Abiogenesis discoveries and research

[shunyadragon]

In a thread on Noah's Arc the inability to respond coherently to the impossibility of the flood and the construction of the Arc it was decided to change the topic to Abiogenesis loaded with all the blue smoke and mirrors and 'arguing from ignorance' posts. Like all science, there are unanswered questions concerning abiogenesis, but this does not negate the advances in research and discoveries concerning abiogenesis.

The purpose of this thread is to address the actual real research and discoveries concerning the sciences of abiogenesis.

The first research article concerning research on the origin of life at mid-ocean vents. It is worthy of note that the first life known has been found in rocks related to mid-ocean vents.

NASA Study Reproduces Origins of Life on Ocean Floor

A team of scientists has re-created some of the first steps of life in the lab, testing whether life could emerge on other ocean worlds.

www.jpl.nasa.gov

NASA Study Reproduces Origins of Life on Ocean Floor​

Feb. 25, 2019





An image of Saturn's moon Enceladus backlit by the Sun, taken by the Cassini mission. The false color tail shows jets of icy particles and water that spray into space from an ocean that lies deep below the moon's icy surface. Future missions could search for the ingredients for life in an ocean on an icy moon like Enceladus.› Full image and caption
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute









A team of scientists has re-created some of the first steps of life in the lab, testing whether life could emerge on other ocean worlds.
Updated Feb. 26, 4:30 p.m. PST: Text was added to the 10th paragraph, noting study co-author Michael Russell.
Scientists have reproduced in the lab how the ingredients for life could have formed deep in the ocean 4 billion years ago. The results of the new study offer clues to how life started on Earth and where else in the cosmos we might find it.
Astrobiologist Laurie Barge and her team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, are working to recognize life on other planets by studying the origins of life here on Earth. Their research focuses on how the building blocks of life form in hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor.
To re-create hydrothermal vents in the lab, the team made their own miniature seafloors by filling beakers with mixtures that mimic Earth's primordial ocean. These lab-based oceans act as nurseries for amino acids, organic compounds that are essential for life as we know it. Like Lego blocks, amino acids build on one another to form proteins, which make up all living things.

Hydrothermal vents are places in the seafloor where warm water from under the Earth's crust mixes with near-freezing seawater. These vents form natural chimneys, which play host to all kinds of ocean life. Image Credit: MARUM/University of Bremen/NOAA-Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory
"Understanding how far you can go with just organics and minerals before you have an actual cell is really important for understanding what types of environments life could emerge from," said Barge, the lead investigator and the first author on the new study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "Also, investigating how things like the atmosphere, the ocean and the minerals in the vents all impact this can help you understand how likely this is to have occurred on another planet."
Found around cracks in the seafloor, hydrothermal vents are places where natural chimneys form, releasing fluid heated below Earth's crust. When these chimneys interact with the seawater around them, they create an environment that is in constant flux, which is necessary for life to evolve and change. This dark, warm environment fed by chemical energy from Earth may be the key to how life could form on worlds farther out in our solar system, far from the heat of the Sun.
"If we have these hydrothermal vents here on Earth, possibly similar reactions could occur on other planets," said JPL's Erika Flores, co-author of the new study.
Barge and Flores used ingredients commonly found in early Earth's ocean in their experiments. They combined water, minerals and the "precursor" molecules pyruvate and ammonia, which are needed to start the formation of amino acids. They tested their hypothesis by heating the solution to 158 degrees Fahrenheit (70 degrees Celsius) - the same temperature found near a hydrothermal vent - and adjusting the pH to mimic the alkaline environment. They also removed the oxygen from the mixture because, unlike today, early Earth had very little oxygen in its ocean. The team additionally used the mineral iron hydroxide, or "green rust," which was abundant on early Earth.
The green rust reacted with small amounts of oxygen that the team injected into the solution, producing the amino acid alanine and the alpha hydroxy acid lactate. Alpha hydroxy acids are byproducts of amino acid reactions, but some scientists theorize they too could combine to form more complex organic molecules that could lead to life.
"We've shown that in geological conditions similar to early Earth, and maybe to other planets, we can form amino acids and alpha hydroxy acids from a simple reaction under mild conditions that would have existed on the seafloor," said Barge.
Barge's creation of amino acids and alpha hydroxy acids in the lab is the culmination of nine years of research into the origins of life. Past studies, which built on the foundational work of co-author and JPL chemist Michael Russell, looked at whether the right ingredients for life are found in hydrothermal vents, and how much energy those vents can generate (enough to power a light bulb). But this new study is the first time her team has watched an environment very similar to a hydrothermal vent drive an organic reaction. Barge and her team will continue to study these reactions in anticipation of finding more ingredients for life and creating more complex molecules. Step by step, she's slowly inching her way up the chain of life.
This line of research is important as scientists study worlds in our solar system and beyond that may host habitable environments. Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus, for example, could have hydrothermal vents in oceans beneath their icy crusts. Understanding how life could start in an ocean without sunlight would assist scientists in designing future exploration missions, as well as experiments that could dig under the ice to search for evidence of amino acids or other biological molecules.
Future Mars missions could return samples from the Red Planet's rusty surface, which may reveal evidence of amino acids formed by iron minerals and ancient water. Exoplanets - worlds beyond our reach but still within the realm of our telescopes - may have signatures of life in their atmospheres that could be revealed in the future.
"We don't have concrete evidence of life elsewhere yet," said Barge. "But understanding the conditions that are required for life's origin can help narrow down the places that we think life could exist."
This research was supported by the NASA Astrobiology Institute's JPL Icy Worlds team.
For more information on astrobiology at NASA, please visit:
NASA Astrobiology

