-biological systems on early Earth that could still have had a hand in the origins of life. This suggests there may be many other non-biological systems that should be targets of future investigations of this type." He thinks the development of these or similar model systems could allow better study of the evolution of diverse chemical systems representative of the complex chemistries likely to be found on primitive planetary bodies.

"The early Earth was certainly a messy place chemically," Jia explains, "and often, most origins of life studies focus on modern biomolecules under relatively 'clean' conditions. Perhaps it is important to take these 'messy' mixtures and see if there are interesting functions or structures that can arise from them spontaneously." The authors now think that by systematically increasing the chemical complexity of such systems, they will be able to observe how they evolve over time and possibly discover divergent and emergent properties.

"We have this new experimental system we can now play with, so we can start to study phenomena like evolution and evolvability of these droplets. The possible combinations of structures or functions these droplets might have are almost endless. If the physical rules that govern the formation of droplets are fairly universal in nature, then we hope to study similar systems to discover whether they also can form microdroplets with novel properties," adds Jia.

Finally, while the team is presently focused on understanding the origins of life, they note this basic research could have applications in other areas, for example, drug delivery and personalized medicine. "This is just a wonderful example of the unexpected ways projects can develop when a team of diverse scientists from around the world come together to try and understand new and interesting phenomena," said team member Jim Cleaves, also of ELSI.

Scientists discover new chemistry that may help explain the origins of cellular life

Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained a massive number of chemicals that reacted with each other more or less randomly, and it is unclear how the complexity of cells could have emerged from such chemical chaos. Now, a team led by Tony Z. Jia at the Tokyo Institute of...

phys.org

"Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained "
Curious...Where did the environment come from?

Amun Ra. Obviously.

Bowel cleasning?

Science has a solution for your problem.

But you don't have any Links to these "solutions"?
Fact...Every scientist on YouTube, when asked where the first piece of matter came about, always answers, "It's almost as though a god created it".
By the way, the only time anyone in a scientists audience can even ask this blasphemous question is when an atheist scientist is debating an Orthodox Jewish scientist.
If this question comes up in from of any other audience the person is jeered, ridiculed and removed from the room.

Try asking a college professor and you'll get an F.

Your facts are rather absent facts.

I will have to presume that you have never attended college or a public lecture on the subject.
Fair enough.

If you say so.

Ad hominem...
What process, devoid of any matter whatsoever, produced the first particle?

I don't know.

What process, assuming magic, produced the first gods?

Why "gods"?
Why plural?
Why does it occur to you that an existence outside of our realm of existence is a plurality?
I think I know why...
You can't imagine "Something from what humans define as Nothing".

The essence of this discussion is that science is no closer to understanding matter from a compete absence of matter than it was yesterday or 1,000 years ago.
And science refuses to address that issue.

No need to concern yourself. The gawds did it. End of discussion.

You are not up to this discussion?
You can't find one video of a scientist discussing this issue?
You haven't tried hard enough to dismiss this.

 

[Hollie]

As noted fatty acids were also produced in Miller's experiment (most sources ignore this). "
a carboxylic acid consisting of a hydrocarbon chain and a terminal carboxyl group ....
a fatty acid is a carboxylic acid with a long aliphatic chain, which is either saturated or unsaturated."

I posted above about carboxylic acids in general. The carboxyl group is a carbon atom double bonded to an Oxygen atom and single bonded to to a hydroxyl group (-OH). A hydrocarbon is a molecule with Hydrogen and Carbon (e.g. Methane = CH4). An aliphatic chain consists of hydrocarbons that form an open chain as in fatty acids and alkanes to be distinguished from hydrocarbon chains which form rings instead of open chains. Alkanes are saturated hydrocarbons like methane (CH4), ethane (C2H6) and propane (C3H8). Saturated hydrocarbons have single bonds between hydrogen atoms - the highest possible number of hydrogen atoms (e.g. methane/CH4) while unsaturated hydrocarbons have double or triple bonds between adjacent carbon atoms and thus can have hydrogen atoms added to make the compound saturated.

