Origin of Life: information? (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, December 14, 2012, 00:45 (4142 days ago)
edited by unknown, Friday, December 14, 2012, 01:04

Paul Davies, the theoretical quantum physicist wants to start with information. How does that work? But he has given up on chemsitry alone and doesn't really point out where the info comes from at the beginning. First cause is now info?-http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121212205918.htm-The chemistry approach: Organic chemistry is hard to create.--'Creating life from scratch requires two abilities: fixing carbon and making more of yourself. The first, essentially hitching carbon atoms together to make living matter, is a remarkably difficult feat. Carbon dioxide (CO2), of which Earth has plenty, is a stable molecule; the bonds are tough to break, and a chemical system can only turn carbon into biologically useful compounds by way of some wildly unstable in-between stages. As hard as it is to do, fixing carbon is necessary for life. A carbon molecule's ability to bond stably with up to four atoms makes it phenomenally versatile, and its abundance makes it suitable as a backbone for trillions of compounds. Once an organized chemical system can harness and manipulate carbon, it can expand and innovate in countless ways. In other words, carbon fixation is the centerpiece of metabolism ... the basic process by which cells take in chemicals from their environments and build them into products they need to live. It's also the link between the geochemistry of Earth and the biochemistry of life"-"Carbon fixing and other chemical sub-processes that together constitute metabolism each comprise dozens of steps; some are quick and easy turnkey reactions with simple molecules, others require highly specific chemical helpers, or catalysts. The parts of metabolism that guide carbon fixation through its unstable intermediate stages fall into the latter category, requiring help. But these seemingly unlikely reactions are remarkably consistent across all living systems. In fact, says Braakman, their ubiquity and the difficulty with which they are forged make them the chemical constraints within which all living systems operate ... in a sense, the scaffolding for the tree of life. It's these dependable regularities of hierarchy and modularity, amid the panoply of reactions comprising metabolism, that stabilize the system and enable its complexity."- Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-12-life-inevitable-paper-pieces-metabolism.html#jCp