Hank Roth, on the InterNUT since 1982
Past (post) Commander Jewish War Veterans
* Cryptologist and Voice Security in the White House
and in the War Room for JCS at the Pentagon
BIO [with pics] http://inyourface.info/bio/

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One Cannot Live by RNA Alone

And just in case you think I am talking only about Homo sapiens, you
are wrong. We are neither the end result of evolution nor the highest
and best use of evolution, just another example of evolution - and one
which is surely not long for this world. There is no reason why we
should not follow the same fate as 99.9% of all the other species that
once lived on the planet.

"We are neither the fastest nor the strongest of creatures. We're not
even the most prolific: in terms of biomass, ants are more plentiful,
and they've been around much longer..." (Frank T. Vertosick, Jr., The
Genus Within - 2002)

Science and the natural law of science rules life and everything in the
universe. Although it is also quite possible that natural law may be
different elsewhere in the universe and different galaxies and
multiverses may have varying natural laws different than our own.

Just as the extreme right wing has been anti-science, for far too long
an extremist "radical" political left has resisted science preferring a
more idealized romantic world view where everyone has a greater
potential for doing good. That may be the ideal view but it is not the
right view.

"So the tendency toward slaughter that manifested itself in the Chinese
Cultural Revolution is not the product of agriculture, technology,
television, or materialism. It is not an invention of either Western or
Eastern civilization. It is not a uniquely human proclivity at all. It
comes from something both sub- and super- human, something we share
with apes, fish, and ants--a brutality that speaks to us through the
animals in our brain. If man has contributed anything of his own to the
equation, it is this: He has learned to dream of peace. But to achieve
that dream, he will have to overcome what nature has built into him."
(Howard Bloom, The Lucifer Principle - 1995)

Life is basically a simple idea but complex enough to add wonderment
and awe to it. We can't help but be humble in the presence of nature's
wonderment and great majesty.

AT first RNA did rule our world. BUT there were complications. There
there was DNA. DNA replicates but cannot do so unassisted. Replication
needs proteins which are large molecules chemically different from DNA.
And proteins, like DNA are built of subunits of amino acids in a long
chain. It is the business of each cell to put to work 20 of these amino
acids, which are called building blocks, to form the proteins.

So where did these amino acids come from? What is the origin of amino
acids? See "The Origin of Life on the Earth," by L. E. Orgel;
Scientific American, October 1994., the Stanley Miller experiment first
published in 1953 where he applied a spark to a mix of gases resembling
early conditions on Earth out of which two amino acids of the 20 were
formed. Also see info re: Murchison meteorite, which impacted with
Earth in 1969, in which 80 amino acids were found, out of which were
ample building blocks, i.e. nucleotides, for the formation of life. "By
extrapolation of these results, some writers have presumed that all of
life's building could be formed with ease in Miller-type experiments
and were present in meteorites and other extraterrestrial bodies. This
is not the case." (Source: Scientific American)

Amino acids make proteins. These proteins do a variety of tasks, they
are the _handymen_ of living cells. But it doesn't end there. The
handymen; that is, the proteins need enzymes, which are _expeditors_
which hasten chemical processes, making them useful for life.

It is the DNA which contains the recipe for the construction of the
protein which cannot be copied or retrieved.

Enter RNA, a class of molecule, like the DNA which is assembled in a
helix of nucleotide (protein) building blocks. RNA resembles DNA but it
is the molecule which edits and censors DNA code (instructions).

DNA and RNA are in a matter of speaking cousins.

There are clues that RNA appeared before proteins and DNA in the
evolution of life. There are small molecules, called _cofactors_ which
perform enzyme-catalyzed reactions and they carry an attached
nucleotide with no known function, so some scientists have speculated
that they are _molecular fossils_ - that is, they are relics descended
when RNA alone, without DNA ruled the natural biochemical world. We
don't really know for sure, therefore it is just a hypothesis (though
it is a good one) that life began with RNA alone.

And what happened before RNA? There are still many questions we cannot
answer and until there are answers to these and other questions much of
it will be attributed to an intelligent designer because being
inexplicable the natural course for those who do not have an answer is
to invent one and attribute all things inexplicable to the
super-inventor of everything, to that mysterious supernatural thing
referred to as GOD. That isn't really an answer for anything but it is
the meme most humans adopt as reasonable. And it is difficult to
impossible to debate the existence of god, no matter how unreasonable
the belief in a belief is - with those committed to that belief. How
did that first self-replicating RNA arise? What made RNA? Are Did RNA
just emerge out of gray-green goo?

There are opposing views (Miller experiment) and what has been found in
meteors is sufficient to produce the basic Watson-Crick building blocks
necessary for life.

The Scientific American reported that analysis of "several meteorites
led the scientists who conducted the work to a different conclusion:
inanimate nature has a bias toward the formation of molecules made of
fewer rather than greater numbers of carbon atoms, and thus shows no
partiality in favor of creating the building blocks of our kind of
life. (When larger carbon-containing molecules are produced, they tend
to be insoluble, hydrogen-poor substances that organic chemists call
tars.) I have observed a similar pattern in the results of many spark
discharge experiments."

"Amino acids, such as those produced or found in these experiments, are
far less complex than nucleotides. Their defining features are an amino
group (a nitrogen and two hydrogens) and a carboxylic acid group (a
carbon, two oxygens and a hydrogen) both attached to the same carbon.
The simplest of the 20 used to build natural proteins contains only two
carbon atoms. Seventeen of the set contain six or fewer carbons. The
amino acids and other substances that were prominent in the Miller
experiment contained two and three carbon atoms. By contrast, no
nucleotides of any kind have been reported as products of spark
discharge experiments or in studies of meteorites, nor have the smaller
units (nucleotides) that contain a sugar and base but lack the
phosphate." (ibid)

"To rescue the RNA-first concept from this otherwise lethal defect, its
advocates have created a discipline called prebiotic synthesis. They
have attempted to show that RNA and its components can be prepared in
their laboratories in a sequence of carefully controlled reactions,
normally carried out in water at temperatures observed on Earth. Such a
sequence would start usually with compounds of carbon that had been
produced in spark discharge experiments or found in meteorites. The
observation of a specific organic chemical in any quantity (even as
part of a complex mixture) in one of the above sources would justify
its classification as "prebiotic," a substance that supposedly had been
proved to be present on the early Earth. Once awarded this distinction,
the chemical could then be used in pure form, in any quantity, in
another prebiotic reaction. The products of such a reaction would also
be considered "prebiotic" and employed in the next step in the
sequence." (ibid)

In any event the controversy is far from being resolved at this point
in time and any further explanation of the RNA first argument is way
above my pay grade but I wanted to at least lay out the essense of the
conflict which persists for this conundrum.

I think it is unfortunate that many of those who favor an Intelligent
Design approach will use this as an example of the scientific inability
to explain life.

There have been numerous other theories proposed for RNA or RNA type
substances playing a role in the origin of life on Earth. Most of these
theories vis-a-vis prebiotic Earth also rely on hypothetical
presumptions that Nucleotide Watson-Crick base pairs type replication
was used in the formation of life in prebiotic Earth. It has not been
possible to reproduce life using scientific experimentation; at least
not so that cytosine can be created, one of the four molecules
necessary for the Watson-Crick base for ATCG. Nor has Cytosine been
found in any analysis of meteorites or products of spark discharge
experimentation. It has been suggested that on the basis of evidence or
the lack thereof, it is unlikely that cytosine played a role in the
origin of life. However, theories that involve replicators that
function without the Watson-Crick pairs, or no replicator at all also
remain as viable alternatives.

Hank Roth

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