More from the Thaxton et al link concerning carboxylic acids from page 55:

"In a similar fashion, growing polypeptides would be terminated by reactions with amines, aldehydes, ketones, reducing sugars* or carboxylic acids. If by some remote chance a true protein did develop in the ocean, its viability would be predictably of short duration. For example, formaldehyde would readily react with free amino groups to form methylene cross-linkages between proteins.37 This would tie up certain reactive sites, and retard the reaction of protein with other chemical agents. To illustrate, "irreversible combination of formaldehyde with asparagine amide groups" would result in a compound which is "stable to dilute boiling phosphoric acid."38 This tying up process is the principle of the well-known tanning reaction, and is used similarly to retard cadaver decay. "In general, reaction with formaldehyde hardens proteins, decreases their water-sensitivity, and increases their resistance to the action of chemical reagents and enzymes."39 Survival of proteins in the soup would have been difficult indeed."

Footnote:

"It is interesting to note that in certain abnormal situations, such as diabetes, the carbonyl group of glucose will form chemical bonds with the amino group of cellular proteins, a process called glycosylation. (See A.L. Notkins, 1975. Sci. Amer. 241,62.)" [Not so good for life!]

Bottom line: carboxylic acids will react with peptides and stop further polymerization. Also the carbonyl group (CO double bonded) in sugars will react with the amino group (NH2) in peptides (and in amines in general). Both sugars (as in RNA) and amines (as in amino acids) are required for life and yet they interact and, in effect: destroy each other!

to be continued later. I'll give you all a chance to review the actual evidence in chemistry relevant to the origin of life and specifically to Miller's experiment.

Again, one needs an intelligent chemist (e.g. God) to create life - and human chemists are inferior creators and cannot create life. Some attribute the attributes of God to Chance! Not a chance!

Actually, we find that supernaturalism is not a requirement for life on the planet.

Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained a massive number of chemicals that reacted with each other more or less randomly, and it is unclear how the complexity of cells could have emerged from such chemical chaos. Now, a team led by Tony Z. Jia at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and Kuhan Chandru of the National University of Malaysia has shown that simple α-hydroxy acids, like glycolic and lactic acid, spontaneously polymerize and self-assemble into polyester microdroplets when dried at moderate temperatures followed by rehydration. This could be what happened along primitive beaches and river banks, or in drying puddles. These form a new type of cell-like compartment that can trap and concentrate biomolecules like nucleic acids and proteins. These droplets, unlike most modern cells, are able to merge and reform easily, and thus could have hosted versatile early genetic and metabolic systems potentially critical for the origins of life.


All life on Earth is made up of cells. Cells are composed of lipids, proteins and nucleic acids, with the lipid forming the cell membrane, an enclosure that keeps the other components together and interfaces with the environment, exchanging food and waste. How molecular assemblages as complex as cells originally formed remains a mystery.

Most origins of life research focuses on how the molecules and structures of life were produced by the environment, and then assembled into structures that led to the first cells. However, there were likely many other types of molecules that formed alongside biomolecules on early Earth, and it is possible that life started using very simple chemistry unrelated to modern biomolecules, then evolved through increasingly complex stages to give rise to the structures found in modern cells.

Previous work conducted at ELSI showed that moderate temperature drying of the simple organic compounds known as alpha-hydroxy acids, which are found in meteorites and many simulations of prebiological chemistry, spontaneously polymerizes them into mixtures of long polyesters. Building on this work, Jia and colleagues took the next step and examined these reactions under the microscope, and found that these mixed polyester systems form a gel phase and spontaneously self-assemble when rewetted to form simple cell-like structures.

