Re: Paradoxes

On 11/01/2025 8:13 pm, Ernest Major wrote:

On 11/01/2025 08:04, MarkE wrote:

5. Water Paradox
Description: Water is essential for life but also promotes the hydrolysis of complex biomolecules like RNA, DNA, and proteins, breaking them apart. This makes it difficult to reconcile the stability of biomolecules in early Earth conditions.
- Proposed Resolutions:
Episodic drying and wetting cycles (e.g., in hydrothermal vents or tidal pools).
Alternative solvents or local protective environments.

 https://phys.org/news/2022-06-scientists-breakthrough-life-earthand- mars.html

Interesting.
"...the study shows that long RNA molecules, 100-200 nucleotides in length, form when nucleoside triphosphates do nothing more than percolate through basaltic glass."
That would be a significant result, depending on the context and details. The chirality problem is still there of course: "Important questions remain," cautions Benner. "We still do not know how all of the RNA building blocks came to have the same general shape, a relationship known as homochirality."
More details at https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/ast.2022.0027
"However, these experiments cannot exclude the presence of 2′,5′ linkages, nor some amount of branching."
Though the following is positive (credit where due):
"In any case, the process is catalytic. Polyribonucleic acid synthesis continues over time, products accumulate over months, and the process does not consume the glass. Furthermore, the process occurs under conditions wherein polyribonucleic acid is stable, especially against depurination (Mungi et al., 2019). Kinetic data suggest that a small impact region on the Hadean surface containing just a few metric tons of fractured and water-permeated glass could have had the ability to produce close to a gram of RNA per day, limited (of course) by the supply of triphosphates."