Origin of Life: flying pigs (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, December 27, 2012, 16:02 (4350 days ago) @ David Turell

Here is a great example of flying pigs in research of OOL. Using thermal vents in the ocean floor.-"The answer lies in the chemistry of deep-sea hydrothermal vents. In their paper Nick Lane (UCL, Genetics, Evolution and Environment) and Bill Martin (University of Dusseldorf) address the question of where all this energy came from -- and why all life as we know it conserves energy in the peculiar form of ion gradients across membranes.
 
"Life is, in effect, a side-reaction of an energy-harnessing reaction. Living organisms require vast amounts of energy to go on living,"-
"They go on to demonstrate that such protocells are limited by their own permeability, which ultimately forced them to transduce natural proton gradients into biochemical sodium gradients, at no net energetic cost, using a simple Na+/H+ transporter. Their hypothesis predicts a core set of proteins required for early energy conservation, and explains the puzzling promiscuity of respiratory proteins for both protons and sodium ions." -http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121220143530.htm-Where do those proteins come from? That is the tough part. Pigs can fly!