The most challenging aspect of this work was devising new methods to characterize the droplets' properties and functions, as no one had analyzed such systems before. Jia noted that the team was fortunate to have such a diversity of multidisciplinary expertise, including chemists, biochemists, materials scientists and geologists. After determining their composition and showing their propensity to self-assemble, the next question was whether these cell-like structures might be able to do something chemically useful. Modern cell membranes perform many crucial functions that help maintain the cell, for example, retaining macromolecules and metabolites in one place, as well as providing a constant internal environment, which can be very different from the one outside the cell. They first measured how stable these structures were and found they could persist for very long periods depending on the environmental conditions, but could also be made to merge and coalesce.

They then tested the ability of these structures to sequester molecules from the environment and found they accumulated large dye molecules to a remarkable degree. They then showed that these droplets could also host RNA and protein molecules and still permit them to be functionally catalytic. Further, the team showed that the droplets could assist in the formation of a lipid layer on their surface, suggesting they could have helped scaffold protocell formation.


Jia and colleagues are not certain these structures are the direct ancestors of cells, but they think it is possible such droplets could have enabled the assembly of protocells on Earth. The new compartmentalization system they have found is extremely simple, they note, and could form easily in primitive environments throughout the universe. Says Jia, "This allows us to imagine non-biological systems on early Earth that could still have had a hand in the origins of life. This suggests there may be many other non-biological systems that should be targets of future investigations of this type." He thinks the development of these or similar model systems could allow better study of the evolution of diverse chemical systems representative of the complex chemistries likely to be found on primitive planetary bodies.

"The early Earth was certainly a messy place chemically," Jia explains, "and often, most origins of life studies focus on modern biomolecules under relatively 'clean' conditions. Perhaps it is important to take these 'messy' mixtures and see if there are interesting functions or structures that can arise from them spontaneously." The authors now think that by systematically increasing the chemical complexity of such systems, they will be able to observe how they evolve over time and possibly discover divergent and emergent properties.

"We have this new experimental system we can now play with, so we can start to study phenomena like evolution and evolvability of these droplets. The possible combinations of structures or functions these droplets might have are almost endless. If the physical rules that govern the formation of droplets are fairly universal in nature, then we hope to study similar systems to discover whether they also can form microdroplets with novel properties," adds Jia.

Finally, while the team is presently focused on understanding the origins of life, they note this basic research could have applications in other areas, for example, drug delivery and personalized medicine. "This is just a wonderful example of the unexpected ways projects can develop when a team of diverse scientists from around the world come together to try and understand new and interesting phenomena," said team member Jim Cleaves, also of ELSI.

Scientists discover new chemistry that may help explain the origins of cellular life

Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained a massive number of chemicals that reacted with each other more or less randomly, and it is unclear how the complexity of cells could have emerged from such chemical chaos. Now, a team led by Tony Z. Jia at the Tokyo Institute of...

phys.org

"Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained "
Curious...Where did the environment come from?

Curious...Where did the environment come from?

.
one thing is certain, there was not a lack of light ...

View attachment 331846

primordial Earth. not a lot of water either. maybe it came in stages. oh, that must be the hours in a day. is that written in hebrew too.

In deference to Hollie, I will address this issue from the POV of science.

You mean YouTube?

No...science.
I will presume you have a PhD in some realm of hard science.
I do no, and I won't pretend on any message board that I do.

As noted fatty acids were also produced in Miller's experiment (most sources ignore this). "
a carboxylic acid consisting of a hydrocarbon chain and a terminal carboxyl group ....
a fatty acid is a carboxylic acid with a long aliphatic chain, which is either saturated or unsaturated."

I posted above about carboxylic acids in general. The carboxyl group is a carbon atom double bonded to an Oxygen atom and single bonded to to a hydroxyl group (-OH). A hydrocarbon is a molecule with Hydrogen and Carbon (e.g. Methane = CH4). An aliphatic chain consists of hydrocarbons that form an open chain as in fatty acids and alkanes to be distinguished from hydrocarbon chains which form rings instead of open chains. Alkanes are saturated hydrocarbons like methane (CH4), ethane (C2H6) and propane (C3H8). Saturated hydrocarbons have single bonds between hydrogen atoms - the highest possible number of hydrogen atoms (e.g. methane/CH4) while unsaturated hydrocarbons have double or triple bonds between adjacent carbon atoms and thus can have hydrogen atoms added to make the compound saturated.

