Re: The unravelling of OoL

On 02/03/2024 02:13, MarkE wrote:

Here is further evidence that OoL research is really only at base camp, if that. Excitement and optimism over reported progress needs to be tempered thus:
 "Explaining isolated steps on the road from simple chemicals to complex living organisms is not enough. Looking at the big picture could help to bridge rifts in this fractured research field."
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00544-4
 

What a good point - as Nick Lane & pals point out one can go much further when taking life as a clue to its own origins:
"Life as a Guide to Its Own Origins"
https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-ecolsys-110421-101509
"Until recently, little of the requisite CO2 chemistry had been demonstrated in the lab. This has changed dramatically in the last decade; large sections of intermediary metabolism have now been accomplished under reasonable prebiotic conditions (Muchowska et al. 2019, 2020; Preiner et al. 2020; Ralser 2018). But that is still far from demonstrating flux through the entire network."

Furthermore:
 "The origin of life is really an extended continuum from the simplest prebiotic chemistry to the first reproducing cells, with molecular machines encoded by genes — machines such as ribosomes, the protein-building factories found in all cells. Most scientists agree that these nanomachines are a product of selection — but selection for what, where and how? There is no consensus about what to look for, or where. Nor is there even agreement on whether all life must be carbon-based — although all known life on Earth is. Did meteorites deliver cells or organic material from outer space? Did life start on Earth in the hot waters of hydrothermal systems on land or in deep seas?"
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00544-4
 

I am losing my mind, that article is by Nick Lane. That dude. When I read "The Vital Question" I thought "that's the most quote-mineable work on the subject of evolution I've ever read and I don't know if he's a babe in the woods or just refusing to write defensively". I kind of wondered from then on if I'd ever see him actually quote-mined because honestly creationists these days don't read stuff like "The Vital Question". So here it is then!
Hint: I don't have access so here's me putting chips down that the rest of the article says: "it's the deep seas hydrothermal systems one and the reason I'm pointing out the field is fractured is to tell them to get on board already. 'Not carbon-based'? for crying out loud..." [paraphrased]

This accords with commentary by Bruce Damer:
 “[OoL research has] been mainly focused on individual solution chemistry experiments where they want to show polymerization over here, or they want to show metabolism over here, and Dave and I believe that it's time for the field to go from incremental progress to substantial progress. So, these are the four points we've come up with to make substantial progress in the origin of life, and the first one is to employ something called system chemistry, having sufficient complexity so instead of one experiment say about proteins, now you have an experiment about the encapsulation of proteins for example, and informational molecules built from nucleotides in an environment that would say be like an analog of the early Earth, build a complex experiment. Something we're calling sufficient complexity, and all of these experiments have to move the reactions away from equilibrium. And what do we mean by that? Well, in in your high school chemistry experiments, something starts foaming something changes color and then the experiment winds down and stops. Well, life didn't get started that way. Life got started by a continuous run-up of complexity and building upon in a sense nature as a ratchet. So we have to figure out how to build experiments that move will move away from equilibrium…”
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/HMw_ZoXIIOc/m/nb1u4MD6AAAJ
 Is this state of affairs due to legitimate factors such as the field's inherent complexity, timescales, interdisciplinary dependencies, etc? Or is it increasingly pointing to the possibility that the formation of chemical assemblies capable of Darwinian evolution is not possible natural physico-chemical processes? Time may tell.

Yes, it's telling "no" right now. These are very exciting articles, they're not announcing the death knell of the field they're firing the starting pistol.

 If nothing else, here is a filter through which to assess the next breathless OoL breakthrough announcement.