On Fri, 29 Apr 2005 14:15:28 -0500, Mark Landin <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

>> >At what point did "life" start?  What was the spark, so to speak?  What
>> >caused a compound in a "primordial soup" to "feed", to grow and to start
>> >replicating?  (Compound being some aggregate of chemicals, I guess.)
>>
>> So Denys,
>>
>> where did "GOD" come from? who is his "maker"?
>> can't remember that answer.
>>
>> Michael
>
>
>Michael,
>
>Please don't mix apples and oranges.
>
>Denys asked questions that any good scientific theory should be able
>to answer. In fact, some of those answers may in fact be known to some
>population of biologists, although I certainly don't know what they
>might be. The fact that there are unanswered does not mean evolution
>as a theory is incorrect. It means that there is a possibility that
>some experiment, observation, or fact will tell us that evolution is
>not the correct theory, but right now it's the most plausible. It's
>what happened to Newtonian physics when quantum physics came along.
>The same may or may not happen to evolution, but right now it is the
>strongest candidate for being the Right Explanation.
>
>The existence of God, and his/her/it's possible origins, are decidedly
>a matter of faith and are not subject to the same kind of inspection
>that scientific theories are. My beleif in God is NOT predicated on
>the answers to those questions, nor even that those questions are even
>answerable.
>
>Belief in God is (supposed to be) strictly faith. Belief in science is
>(supposed to be) strictly evidence.

Oh, you mean these theory?

http://www-news.uchicago.edu/releases/98/980331.origin.of.life.shtml

How did life begin? Biochemical evolution on mineral surfaces

How did life begin on Earth? University of Chicago geophysicist Joseph V.
Smith, in a Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper published
Tuesday, March 31, provides a theory for how small organic molecules may
have been able to assemble on the surfaces of minerals into self-
replicating biomolecules--the essential building blocks of life.

"The problem with most theories on the origin of life is that there is too
much water around for the kind of organic chemistry that needed to take
place," said Smith, Louis Block Professor in the Geophysical
Sciences. "Synthesis of biomolecules from organic compounds dispersed in
aqueous `soups' require a mechanism for concentrating the organic species
next to each other, and biochemically significant polymers--like
polypeptides and ribonucleic acids--must be protected from photochemical
destruction by solar radiation."

Smith postulates that this chemistry could have been facilitated by silica-
rich minerals resembling zeolites, porous crystals with channels running
through them. Most zeolites are hydrophilic--water-loving--and tend to
absorb water from their surroundings. But certain synthetic zeolites are
organophilic, preferentially absorbing organic materials out of water.

A naturally occurring organophilic zeolite--called mutinaite--was recently
discovered in Antarctica, and Smith thinks that this mineral could provide
the key to the chemical evolution that led to the origin of life. It's
possible that mutinaite, which has aluminum in place of silica, loses
aluminum at its surface to become silica-rich through weathering, Smith
said. A small amount of remaining aluminum would provide the catalytic
centers for assembling organic molecules into polymers.

"For many years, I've wondered if such a material could occur in nature,"
said Smith. If small organic molecules, like amino acids, could accumulate
in the pores of a zeolite, the mineral surface could have provided the
catalytic framework for assembling them into polymers and protecting them
from destruction by the sun.

A famous experiment performed at the University of Chicago in 1954 by then-
graduate student Stanley Miller and his advisor, the Nobel laureate chemist
Harold Urey, showed that amino acids, which make up the proteins found in
all living organisms, could form from chemicals in the atmosphere combined
with water and lightening.

No experiment has yet demonstrated how the amino acids assembled into
protein and ribonucleic-acid (RNA) chains, but Smith is planning such
experiments using a synthetic, silica-rich organophilic zeolite.

Amino acids occur naturally in right-handed and left-handed forms, but only
the left-handed forms are found in the proteins of living organisms. Smith
said, "It's probably an accident that only the left-handed form is used,
but it may have started in a zeolite with a left-handed channel." Zeolites
with one-dimensional channels could have provided the template for assembly
of only one version of the amino acids into the first primitive proteins.

Smith plans a trip to Australia, where some of the oldest and least-
metamorphosed rocks and minerals are found, to look for more naturally
occurring organophilic zeolites like the mutinaite found in Antarctica.
He's hoping these minerals still contain evidence of primary biocatalysis.
Further research will include chemical experiments to see if the zeolites
actually carry out the chemistry he proposes, and the use of computer
models to study the structure of the channels.

Smith's work on zeolites was funded by Union Carbide Corporation/UOP, the
National Science Foundation, the American Chemical Society, Exxon
Educational Foundation, Mobil Research Foundation and Chevron Corporation.

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