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New hypothesis for origin of life proposed (physorg.com)
15 points by nickb on Dec 5, 2007 | hide | past | favorite | 4 comments


Definitely an interesting theory. I could absolutely see life forming there, though some of her arguments are a little over the top:

"RNA plays an important part in translating the genetic code, and is composed of nitrogenous bases, sugar, and phosphates. RNA and many proteins and lipids in our cells have negative charges like mica. RNA's phosphate groups are spaced one half nanometer apart, just like the negative charges on mica."

This is coincidence and nothing more. Lots of things have a negative charge. In fact, half of all things with a charge must be negative. The same with the phosphate groups. I assume she means the distance between the phosphate group in subsequent ribonucleotides, since in the chain each ribonucleotide has only one phosphate group. However, I believe this distance can change based on how the RNA is folded (it's never in a straight chain like it's drawn unless it's bound to its complimentary strand).

I hope more research is done on this though, because it would solve some problems with the primordial soup hypothesis.


I agree, I wonder how many origin-of-life hypotheses are created each day sometimes...

Formula for OOL Hypothesis:

1) Find extremely old rock layer / ocean bed, etc that contains materials that are components of today's living organisms

2) Take High-res microscopic pictures of gel or bubbly substance, toss in a few arrows

3) Throw in a few words about positive/negative charges to satisfy the amino acid creation requirement

4) Make up a source of heat -- i.e. sun through magnified glass, earthquake, volcanic activity, etc.

5) Release theory!


More satanic trickery! Again the devil fools the nonbelievers.

In all seriousness though, more posts like this please. There should be hacker news for non-computer science nerds like me.


I've heard the idea of life forming on mineral surfaces before; see for example from 1998:

http://www-news.uchicago.edu/releases/98/980331.origin.of.li...

My money's on extraterrestrial origin, aka 'exogenesis', and probably 'panspermia' as well. (We'll eventually find life almost everywhere.) See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia




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