
Researchers Rethink the Ancestry of Complex Cells - pseudolus
https://www.quantamagazine.org/rethinking-the-ancestry-of-the-eukaryotes-20190409/
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grayed-down
Good post. I had an organic chemistry prof back in the late eighties that
remarked something like, "if you think the origin of life was some sort of
random event, think again". This was a really bright guy no one would take for
a religious sort.

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ncmncm
The alternative is that it was inevitable, given the conditions in which it
occurred, dictated by laws of physics, chemistry, and thermodynamics, and was
just a matter of time, like rust or diamonds.

I approve of this interpretation.

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grayed-down
I certainly respect all reasonable opinions on the matter, but I'm personally
convinced that there was some sort of, ahem, intervention involved. It seems
that the mechanics of life involve many complexities that seem far from
inevitable. Who knows, you may be right.

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ncmncm
Then you are saddled with the overwhelmingly bigger problem of where the
interventionist came from.

You don't converge when each next term is astronomically bigger than the
previous one.

It appears, already, that amino acids and RNA were inevitable, and RNA turns
out to suffice for the needed enzyme operations. RNA that replicates other RNA
arises spontaneously. Once you get two of them, the seas fill with variations
of everything they encounter.