More from the Thaxton et al link concerning carboxylic acids from page 55:

"In a similar fashion, growing polypeptides would be terminated by reactions with amines, aldehydes, ketones, reducing sugars* or carboxylic acids. If by some remote chance a true protein did develop in the ocean, its viability would be predictably of short duration. For example, formaldehyde would readily react with free amino groups to form methylene cross-linkages between proteins.37 This would tie up certain reactive sites, and retard the reaction of protein with other chemical agents. To illustrate, "irreversible combination of formaldehyde with asparagine amide groups" would result in a compound which is "stable to dilute boiling phosphoric acid."38 This tying up process is the principle of the well-known tanning reaction, and is used similarly to retard cadaver decay. "In general, reaction with formaldehyde hardens proteins, decreases their water-sensitivity, and increases their resistance to the action of chemical reagents and enzymes."39 Survival of proteins in the soup would have been difficult indeed."

Footnote:

"It is interesting to note that in certain abnormal situations, such as diabetes, the carbonyl group of glucose will form chemical bonds with the amino group of cellular proteins, a process called glycosylation. (See A.L. Notkins, 1975. Sci. Amer. 241,62.)" [Not so good for life!]

Bottom line: carboxylic acids will react with peptides and stop further polymerization. Also the carbonyl group (CO double bonded) in sugars will react with the amino group (NH2) in peptides (and in amines in general). Both sugars (as in RNA) and amines (as in amino acids) are required for life and yet they interact and, in effect: destroy each other!

to be continued later. I'll give you all a chance to review the actual evidence in chemistry relevant to the origin of life and specifically to Miller's experiment.

Again, one needs an intelligent chemist (e.g. God) to create life - and human chemists are inferior creators and cannot create life. Some attribute the attributes of God to Chance! Not a chance!

Actually, we find that supernaturalism is not a requirement for life on the planet.

Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained a massive number of chemicals that reacted with each other more or less randomly, and it is unclear how the complexity of cells could have emerged from such chemical chaos. Now, a team led by Tony Z. Jia at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and Kuhan Chandru of the National University of Malaysia has shown that simple α-hydroxy acids, like glycolic and lactic acid, spontaneously polymerize and self-assemble into polyester microdroplets when dried at moderate temperatures followed by rehydration. This could be what happened along primitive beaches and river banks, or in drying puddles. These form a new type of cell-like compartment that can trap and concentrate biomolecules like nucleic acids and proteins. These droplets, unlike most modern cells, are able to merge and reform easily, and thus could have hosted versatile early genetic and metabolic systems potentially critical for the origins of life.


All life on Earth is made up of cells. Cells are composed of lipids, proteins and nucleic acids, with the lipid forming the cell membrane, an enclosure that keeps the other components together and interfaces with the environment, exchanging food and waste. How molecular assemblages as complex as cells originally formed remains a mystery.

Most origins of life research focuses on how the molecules and structures of life were produced by the environment, and then assembled into structures that led to the first cells. However, there were likely many other types of molecules that formed alongside biomolecules on early Earth, and it is possible that life started using very simple chemistry unrelated to modern biomolecules, then evolved through increasingly complex stages to give rise to the structures found in modern cells.

Previous work conducted at ELSI showed that moderate temperature drying of the simple organic compounds known as alpha-hydroxy acids, which are found in meteorites and many simulations of prebiological chemistry, spontaneously polymerizes them into mixtures of long polyesters. Building on this work, Jia and colleagues took the next step and examined these reactions under the microscope, and found that these mixed polyester systems form a gel phase and spontaneously self-assemble when rewetted to form simple cell-like structures.

