Theoretical origin of life: lab manufactured nonsense (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, March 20, 2021, 21:40 (1126 days ago) @ David Turell

A lab manufactured study to show that death is important for complexity to develop:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/03/210317141453.htm

"Simple systems can reproduce faster than complex ones. So, how can the complexity of life have arisen from simple chemical beginnings? Starting with a simple system of self-replicating fibres, chemists at the University of Groningen have discovered that upon introducing a molecule that attacks the replicators, the more complex structures have an advantage. This system shows the way forward in elucidating how life can originate from lifeless matter.

"The road to answering the question of how life originated is guarded by Spiegelman's monster, named after the American molecular biologist Sol Spiegelman, who some 55 years ago described the tendency of replicators to become smaller when they were allowed to evolve. 'Complexity is a disadvantage during replication, so how did the complexity of life evolve?' asked Sijbren Otto, Professor of Systems Chemistry at the University of Groningen. He previously developed a self-replicating system in which self-replication produces fibres from simple building blocks and, now, he has found a way to beat the monster.

"'To achieve this, we introduced death into our system,' Otto explains. His fibres are made up of stacked rings that are self-assembled from single building blocks. The number of building blocks in a ring can vary, but stacks always contain rings of the same size. Otto and his team tweaked the system in such a way that rings of two different sizes were created, containing either three or six building blocks.

"Under normal circumstances, fibres that are made up of small rings will outgrow the fibres with larger rings. 'However, when we added a compound that breaks up rings inside the fibres, we found that the bigger rings were more resistant. This means that the more complex fibres will dominate, despite the smaller rings replicating faster. Fibres that are made from small rings are more easily "killed." '

"Otto acknowledges that the difference in complexity between the two types of fibres is small.

***

"'All in all, we have now shown that it is possible to beat Spiegelman's monster,' says Otto. 'We did this in a particular way, by introducing chemical destruction, but there may be other routes.

***

"The new system is the first of its kind and opens a route to more complex chemical evolution. 'In order to achieve real Darwinian evolution that leads to new things, we will need more complex systems with more than one building block,' says Otto. The trick will be to design a system that allows for the right amount of variation. 'When you have unlimited variation, the system won't go anywhere, it will just produce small amounts of all kinds of variants.' In contrast, if there is very little variation, nothing really new will appear. (my bold)

Comment: From laughable to ridiculous as I see it. The bolded paragraph shows us how human intelligent design looks for clues as to how life developed on a rocky Earth. But note: these invented molecules have no relationship to the real RNA/DNA molecules we know.