 

[shunyadragon]

It has been determined that the vents are an ideal environment for life to begin. The mid-ocean ridge vents have the basic organics and energy required for first life. The first life forms would have been very simple RNA organisms like primitive viruses. The earliest primitive organisms found are fossils in rocks formed 3.77 billion years ago.

World's oldest fossils unearthed

Remains of microorganisms at least 3,770 million years old have been discovered by an international team led by UCL scientists, providing direct evidence of one of the oldest life forms on Earth.

www.ucl.ac.uk

World's oldest fossils unearthed​

1 March 2017
Remains of microorganisms at least 3,770 million years old have been discovered by an international team led by UCL scientists, providing direct evidence of one of the oldest life forms on Earth.

Tiny filaments and tubes formed by bacteria that lived on iron were found encased in quartz layers in the Nuvvuagittuq Supracrustal Belt (NSB), Quebec, Canada.
The NSB contains some of the oldest sedimentary rocks known on Earth which likely formed part of an iron-rich deep-sea hydrothermal vent system that provided a habitat for Earth's first life forms between 3,770 and 4,300 million years ago.
"Our discovery supports the idea that life emerged from hot, seafloor vents shortly after planet Earth formed. This speedy appearance of life on Earth fits with other evidence of recently discovered 3,700 million year old sedimentary mounds that were shaped by microorganisms," explained first author, PhD student Matthew Dodd (UCL Earth Sciences and the London Centre for Nanotechnology).
Published today in Nature and funded by UCL, NASA, Carnegie of Canada and the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the study describes the discovery and the detailed analysis of the remains undertaken by the team from UCL, the Geological Survey of Norway, US Geological Survey, the University of Western Australia, the University of Ottawa and the University of Leeds.
Prior to this discovery, the oldest microfossils reported were found in Western Australia and dated at 3,460 million years old but some scientists think they might be non-biological artefacts in the rocks. It was therefore a priority for the UCL-led team to determine whether the remains from Canada had biological origins.
The researchers systematically looked at the ways the tubes and filaments, made of haematite - a form of iron oxide or 'rust' - could have been made through non-biological methods such as temperature and pressure changes in the rock during burial of the sediments, but found all of the possibilities unlikely.
The haematite structures have the same characteristic branching of iron-oxidising bacteria found near other hydrothermal vents today and were found alongside graphite and minerals like apatite and carbonate which are found in biological matter including bones and teeth and are frequently associated with fossils.
They also found that the mineralised fossils are associated with spheroidal structures that usually contain fossils in younger rocks, suggesting that the haematite most likely formed when bacteria that oxidised iron for energy were fossilised in the rock.
"We found the filaments and tubes inside centimetre-sized structures called concretions or nodules, as well as other tiny spheroidal structures, called rosettes and granules, all of which we think are the products of putrefaction. They are mineralogically identical to those in younger rocks from Norway, the Great Lakes area of North America and Western Australia," explained study lead, Dr Dominic Papineau (UCL Earth Sciences and the London Centre for Nanotechnology).
"The structures are composed of the minerals expected to form from putrefaction, and have been well documented throughout the geological record, from the beginning until today. The fact we unearthed them from one of the oldest known rock formations, suggests we've found direct evidence of one of Earth's oldest life forms. This discovery helps us piece together the history of our planet and the remarkable life on it, and will help to identify traces of life elsewhere in the universe."
Matthew Dodd concluded, "These discoveries demonstrate life developed on Earth at a time when Mars and Earth had liquid water at their surfaces, posing exciting questions for extra-terrestrial life. Therefore, we expect to find evidence for past life on Mars 4,000 million years ago, or if not, Earth may have been a special exception."

