Posted on 01/09/2009 10:46:53 AM PST by Coyoteman
A new molecule that performs the essential function of life - self-replication - could shed light on the origin of all living things.
If that wasn't enough, the laboratory-born ribonucleic acid (RNA) strand evolves in a test tube to double itself ever more swiftly.
"Obviously what we're trying to do is make a biology," says Gerald Joyce, a biochemist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. He hopes to imbue his team's molecule with all the fundamental properties of life: self-replication, evolution, and function.
Joyce and colleague Tracey Lincoln made their chemical out of RNA because most researchers think early life stored information in this sister molecule to DNA. And unlike the stuff of our genomes, RNA molecules can catalyse chemical reactions.
"We're trying to jump in at the last signpost we have back there in the early history of life," Joyce says.
Continues...
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
clearly the important facts are being left out.
I was making bread the other day and after I added the yeast, my dough evolved very swiftly.
Immediately the ACLU files suit to give it legal standing and benefits.
bfltr
This is like taking a box of Betty Crocker cake mix, adding water, and saying Whoa I created a cake.
After the efforts of thousands of scientists all over the world involving millions of man-hours of dedicated research using billions of dollars worth of the latest hi-tech biogen equipment, a primitive RNA molecule, based on existing RNA molecules, has been synthesized, proving once and for all that no intelligence is necessary for life to have started abiogenically.
Very interesting.
Put on your hip waders; its running deep in here !!!!!
Put on your hip waders; its running deep in here !!!!!
Put on your hip waders; its running deep in here !!!!!
Put on your hip waders; its running deep in here !!!!!
Put on your hip waders; its running deep in here !!!!!
You could ping all of those folks in a single post. Put all the names in the “To” box separated by “;” — or are you deliberately spamming the thread?
I can’t stand these so-called scientists with absolutely no background in theology attempting to explain the origins of life...
Are you questioning the intelligence of those millions of "scientists?"
I believe in treating people as individuals, not as countless vermin.
I’m pretty sure he’s on your side; he’s inviting freeper creationists to come and discuss.
I can’t stand these so-called theologists with absolutely no background in science attempting to explain the origins of life...
All from “PhD”’s, right?
You must care an awful lot!
*snicker*
You weren't supposed to notice that.
“laboratory-born ribonucleic acid (RNA)”...He hopes to imbue his team’s molecule with all the fundamental properties of life...Joyce and colleague Tracey Lincoln made their chemical out of RNA...Joyce’s team created...Further lab tinkering made this molecule better at copying itself, but this is not the same as bringing it to life...Lincoln redesigned the molecule to forge a sister RNA...”I wouldn’t call these molecules alive,” he cautions...Joyce says his team has endowed its molecule with another function...More fundamentally, to mimic biology, a molecule must gain new functions on the fly, without laboratory tinkering. Joyce says he has no idea how to clear this hurdle with his team’s RNA molecule....”If somebody makes something great in the lab, it’s fantastic. But really the origin of life on Earth is an historical problem that we’re never going to be able to witness and verify,” he says. (Bingo!—GGG)
Does it ever occur to these scientists (who are made in God’s image) that they are intelligently designing (non-living) molecules to mimic God’s pre-existing intelligent designs?
Except that scientists have no explanation of the origins of life, so they're no further ahead than the theologians.
At least for the theologian, we have the input from the One who did it. He should know what He's talking about it anyone.
And scientists have exactly what? concerning the origin of life?
The facts inadvertantly failed to support their contention, and thus had to be omitted :o(
The crucial difference being the timespan allowed. Billions of years vs. a few manhours. I'm surprised you overlooked this. [/sarc]
Blasphemy. ;-)
Heh, heh - Poor Wiley!
So do the Hindus, and every other religion out there.
By your logic, a believer in Norse mythology is more knowledgeable about the universe than a geologist or an astronomer.
Microevolution is trivial to demonstrate. It doesn’t affirm or refute species-level evolution.
Well, more like a cake that keeps on making cake as you pour in more ingredients.
Well, more like a cake that keeps on making cake as you pour in more ingredients.
