Transition Metal Catalysts Could Be Key to Origin of Life

[Tank]

Transition Metal Catalysts Could Be Key to Origin of Life

ScienceDaily (Sep. 3, 2010) â€" One of the big, unsolved problems in explaining how life arose on Earth is a chicken-and-egg paradox: How could the basic biochemicals -- such as amino acids and nucleotides -- have arisen before the biological catalysts (proteins or ribozymes) existed to carry out their formation?

[PoopShoot]

More and more testable theories arise in support of abiogenesis, while creation theories and arguments for intelligent design are shattered with every new "discovery" they attempt to make.  :twocents:

[Inevitable Droid]

I'm so glad I found this thread, which pointed me to such an important article.  My thanks to the author of the OP.

Incidentally, I got here by searching on the word abiogenesis, as I wondered if this topic had been raised on this message board, albeit I was highly expectant that it had, and I wasn't disappointed.

This from the article makes total sense to me:

"The idea has emerged from a study of the periodic table. We strongly feel that unless you're able to see how life comes about in some formal chemical way, you're never really going to solve the problem," Morowitz says.

Understanding abiogenesis will probably lead to us understanding something else near and dear to my heart - the chemical constraints on mutation.  My intuition demands that mutation is more chemically constrained, hence more intrinsically non-random, then science can currently articulate.  I don't begin to have the requisite knowledge to be able to turn my intution into hypotheses, and despite their immensely greater knowledge, even modern biochemists haven't quite yet raised the kind of hypotheses I hope for.  But my intuition likewise suggests that an understanding of abiogenesis will lead to the ability to formulate my hoped-for hypotheses.  Time will tell.  

As always, I am gratified that in this world there are those who, in the face of mystery, do science, not theology.