​

 

[shunyadragon]

I missed this that there was another recent thread on the evidence for abiogenesis here:

Recent research in support of abiogenesis

In 2022, two papers were published on research favoring the RNA World hypothesis of the origin of life on Earth. In the first paper it was demonstrated that RNA could evolve and diversify leading to ever increasingly complex interactions between replicator molecules. Evolutionary transition...

www.religiousforums.com

I found,this thread started by @Subduction Zone, like this thread, the fundamentalist Christians rattle the bones and tin cans over the Miller-Urey experiment in other threads that there is no evidence for abiogenesis, but not a peep in response when the current research and discoveries are presented.

 

[shunyadragon]

A pair of experiments reveal new details regarding the origin of life on Earth

Separate teams of researchers in Japan and Germany have experimentally demonstrated key elements in the chemical processes that led to the appearance of living systems 4 billion years ago.

www.wsws.org

In the first of the two recent studies, a Japanese team, based at the University of Tokyo, used RNA sequences that, under specific conditions, spontaneously replicated themselves and underwent modification in subsequent generations (Mizuuchi, Furubayashi, and Ichihashi, “Evolutionary transition from a single RNA replicator to a multiple replicator network,” Nature Communications, March 18, 2022).

They posed their research question as follows. “An origins-of-life scenario depicts Darwinian evolution from self-replicating molecules, such as RNA, toward complex living systems. How molecular replicators could develop complexity by continuously expanding information and functions is a central issue in prebiotic evolution.”

This team conducted a long-term experiment in which they encased RNA molecules obtained from Escherichia coli (a common bacteria), in water-in-oil droplets, heating them, and introducing additional nucleotides as raw material. They found that over time, as new copies of the RNA molecules were generated, the original sequences mutated, creating distinct lineages. Notably, the new lineages did not undergo further mutations at the same rate and began to differentiate due to imperfect replication, indicating the potential for different evolutionary trajectories and, in effect, manifesting the potential for different evolutionary “fitness” which would have been subject to natural selection. They also found that different lineages interacted with each other in replication, creating a complex, interdependent system.

The researchers concluded, “Our results provide evidence that Darwinian evolution drives complexification of molecular replicators, paving the way toward the emergence of living systems.” Thus, natural chemical processes not only produce molecules that replicate themselves but launch a self-sustaining trajectory to increasing complexity.

One of the team, Ryo Mizuuchi, explained to OnlySky, “The simplicity of our molecular replication system, compared with biological organisms, allows us to examine evolutionary phenomena with unprecedented resolution. The evolution of complexity seen in our experiment is just the beginning. Many more events should occur towards the emergence of living systems.”

He added, “We found that the single RNA species evolved into a complex replication system: a replicator network comprising five types of RNAs with diverse interactions, supporting the plausibility of a long-envisioned evolutionary transition scenario.”

