Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: jennyp
Amino acids & nucleic acids spontaneously link & form longer & longer chains on the surfaces of minerals, even up to lengths where functional proteins & RNA start to be found.

Dear god.. you actually believe that? LOL! And dear, if you had half the intellectual honesty that you pretend to, you might have spent five minutes looking for Dembski's responses to his critics. I would also put down a large sum of cash betting that you've never even read one of his books.
43 posted on 12/31/2001 5:25:53 AM PST by Exnihilo
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 32 | View Replies ]


To: Exnihilo
Amino acids & nucleic acids spontaneously link & form longer & longer chains on the surfaces of minerals, even up to lengths where functional proteins & RNA start to be found.

Dear god.. you actually believe that? LOL!

The mineral surfaces are catalysts. Catalysts are substances that do great damage to creationist impossible odds arguments.

Most theories of the origin of biological organization assume that polymers with lengths in the range of 30-60 monomers are needed to make a genetic system viable. But it has not proved possible to synthesize plausibly prebiotic polymers this long by condensation in aqueous solution, because hydrolysis competes with polymerization. The potential of mineral surfaces to facilitate prebiotic polymerization was pointed out long ago. Here we describe a system that models prebiotic polymerization by the oligomerization of activated monomers--both nucleotides and amino acids. We find that whereas the reactions in solution produce only short oligomers (the longest typically being a 10-mer), the presence of mineral surfaces (montmorillonite for nucleotides, illite and hydroxylapatite for amino acids) induces the formation of oligomers up to 55 monomers long. These are formed by successive 'feedings' with the monomers; polymerization takes place on the mineral surfaces in a manner akin to solid-phase synthesis of biopolymers.
Ferris, Hill, Liu, & Orgel. 1996 May 2. Synthesis of long prebiotic oligomers on mineral surfaces. Nature, 381, 59-61.

What part of this study do you laugh at? And if you say it's the fact that it's a human-designed experiment, you lose. :-)

55 posted on 12/31/2001 11:20:56 AM PST by jennyp
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 43 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson