Posted: Mar 31, 2010 9:52 am
rainbow wrote:byofrcs wrote:rainbow wrote:byofrcs wrote:
That is a good bet and there are clues as to what it is. The key is self-organization being an inherent property of all matter. The problem is the sheer choice. There won't be one magic reaction or set of chemicals but a long chain of reactions, with different chemicals, reactions and most importantly without any pre-planned direction that it will take.
What clues?
Was it RNA, DNA, polypeptides, a vesicle based on fatty acids?
A metabolic cycle perhaps?
Pray tell.
We are not looking for one magic reaction, but a simple replicator. Something that can evolve into something more complex.
Folks like Christian DeDuve (1995)in "VITAL DUST" and the authors in Andre Brack's (1998) "
" investigate these questions in considerable detail. Better replicators, like RNA would have totally replaced any simpler precursors, and since we are talking about events that happened over 3.8 billion years ago, much, if not all information could be lost. So while we may not get to know the exact conditions of that time, or the initial replicators, it is possible to work out the likely "options" that might have been available to chemical interactions of that era.THE MOLECULAR ORIGINS OF LIFE
DeDuve and others think that the first thing to arrive was metabolism. I makes sense because all chemical reactions need energy. Perhaps a polymer of something like Adenosine phosphate chains that ended up bonding with sugars and bases. DeDuve especially likes thioesters as the initial electron acceptor.