A second experiment was conducted by a different set of researchers, based at the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich, Germany (Muller et al, “A prebiotically plausible scenario of an RNA-peptide world,” Nature, May 11, 2022). This team set out to examine how, prior to the appearance of DNA, the first life forms, based on RNA, could begin to assemble amino acids into proteins. It had been previously observed that RNA strands become increasingly fragile as they lengthen, thus posing the question of how RNA could assemble more than short segments of amino acids, also known as peptides, which are intermediate steps in the construction of proteins.

It has long been known that nucleic acid strands in both RNA and DNA contain segments that code specifically for the assembly of amino acids into proteins and others the function of which was unclear. The research by Muller et al demonstrates that these “non-coding” segments of RNA can bond with amino acids to form structures, some relatively complex, that strengthen the RNA strand and form a “scaffolding” on which longer segments of amino acids can be assembled by the “coding” sections of the RNA.

The German research appears to address earlier criticisms of the RNA-world scenario which contend that RNA alone could not have fulfilled the necessary replicatory and information storage functions necessary to initiate life. RNA by itself does not have what one critic called “computational reflexivity,” the capacity to accurately reproduce itself. These critics proposed an RNA-peptide world in which combinations of these two molecules had this property. This is what the German team has found.

In many modern organisms, DNA functions as the primary mechanism by which genetic information is stored in order not only to direct the growth and function of an individual organism but also to transmit the code to produce the next generation. RNA operates in a “supportive” role within a cell, functioning to transfer sections of code to assemble the necessary amino acids to construct specific proteins in intra-cellular structures called ribosomes.

The combined results of these two studies provide key details regarding the initial evolution of life from “non-life.” Many questions remain. How did DNA develop? How did RNA become incorporated in a “subordinate” role within cells where DNA functions as the primary information repository?

 

[shunyadragon]

More contemporary research gives an explanation of the origins of the organic chemistry for abiogenesis:

Science | AAAS

www.science.org

Researchers may have solved origin-of-life conundrum​

Study explains how three essential molecules could have formed simultaneously​

Now, researchers say they may have solved these paradoxes. Chemists report today that a pair of simple compounds, which would have been abundant on early Earth, can give rise to a network of simple reactions that produce the three major classes of biomolecules—nucleic acids, amino acids, and lipids—needed for the earliest form of life to get its start. Although the new work does not prove that this is how life started, it may eventually help explain one of the deepest mysteries in modern science.

"This is a very important paper," says Jack Szostak, a molecular biologist and origin-of-life researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, who was not affiliated with the current research. "It proposes for the first time a scenario by which almost all of the essential building blocks for life could be assembled in one geological setting."

​

Scientists have long touted their own favorite scenarios for which set of biomolecules formed first. "RNA World" proponents, for example suggest RNA may have been the pioneer; not only is it able to carry genetic information, but it can also serve as a proteinlike chemical catalyst, speeding up certain reactions. Metabolism-first proponents, meanwhile, have argued that simple metal catalysts, as opposed to advanced protein-based enzymes, may have created a soup of organic building blocks that could have given rise to the other biomolecules.​

The RNA World hypothesis got a big boost in 2009. Chemists led by John Sutherland at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom reported that they had discovered that relatively simple precursor compounds called acetylene and formaldehyde could undergo a sequence of reactions to produce two of RNA's four nucleotide building blocks, showing a plausible route to how RNA could have formed on its own—without the need for enzymes—in the primordial soup. Critics, though, pointed out that acetylene and formaldehyde are still somewhat complex molecules themselves. That begged the question of where they came from.

For their current study, Sutherland and his colleagues set out to work backward from those chemicals to see if they could find a route to RNA from even simpler starting materials. They succeeded. In the current issue of Nature Chemistry, Sutherland's team reports that it created nucleic acid precursors starting with just hydrogen cyanide (HCN), hydrogen sulfide (H2S), and ultraviolet (UV) light. What is more, Sutherland says, the conditions that produce nucleic acid precursors also create the starting materials needed to make natural amino acids and lipids. That suggests a single set of reactions could have given rise to most of life's building blocks simultaneously.

​

Sutherland's team argues that early Earth was a favorable setting for those reactions. HCN is abundant in comets, which rained down steadily for nearly the first several hundred million years of Earth's history. The impacts would also have produced enough energy to synthesize HCN from hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen. Likewise, Sutherland says, H2S was thought to have been common on early Earth, as was the UV radiation that could drive the reactions and metal-containing minerals that could have catalyzed them.

