How close are 'we' to finding the origen of Life?

Mr. Pessimistic

Quote:
In the early 1980s Tom Cech, then a young biologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, uncovered evidence that RNA does more than simply relay messages from DNA to proteins. In an experiment that earned him a Nobel Prize, he found that a single-celled creature named Tetrahymena possessed some RNA molecules that could act like simple enzymes. These molecules, which came to be known as ribozymes, twisted into a complicated snarl that allowed them to hack themselves apart. In other words, RNA could carry information like DNA and carry out biochemistry the way proteins do.

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Fascinating stuff!

Mr. P.

The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.

Jeremy1952

We have a number of good hypotheses' on how life might have started. As far as how it actually started, that is a historical event and extremely unlikely that we will ever know what actually happened.

Our best chance will be when we analyze life on other planets that started independently. It may eventually be possible to assemble a large enough sample to make a good guess at what "always" happens. But I doubt it. How many origin-of-lifes would constitute a sufficient sample to assert with any certainty that ours happened that way, too? And it's going to be devilishly difficult to observe life early enough anywhere to watch the process happen.

If you make yourself really small, you can externalize virtually everything. Daniel Dennett, 1984

Citichic · Newbie Joined: 26 Jul 2004 Posts: 3 Gender:

Here is another theory written by an author named z. sitchen. More theories of origin found at the Science Forum:
p215.ezboard.com/bscienceforum
THE CASE OF ADAM’S ALIEN GENES

In whose image was The Adam – the prototype of modern humans, Homo sapiens – created?

The Bible asserts that the Elohim said: “Let us fashion the Adam in our image and after our likeness.” But if one is to accept a tentative explanation for enigmatic genes that humans possess, offered when the deciphering of the human genome was announced in mid-February, the feat was decided upon by a group of bacteria!

“Humbling” was the prevalent adjective used by the scientific teams and the media to describe the principal finding – that the human genome contains not the anticipated 100,000 - 140,000 genes (the stretches of DNA that direct the production of amino-acids and proteins) but only some 30,000+ -- little more than double the 13,601 genes of a fruit fly and barely fifty percent more than the roundworm’s 19,098. What a comedown from the pinnacle of the genomic Tree of Life!

Moreover, there was hardly any uniqueness to the human genes. They are comparative to not the presumed 95 percent but to almost 99 percent of the chimpanzees, and 70 percent of the mouse. Human genes, with the same functions, were found to be identical to genes of other vertebrates, as well as invertebrates, plants, fungi, even yeast. The findings not only confirmed that there was one source of DNA for all life on Earth, but also enabled the scientists to trace the evolutionary process – how more complex organisms evolved, genetically, from simpler ones, adopting at each stage the genes of a lower life form to create a more complex higher life form – culminating with Homo sapiens.

www.sitchin.com/adam.htm

The Role of the Anunnaki

Readers of my books must be smiling by now, for they know the answer.

They know that the biblical verses dealing with the fashioning of The Adam are condensed renderings of much much more detailed Sumerian and Akkadian texts, found inscribed on clay tablets, in which the role of the Elohim in Genesis is performed by the Anunnaki – “Those Who From Heaven to Earth Came.”

As detailed in my books, beginning with The 12th Planet (1976) and even more so in Genesis Revisited and The Cosmic Code, the Anunnaki came to Earth some 450,000 years ago from the planet Nibiru – a member of our own solar system whose great orbit brings it to our part of the heavens once every 3,600 years. They came here in need of gold, with which to protect their dwindling atmosphere. Exhausted and in need of help in mining the gold, their chief scientist Enki suggested that they use their genetic knowledge to create the needed Primitive Workers. When the other leaders of the Anunnaki asked: How can you create a new being? He answered:

"The being that we need already exists;
all that we have to do is put our mark on it.”

The time was some 300,000 years ago.

