From: me22over7@gmail.com   
      
   On 28/08/2025 3:01 pm, Pro Plyd wrote:   
   >   
   > https://phys.org/news/2025-08-chemists-rna-proteins-early-earth.html   
   >   
   > Chemists at University College London have shown   
   > how two of biology's most fundamental ingredients,   
   > RNA (ribonucleic acid) and amino acids, could have   
   > spontaneously joined together at the origin of life   
   > four billion years ago.   
   >   
   > Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins,   
   > the "workhorses" of life essential to nearly every   
   > living process. But proteins cannot replicate or   
   > produce themselves—they require instructions. These   
   > instructions are provided by RNA, a close chemical   
   > cousin of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid).   
   >   
   > In a new study, published in Nature, researchers   
   > chemically linked life's amino acids to RNA in   
   > conditions that could have occurred on early   
   > Earth—an achievement that has eluded scientists   
   > since the early 1970s.   
   > ...   
   >   
      
   "Our study brings us closer to that goal by demonstrating how two   
   primordial chemical LEGO pieces (activated amino acids and RNA) could   
   have built peptides, short chains of amino acids that are essential to   
   life."   
      
   This is prebiotic, which by definition precedes Darwinian evolution,   
   i.e. replication with random variation acted upon by natural selection   
   resulting in differential reproductive success.   
      
   Therefore, even if random "short chains of amino acids" could be   
   produced, how do they become functional? Or more completely, how do we   
   get to a minimal entity capable of self-replication?   
      
   Self-replication in this context will have a high dependency on specific   
   environmental conditions compared with a modern cell.   
      
   Because any conceivable "minimal entity capable of self-replication"   
   will be far too complex for random, chance formation, any realistic   
   naturalistic hypothesis must provide a process of "chemical evolution".   
      
   What's your preferred hypothesis?   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)