That said, Sutherland cautions that the reactions that would have made each of the sets of building blocks are different enough from one another—requiring different metal catalysts, for example—that they likely would not have all occurred in the same location. Rather, he says, slight variations in chemistry and energy could have favored the creation of one set of building blocks over another, such as amino acids or lipids, in different places. "Rainwater would then wash these compounds into a common pool," says Dave Deamer, an origin-of-life researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who wasn't affiliated with the research.
Could life have kindled in that common pool? That detail is almost certainly forever lost to history. But the idea and the "plausible chemistry" behind it is worth careful thought, Deamer says. Szostak agrees. "This general scenario raises many questions," he says, "and I am sure that it will be debated for some time to come."

 

[YoursTrue]

I found,this thread started by @Subduction Zone, like this thread, the fundamentalist Christians rattle the bones and tin cans over the Miller-Urey experiment in other threads that there is no evidence for abiogenesis, but not a peep in response when the current research and discoveries are presented.

In actuality, what you are doing is separating the process of evolution from what you call abiogenesis, as if it had no connection to evolution.

 

[shunyadragon]

In actuality, what you are doing is separating the process of evolution from what you call abiogenesis, as if it had no connection to evolution.

If you read I am not doing that environmentally driven evolution follows abiogenesis, but also abiogenesis has its own pattern of being environmentally driven. Post #5 deals specifically with the origin of organics' needed for evolution. Post #2 deals with the most primitive organisms known at mid-ocean vents which are the strongest evidence for the beginning of life. The boundary is not totally clear at present, but the likely beginning is the reproduction of RNA, which is mentioned in the research articles I posted. All these research sources mention and relate to processes that result in the first life.

There are three distinct aspects of the current research (1) The environment necessary for abiogenesis including energy sources. (2) the origin of organic materials necessary for abiogenesis. (3) The chemical steps for the formation of RNA and replication, The existence of the present very primitive TNA viruses are models for what is necessary for the first life.

There may be more references

You are welcome to post your contributions. The discussion of abiogenesis is not supposed to be in Noah's flood thread.

 

[Jimmy]

That’s all very fascinating but I’m goin for the earth began around 1980 for $300 Alex.

 

[Subduction Zone]

In actuality, what you are doing is separating the process of evolution from what you call abiogenesis, as if it had no connection to evolution.

Not at all. And if you look into some of the latest articles on abiogenesis the process may have worked in a similar way to evolution. That stage of the development of life is even called "chemical evolution" by some since it follows many of the same laws that life follows as it evolves:

The Informational Substrate of Chemical Evolution: Implications for Abiogenesis

A key aspect of biological evolution is the capacity of living systems to process information, coded in deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), and used to direct how the cell works. The overall picture that emerges today from fields such as developmental, synthetic, ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

 

[Dan From Smithville]

I missed this that there was another recent thread on the evidence for abiogenesis here:

Recent research in support of abiogenesis

In 2022, two papers were published on research favoring the RNA World hypothesis of the origin of life on Earth. In the first paper it was demonstrated that RNA could evolve and diversify leading to ever increasingly complex interactions between replicator molecules. Evolutionary transition...

www.religiousforums.com

I found,this thread started by @Subduction Zone, like this thread, the fundamentalist Christians rattle the bones and tin cans over the Miller-Urey experiment in other threads that there is no evidence for abiogenesis, but not a peep in response when the current research and discoveries are presented.

I didn't get much action on that thread from the creationists.

 

[YoursTrue]

I didn't get much action on that thread from the creationists.

Perhaps you're not using the right word because those believing the creation account in Genesis that you term as creationists may have different viewpoints, I'm not sure if you would agree with the term evolutionist (I doubt you would agree) but to be respectful I will question instead of using the word evolutionist, that those believers in evolution agree with each other about the summations of scientists believing in evolution.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Perhaps you're not using the right word because those believing the creation account in Genesis that you term as creationists may have different viewpoints, I'm not sure if you would agree with the term evolutionist (I doubt you would agree) but to be respectful I will question instead of using the word evolutionist, that those believers in evolution agree with each other about the summations of scientists believing in evolution.

