Re: Clay


"Tim Tyler" <seemysig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:jqjCi.34210$g.3831@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Kent Paul Dolan wrote:

The sense of what holding a conversation with
spintronic is like should be beginning to make
itself obvious about now.

I'm still amazed he's been able to string you along
even this far. His universal rabid state is usually
much more in evidence this far into an exchange.

Enjoy your tussle with the tar baby, Tim.

You were adequately warned.

Yes, well - the point of this discussion from
my point of view only becomes apparent if I
say something stupid enough to goad Perplexed
into responding.

Something like: "cells with their genes on the
*outside*: how dumb is that?" - perhaps.

However I'm not yet sure how I'm going to work
something like that into the conversation ;-)

Genes with their phenotypes in grooves? How stupid is
that?

Organisms needing monomers to reproduce, and unable to
build monomers themselves, evolving a wall around themself
to keep the monomers out? How stupid is that?

Organisms needing monomers to reproduce, and unable
to build monomers themselves, evolving the ability
to build monomers - which then diffuse away into the
'soup'? How stupid is that?

The only things I am completely sure about regarding
abiogenesis are (1) you need some kind of containment
to evolve a metabolism under natural selection, and
(2) almost any conceivable container which keeps intermediate
metabolites in will keep raw materials out.

Hence, the key problem in any metabolism-first scheme is to
somehow have containment without the usual kinds of containers.
Wachtershauser solved this problem. The container IS the contents.

Of course, the Cairns-Smith approach is not metabolism-first.
It is genes-first. And it solves the characteristic problems
of genes-first (namely, where do the monomers come from?) in an
equally clever fashion.

So that leaves the question of whether it is easier for genes
to invent metabolism or for metabolism to invent genes. My
intuition says metabolism invented genes. On the outside, at
first, because that is where the phosphate was.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Clay
    ... "cells with their genes on the ... Organisms needing monomers to reproduce, ... The container IS the contents. ... to invent metabolism or for metabolism to invent genes. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • When You Eat May Be Just as Vital to Your Health as What You Eat
    ... When You Eat May Be Just as Vital to Your Health as What You Eat ... and not by the body's circadian clock as conventional wisdom had it. ... "If feeding time determines the activity of a large number of genes ... each day will have a huge impact on your metabolism," says the study's ...
    (sci.med.nutrition)
  • Re: Metabolism first?
    ... Szathmary, E, Santos, M, Fernando, C. Evolutionary Potential ... metabolism takes place _within_ the enclosed aquaeous medium. ... degrading polymers to non-activated monomers. ... the polymerization process to add the right nucleotide over the wrong one. ...
    (sci.bio.evolution)
  • Re: Clay
    ... The clay idea does without a container. ... of what you mean by a 'metabolism', ... I would say that your version of clay solves the 'containment problem' ... variant proposals. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: solution for Regex
    ... ENTRY K00002 KO ... CLASS Metabolism; Carbohydrate Metabolism; Glycolysis / Gluconeogenesis ... PATHWAY ko00510 N-Glycan biosynthesis ... GENES SCE: YDL232W ...
    (perl.beginners)