[[Not content with achieving one hallmark of life in the lab, Joyce and Lincoln sought to evolve their molecule by natural selection. They did this by mutating sequences of the RNA building blocks, so that 288 possible ribozymes could be built by mixing and matching different pairs of shorter RNAs.
What came out bore an eerie resemblance to Darwin’s theory of natural selection: a few sequences proved winners, most losers. The victors emerged because they could replicate fastest while surrounded by competition, Joyce says.]]
Hmmmm- Swell, but like the link Coyote posts abotu the supposed rise in non intelligent complexity which uses a very sophisticated software program to preprogram certain outcomes, while protecting hte process from any unwanted bad effects, were Joyce’s experiments also tightly and intelligently controlled? Protecting certain outcomes until the desired results arose? Article doesn’t say, but I’ll bet this is the case-
[[Joyce says his team has endowed its molecule with another function, although he will not say what that might be before his findings are published.]]
Yup- Another unrealistic attempt to kick God out of creation by intelligently designing systems under strict scientifically sterile lab conditions-
[[More fundamentally, to mimic biology, a molecule must gain new functions on the fly, without laboratory tinkering. Joyce says he has no idea how to clear this hurdle with his team’s RNA molecule. “It doesn’t have open-ended capacity for Darwinian evolution.”]]
Woopsie- another dead end for Macroevolution- surprised this admission wasn’t written in microscopic letters and at the end of the article under a list of intelligence endowed contribotors to the project
[[”If somebody makes something great in the lab, it’s fantastic. But really the origin of life on Earth is an historical problem that we’re never going to be able to witness and verify,” he says.]]
Oh Darn!
On a more scientifically important point, I’ve created the perpetual motion machine- the only problem is that it needs energy to keep going, but by golly it’s a perpetual motion machine none-the-less- I declare it so because I got the parts to move!
I guess that means that origins are *not science* after all.
Now we're back to square one. Only the theologians have anything approaching an answer.
On a planet before life existed, the surroundings, by logic, would be biologically sterile.
Wow, let’s substantiate evolution by redefining it!
So, I guess they just experimentally demonstrated intelligent design, right?
[[Microevolution is trivial to demonstrate. It doesn’t affirm or refute species-level evolution.]]
Exactly- just another example of intelligently designed Microevolution- it will take the intelligent designed informaiton insertion to even begin to move this to another realm called macroevolution.
The only hting this experiment has managed is to show how intelligently designed creation really is, and to show the mechanism by which the Creator caused life to show up, which was fully formed and fully functional completed species kinds- showing the wheel lug off a car does not show the car evolved naturalistically, all it does is show the design that went into the creation of a very small part of hte whole I’m afraid
[[On a planet before life existed, the surroundings, by logic, would be biologically sterile.]]
In a time far removed, and far away, after the intitial creation of energy by soem unknown force- Metaphyisical appeals to unknown intellgence and Natural law suspensions
I wonder if Gerald Joyce would be flattered or annoyed when, a billion years hence, some of the progeny of his designed molecule refuse to acknowledge his accomplishment?
[[But really the origin of life on Earth is an historical problem that we’re never going to be able to witness and verify,” he says...
I guess that means that origins are *not science* after all.]]
Exactly, and it’s amusing to see evos accuse us and creation and ID scientists of being ‘apologists’
Frankly, that is the only weakness my atheism/ agnosticism has had, for a long, long time. That, and the related property of our minds not being able to fathom a physical limit for the universe: It’s not just very big, but the space has no limit, in the most technical of definitions.
Admitting that the concept of God is beyond human understanding is not necessarily atheism.
Claiming to know the mind of God and be privy to God’s understanding of the physical world is not necessarily Christian.
Which theological answer is the correct one?
Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything.Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love, 1973
Really? Because.....
[[But really the origin of life on Earth is an historical problem that we’re never going to be able to witness and verify,” he says...
I guess that means that origins are *not science* after all.]]
Exactly, and it’s amusing to see evos accuse us and creation and ID scientists of being ‘apologists’
But the true believers buy this crap up in spades.
They look past the extreme manipulation, and see ‘evolution.’
A few months down the road, this will be added to the rest of the ignorant crap at talk.origins as more ‘proof’ of evolution.
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