Creationist is a term used to describe science deniers. A couple of things that they have in common. None of them have a working model for creationism and none of them have any scientific evidence for their beliefs. Since they do not follow the scientific method one cannot call them scientists, what do you propose that they be called?

 

[sun rise]

Perhaps you're not using the right word because those believing the creation account in Genesis that you term as creationists may have different viewpoints, I'm not sure if you would agree with the term evolutionist (I doubt you would agree) but to be respectful I will question instead of using the word evolutionist, that those believers in evolution agree with each other about the summations of scientists believing in evolution.

People who accept evolution are not "believers". They accept the real gigantic mountain range of scientific evidence that keeps getting stronger and stronger.

The non-atheists among those who accept evolution do believe in creation but not literally. They are "God is who; evolution is how" people.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

In actuality, what you are doing is separating the process of evolution from what you call abiogenesis, as if it had no connection to evolution.

1. it indeed has no connection, in the sense that the process of evolution isn't predicated on any particular origin of life. Evolution just requires life as we know it to exist - no matter how it came about.

2. funny how after all the information posted in this thread THAT is the part you pick to reply to. This thread isn't about that at all.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Creationist is a term used to describe science deniers. A couple of things that they have in common. None of them have a working model for creationism and none of them have any scientific evidence for their beliefs.

And most of them have only a strawman understanding of evolution.
And I'm being generous with the word "most", because I have actually never encountered one that had a correct understanding of evolution theory.

 

[YoursTrue]

People who accept evolution are not "believers". They accept the real gigantic mountain range of scientific evidence that keeps getting stronger and stronger.

The non-atheists among those who accept evolution do believe in creation but not literally. They are "God is who; evolution is how" people.

If someone could show me in reality (not guesswork) how apes and lions came about from a common ancestor , I might think differently. So far it seems to me it's all guesswork. There are insects now that I think about it. Did insects supposedly evolve eventually to elephants? Just wondering what you think scientists think and may possibly believe.

 

[Subduction Zone]

If someone could show me in reality (not guesswork) how apes and lions came about from a common ancestor , I might think differently. So far it seems to me it's all guesswork. There are insects now that I think about it. Did insects supposedly evolve eventually to elephants? Just wondering what you think scientists think and may possibly believe.

It h as been done. Don't blame others for something that is your fault

 

[shunyadragon]

I didn't get much action on that thread from the creationists.

Beat a dead horse to death in the Noah's Arc thread did not help.

 

[sun rise]

If someone could show me in reality (not guesswork) how apes and lions came about from a common ancestor , I might think differently. So far it seems to me it's all guesswork. There are insects now that I think about it. Did insects supposedly evolve eventually to elephants? Just wondering what you think scientists think and may possibly believe.

That evidence is there. You have been presented with pieces of it. If you truly want to know more, take a course such as the ones offered here 60+ Free Online Courses on Evolutionary Science But to even begin to learn that answer you need to learn how science works. How science works - Understanding Science is a place to start.

Scientists think that they should seek to understand how the world works and that science is the tool to accomplish that goal. Scientists think that knowledge is better than ignorance. Scientists know that the tools we use today such as cellphones and computers are the products of science. Don't like science? Then throw away all the products of science and that's everything today and go live in the tall grass with a spear and an animal hide loincloth.

 

[YoursTrue]

That evidence is there. You have been presented with pieces of it. If you truly want to know more, take a course such as the ones offered here 60+ Free Online Courses on Evolutionary Science But to even begin to learn that answer you need to learn how science works. How science works - Understanding Science is a place to start.

Scientists think that they should seek to understand how the world works and that science is the tool to accomplish that goal. Scientists think that knowledge is better than ignorance. Scientists know that the tools we use today such as cellphones and computers are the products of science. Don't like science? Then throw away all the products of science and that's everything today and go live in the tall grass with a spear and an animal hide loincloth.

As far as I am concerned your statement does not make sense because you're not citing reports and facts . You're only saying that you agree with what scientists say.