RNA world & the origin of life

C

Cypress

Well-known member
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How life could have arisen on an ‘RNA world’

New evidence suggests RNA and peptides may have helped build each other on early Earth

11 MAY 2022 - Current Event, News Release on Cutting Edge Scientific Research

It’s the ultimate chicken-and-egg conundrum. Life doesn’t work without tiny molecular machines called ribosomes, whose job is to translate genes into proteins. But ribosomes themselves are made of proteins. So how did the first life arise?

Researchers may have taken the first step toward solving this mystery. They’ve shown that RNA molecules can grow short proteins called peptides all by themselves—no ribosome required. What’s more, this chemistry works under conditions likely present on early Earth.

“It’s an important advance,” says Claudia Bonfio, an origin of life chemist at the University of Strasbourg who was not involved in the work. The study, she says, provides scientists a new way of thinking about how peptides were built.

Researchers who study the origin of life have long considered RNA the central player because it can both carry genetic information and catalyze necessary chemical reactions. It was likely present on our planet before life evolved. But to give rise to modern life, RNA would have had to somehow “learn” to make proteins, and eventually ribosomes. “At the moment, the ribosome simply falls from the heavens,” says Thomas Carell, a chemist at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.


https://www.science.org/content/art...e chicken-and,themselves are made of proteins.
 
We are cracking the case


I can’t wait until we reach a point that people believe science again
 
This stuff is fascinating to me.

I've also read that they think life "arose" many times on the early earth. It kept getting extinguished, because we were getting so pelted w/ meteors at that time, and kept happening again & again.

It might be a simple chemical process that can happen easily if the conditions are right. I've never understood why we have to make it some miracle.
 
BartenderElite said:
This stuff is fascinating to me.

I've also read that they think life "arose" many times on the early earth. It kept getting extinguished, because we were getting so pelted w/ meteors at that time, and kept happening again & again.

It might be a simple chemical process that can happen easily if the conditions are right. I've never understood why we have to make it some miracle.
Click to expand...

Agree. Life and non-life are not a metaphysical reality. Artificial Intelligence does not need the biological mechanism. A new stage in the evolution of the universe.
 
evince said:
We are cracking the case


I can’t wait until we reach a point that people believe science again
Click to expand...

It's progress. Baby steps.

But peptides are just short strings of amino acids. Amino acids are relatively uncomplicated organic molecules that have even been detected in meteorites, and probably comets.

It's a big jump to the infinitely complex architecture, synthesis, and function of larger proteins.

And we still don't have a good, solid theory for how RNA formed.

But I think this is some of the most interesting research out there. And any good scientist loves unanswered questions.
 
BartenderElite said:
This stuff is fascinating to me.

I've also read that they think life "arose" many times on the early earth. It kept getting extinguished, because we were getting so pelted w/ meteors at that time, and kept happening again & again.

It might be a simple chemical process that can happen easily if the conditions are right. I've never understood why we have to make it some miracle.
Click to expand...

Life only arose once, sometime before 3.5 billion years ago. Every species that has ever existed has the DNA which is a genetic legacy of those first single celled prokaryotes in the remote past.

But to me, what is extraordinary is the persistence and tenacity of life. Even through many mass extinction events, some genetic material survived to fuel the speciation of new species of plants and animals.
 
Cypress said:
.
How life could have arisen on an ‘RNA world’

New evidence suggests RNA and peptides may have helped build each other on early Earth

11 MAY 2022 - Current Event, News Release on Cutting Edge Scientific Research

It’s the ultimate chicken-and-egg conundrum. Life doesn’t work without tiny molecular machines called ribosomes, whose job is to translate genes into proteins. But ribosomes themselves are made of proteins. So how did the first life arise?

Researchers may have taken the first step toward solving this mystery. They’ve shown that RNA molecules can grow short proteins called peptides all by themselves—no ribosome required. What’s more, this chemistry works under conditions likely present on early Earth.

“It’s an important advance,” says Claudia Bonfio, an origin of life chemist at the University of Strasbourg who was not involved in the work. The study, she says, provides scientists a new way of thinking about how peptides were built.

Researchers who study the origin of life have long considered RNA the central player because it can both carry genetic information and catalyze necessary chemical reactions. It was likely present on our planet before life evolved. But to give rise to modern life, RNA would have had to somehow “learn” to make proteins, and eventually ribosomes. “At the moment, the ribosome simply falls from the heavens,” says Thomas Carell, a chemist at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.


https://www.science.org/content/art...e chicken-and,themselves are made of proteins.
Click to expand...

evince said:
We are cracking the case


I can’t wait until we reach a point that people believe science again
Click to expand...

Cypress said:
It's progress. Baby steps.

But peptides are just short strings of amino acids. Amino acids are relatively uncomplicated organic molecules that have even been detected in meteorites, and probably comets.

It's a big jump to the infinitely complex architecture, synthesis, and function of larger proteins.

And we still don't have a good, solid theory for how RNA formed.

But I think this is some of the most interesting research out there. And any good scientist loves unanswered questions.
Click to expand...

You're cracking your headshells, eggheads and wanna-be eggheads.


"Researchers may have taken the first step toward solving this mystery. They’ve shown that RNA molecules can grow short proteins called peptides all by themselves—no ribosome required. What’s more, this chemistry works under conditions likely present on early Earth.


How are they recreating these "conditions likely present on early Earth"? How do they know what those conditions were, even?
 
Cypress said:
Life only arose once, sometime before 3.5 billion years ago. Every species that has ever existed has the DNA which is a genetic legacy of those first single celled prokaryotes in the remote past.