The most challenging aspect of this work was devising new methods to characterize the droplets' properties and functions, as no one had analyzed such systems before. Jia noted that the team was fortunate to have such a diversity of multidisciplinary expertise, including chemists, biochemists, materials scientists and geologists. After determining their composition and showing their propensity to self-assemble, the next question was whether these cell-like structures might be able to do something chemically useful. Modern cell membranes perform many crucial functions that help maintain the cell, for example, retaining macromolecules and metabolites in one place, as well as providing a constant internal environment, which can be very different from the one outside the cell. They first measured how stable these structures were and found they could persist for very long periods depending on the environmental conditions, but could also be made to merge and coalesce.

They then tested the ability of these structures to sequester molecules from the environment and found they accumulated large dye molecules to a remarkable degree. They then showed that these droplets could also host RNA and protein molecules and still permit them to be functionally catalytic. Further, the team showed that the droplets could assist in the formation of a lipid layer on their surface, suggesting they could have helped scaffold protocell formation.


Jia and colleagues are not certain these structures are the direct ancestors of cells, but they think it is possible such droplets could have enabled the assembly of protocells on Earth. The new compartmentalization system they have found is extremely simple, they note, and could form easily in primitive environments throughout the universe. Says Jia, "This allows us to imagine non-biological systems on early Earth that could still have had a hand in the origins of life. This suggests there may be many other non-biological systems that should be targets of future investigations of this type." He thinks the development of these or similar model systems could allow better study of the evolution of diverse chemical systems representative of the complex chemistries likely to be found on primitive planetary bodies.

"The early Earth was certainly a messy place chemically," Jia explains, "and often, most origins of life studies focus on modern biomolecules under relatively 'clean' conditions. Perhaps it is important to take these 'messy' mixtures and see if there are interesting functions or structures that can arise from them spontaneously." The authors now think that by systematically increasing the chemical complexity of such systems, they will be able to observe how they evolve over time and possibly discover divergent and emergent properties.

"We have this new experimental system we can now play with, so we can start to study phenomena like evolution and evolvability of these droplets. The possible combinations of structures or functions these droplets might have are almost endless. If the physical rules that govern the formation of droplets are fairly universal in nature, then we hope to study similar systems to discover whether they also can form microdroplets with novel properties," adds Jia.

Finally, while the team is presently focused on understanding the origins of life, they note this basic research could have applications in other areas, for example, drug delivery and personalized medicine. "This is just a wonderful example of the unexpected ways projects can develop when a team of diverse scientists from around the world come together to try and understand new and interesting phenomena," said team member Jim Cleaves, also of ELSI.

Scientists discover new chemistry that may help explain the origins of cellular life

Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained a massive number of chemicals that reacted with each other more or less randomly, and it is unclear how the complexity of cells could have emerged from such chemical chaos. Now, a team led by Tony Z. Jia at the Tokyo Institute of...

phys.org

"Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained "
Curious...Where did the environment come from?

Amun Ra. Obviously.

Bowel cleasning?

Science has a solution for your problem.

But you don't have any Links to these "solutions"?
Fact...Every scientist on YouTube, when asked where the first piece of matter came about, always answers, "It's almost as though a god created it".
By the way, the only time anyone in a scientists audience can even ask this blasphemous question is when an atheist scientist is debating an Orthodox Jewish scientist.
If this question comes up in from of any other audience the person is jeered, ridiculed and removed from the room.

Try asking a college professor and you'll get an F.

Your facts are rather absent facts.

I will have to presume that you have never attended college or a public lecture on the subject.
Fair enough.

If you say so.

Ad hominem...
What process, devoid of any matter whatsoever, produced the first particle?

I don't know.

What process, assuming magic, produced the first gods?

Why "gods"?
Why plural?
Why does it occur to you that an existence outside of our realm of existence is a plurality?
I think I know why...
You can't imagine "Something from what humans define as Nothing".

The essence of this discussion is that science is no closer to understanding matter from a compete absence of matter than it was yesterday or 1,000 years ago.
And science refuses to address that issue.

No need to concern yourself. The gawds did it. End of discussion.

You are not up to this discussion?
You can't find one video of a scientist discussing this issue?
You haven't tried hard enough to dismiss this.

OK.