What he had in mind was to upgrade genetically the existing hominids, who were already on Earth through Evolution, by adding some of the genes of the more advanced Anunnaki. That the Anunnaki, who could already travel in space 450,000 years ago, possessed the genomic science (whose threshold we have now reached) is clear not only from the actual texts but also from numerous depictions in which the double-helix of the DNA is rendered as Entwined Serpents (a symbol still used for medicine and healing)
© Z. Sitchin
Reprinted with permission.

citichic

Edited by: Citichic at: 7/26/04 7:20 am

Jeremy1952

Counting genes is totally irrellevant to anything at all. First of all, genetic information isn't linear. That is, the amount of information carried by a complement of genes expands exponentially because they mutually influence one another. Secondly, we knew about genes by their effect before we had any idea of what they physically are or any way of guessing how many there are. The facts of "this is coded" are known; the puzzle to solve is how life does the trick. There is no point at all in denying that bumblebees fly. Third, the work suggested by (second) has already begun; recent work shows that a great deal of information is coded in the introns, that is, the portions of DNA that never code for protein. Quite simply, Crick's one gene = one protein hypothesis has turned out to be wrong. The entire process of turning genotypes into phenotypes is turning out to be even more complex than we imagined, and the decoding of the human genome with regards to coding genes has been revealed to be the first step, not the final step, toward understanding how this amazing information system works.

Well ok maybe not FIRST step, as discovery of particulate inheretance and of the double helix both precede it.

If you make yourself really small, you can externalize virtually everything. Daniel Dennett, 1984

Mr. Pessimistic

Crick recently passed away!

www.skeptic.com/eskeptic07-30-04.html#2

Mr. P.

The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.

I came to get down, I came to get down. So get out ya seat and jump around - House of Pain

Doc Tiessen · Intern Joined: 27 Sep 2004 Posts: 161 Gender:

It is interesting how comments with highly scientific contents share the same space as comments about pseudoscientific fantasies...

I do not want to say that the fantasies like the ones of Citichic are not amusing and itself have an aesthetic value... but it is rather entretainment, but it is not anything which is near to the truth...

As with Carls Sagan Daemon Haunted world... if we had a number of pseudosciences dealing with cosmological, spacetravelling and extraterrestrial fantasies... in the future we will see a growing number of pseudosciences dealing with biology, genetics and biotechnology.

If the past centuries were dominated by physical and chemical sciences... the coming years will be dominated by biological sciences... and the DNA will become part of our everyday experiences and language...
We will speak so much about DNA, that even the charlatans and esoteric people will speak about nucleotides and genes...

Not long ago I read some essays written by psychologists on new therapies on how to reprogram your genes... they seriously said that human thought could influences the genetic code and that by thinking very hard, one could reprogram the DNA...

At a certain level, the human species is so predictable... history repeats with the same patterns again and again...
Pseudoscientific and Esoteric people will adopt the DNA and the genetic style to communicate their old messages...
Scientists will have a hard time to dismiss the Daemons... we will need many Carl Sagans and many Scooby Doos to return to the truth and convince the people that gosths and supranatural phenomena... can have a rational and objective explanation....

Who is going to be the Carl Sagan of Biology?

Diversity is Good!

PeterDF · Freshman Joined: 07 Jul 2003 Posts: 214 Gender:

I posted this link on the round table in my post about Dawkins' new book but, on reflection, I think it is more apropriate to put it on this thread as the discussion is about the origin of life.

BBC Radio 4 recently transmitted a discussion programme about the origin of life. It is hosted by Melvyn Bragg. (Bragg is probably not well known outside of this country. He is a writer and broadcaster and a friend of Tony Blair who was recently given a seat in the Lords. Bragg actually comes from the same county as me - Cumbria.) To listen to the programme just click the link below then click on "listen now"

"In Our Time" debate.

It is a fascinating discussion don't miss it.

Doc Tiessen · Intern Joined: 27 Sep 2004 Posts: 161 Gender:

I do not agree with some of the opinions of Dawkins on the origin on life. Reading his books you get the impresion that he wants to explain everything with some kind of small changes and very probable events. He seem to be dedicated to exclude the event of any miracle. he thinks that miracles are unscientific.

But the origin of life is a miracle. It was so unprobable... it cannot have been but a wonderful miracle. I think that without miracles, science is only fooling itself.

Diversity is Good!


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