But to me, what is extraordinary is the persistence and tenacity of life. Even through many mass extinction events, some genetic material survived to fuel the speciation of new species of plants and animals.
Click to expand...

I should have said "some think," not "they think." It's a side theory. According to it, life arose multiple times, but there is no record whatsoever of the earlier times because it was extinguished by massive meteor storms that slammed the early earth, and it never made it past the most simplistic self-replicating form, so there are no fossils or evidence of it.

I think that could be possible, and if that is what happened, it changes the idea that life forming is some rare, chance occurrence. It's basically an inevitability given certain conditions.

But either way, agreed - everything alive today has a single ancestor.
 
BartenderElite said:
I should have said "some think," not "they think." It's a side theory. According to it, life arose multiple times, but there is no record whatsoever of the earlier times because it was extinguished by massive meteor storms that slammed the early earth, and it never made it past the most simplistic self-replicating form, so there are no fossils or evidence of it.

I think that could be possible, and if that is what happened, it changes the idea that life forming is some rare, chance occurrence. It's basically an inevitability given certain conditions.

But either way, agreed - everything alive today has a single ancestor.
Click to expand...

I can see the resemblance between you and a Mourning Dove.
 
Matt Dillon said:
How are they recreating these "conditions likely present on early Earth"? How do they know what those conditions were, even?
Click to expand...

The geochemistry and isotopes of ancient rocks give us clues to atmospheric conditions on the early earth.

Having a reasonable idea of what those conditions were, scientists can recreate those environments under laboratory conditions.
 
Cypress said:
The geochemistry and isotopes of ancient rocks give us clues to atmospheric conditions on the early earth.

Having a reasonable idea of what those conditions were, scientists can recreate those environments under laboratory conditions.
Click to expand...

How far off would those evironments be from present day earth?
 
Cypress said:
.
How life could have arisen on an ‘RNA world’

New evidence suggests RNA and peptides may have helped build each other on early Earth

11 MAY 2022 - Current Event, News Release on Cutting Edge Scientific Research

It’s the ultimate chicken-and-egg conundrum. Life doesn’t work without tiny molecular machines called ribosomes, whose job is to translate genes into proteins. But ribosomes themselves are made of proteins. So how did the first life arise?

Researchers may have taken the first step toward solving this mystery. They’ve shown that RNA molecules can grow short proteins called peptides all by themselves—no ribosome required. What’s more, this chemistry works under conditions likely present on early Earth.

“It’s an important advance,” says Claudia Bonfio, an origin of life chemist at the University of Strasbourg who was not involved in the work. The study, she says, provides scientists a new way of thinking about how peptides were built.

Researchers who study the origin of life have long considered RNA the central player because it can both carry genetic information and catalyze necessary chemical reactions. It was likely present on our planet before life evolved. But to give rise to modern life, RNA would have had to somehow “learn” to make proteins, and eventually ribosomes. “At the moment, the ribosome simply falls from the heavens,” says Thomas Carell, a chemist at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.


https://www.science.org/content/art...e chicken-and,themselves are made of proteins.
Click to expand...
self replicating RNA has been known for a while but the mechanisms are not
Loks like the peptides (short chain amino acids) might play apart but it's beyond my comprehension
 
Matt Dillon said:
How far off would those evironments be from present day earth?
Click to expand...
Don't know, but there is always a range of uncertainty in scientific investigations, and the professional scientist will always identify, and if possible, quantify the uncertainty.

One thing we know with certainty, the atmosphere of the early Earth was virtually oxygen-free and the first prokaryotes evolved in the absence of atmospheric free oxygen.
 
anatta said:
self replicating RNA has been known for a while but the mechanisms are not
Loks like the peptides (short chain amino acids) might play apart but it's beyond my comprehension
Click to expand...

As far as I know, we've never been able to synthesize stable RNA polymer chains under anything other than extremely controlled laboratory conditions.

Supposedly, meteorites contain nucleobases, and RNA world must have existed prior to 3.8 billion years ago when the earth was being heavily bombarded with meteors. That might be the source of the four nucleobases.

But it's a long way from a simple nucleobase to stable chain polymers of nucleotides that make up RNA. Even if we figure out RNA polymerization we are still light years from fully comprehending abiogenesis.

It's still a mystery, and that's what makes science so fun.
 
Cypress said:
As far as I know, we've never been able to synthesize stable RNA polymer chains under anything other than extremely controlled laboratory conditions.

Supposedly, meteorites contain nucleobases, and RNA world must have existed prior to 3.8 billion years ago when the earth was being heavily bombarded with meteors. That might be the source of the four nucleobases.

But it's a long way from a simple nucleobase to stable chain polymers of nucleotides that make up RNA. Even if we figure out RNA polymerization we are still light years from fully comprehending abiogenesis.

It's still a mystery, and that's what makes science so fun.
Click to expand...
nice analysis -though my biochemisrty is a bit lacking follow some terms like nucleobase and nucleotides
 
Cypress said:
Life only arose once, sometime before 3.5 billion years ago. Every species that has ever existed has the DNA which is a genetic legacy of those first single celled prokaryotes in the remote past.

But to me, what is extraordinary is the persistence and tenacity of life. Even through many mass extinction events, some genetic material survived to fuel the speciation of new species of plants and animals.
Click to expand...

That doesn't prove life only rose once. It could mean life always takes the same path when it starts or it could mean all other forms of life were quickly extinguished by the evolutionary dominance of one form.
 
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