
Metabolism appears in lab without cells - chewxy
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25471-spark-of-life-metabolism-appears-in-lab-without-cells.html
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tokenadult
The full paper[1] is interesting, as is the news and views commentary on this
article[2] from the same _Molecular Systems Biology_ journal. The origin of
life is, of course, still an unsolved problem, and one of the problems has
been inferring from geological and other findings what the early environment
of Earth was in which life arose. I commend the Hacker News participant here
who submitted this article for submitting an article from a journalistic
source experienced in science journalism, with a reporter making the effort to
seek other commenters besides the primary research journal authors to gain
pro-and-con commentary about how important this preliminary finding is. I
found the submission interesting, as it suggests some lines of inquiry I
hadn't read about before in other writings on the origin of life.

[1]
[http://msb.embopress.org/content/10/4/725](http://msb.embopress.org/content/10/4/725)

[2]
[http://msb.embopress.org/content/10/4/729](http://msb.embopress.org/content/10/4/729)

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dekhn
I'm with Szotack (quote at end of article). Basically, they're just showing
relatively obvious stuff, which is to say, the second law of thermodynamics
coupled with a heat bath can lead to interesting deviations from entropy.

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fidotron
The difference is that absent a cell doing what Szotack claims (i.e. evolving
in front of him) his theory is basically unprovable and unfalsifiable. The
other group stand a chance of eventually reconstructing what they're looking
for, but the alternative being presented is just pontification.

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hyp0

      from complex sugars to simpler molecules
    

Are they saying they've found non-cell metabolic pathways... but that require
cell-created complex sugars as starting points? OK, so not enough to start
life; but filling in each link in the chain (tree?) is important.

BTW: some researchers extrapolated life-complexity-over-time backwards, and
concluded life is older than Earth. Speculation on speculation! But a
fascinating paper:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5552381](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5552381)

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chm
The DOI is wrong. Here's the paper:
[http://msb.embopress.org/content/10/4/725](http://msb.embopress.org/content/10/4/725).

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sushirain
A non-biologist summary: some complex compositions like sugars have been found
to decompose (metabolize) outside of a cell. The research still does not
explain how such compositions can form in the first place.

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yawz
Journalists look for sensational titles and words so the scientific paper is
probably less "spark"ling.

Regardless, it is encouraging that with every step scientists are getting
closer to explaining one of the greatest scientific mysteries and one of the
biggest dark holes where religious supernatural beings and deities happen to
skulk.

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spiritplumber
I wonder what the creationists will say about this :P

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jwarkentin
See, this is what bothers me. Too many people seem to think that there is a
conflict between evolution and creationism. The thing is, both can in fact be
true. Who's to say that there isn't a creator orchestrating processes? Such a
being wouldn't work by magic, but by a profound understanding of natural
processes. How would this be any different from us discovering how life was
created and then using that understanding to create it ourselves? The whole
back and forth over evolution between religious and non-religious folk is
ridiculous. Neither side will ever get anywhere because the whole premise of
the debate is a non sequitur.

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stormbrew
You might be less bothered if you took creationist in this context to imply
"young earth creationist," which is almost certainly what's intended.

~~~
spiritplumber
Yeah, that's what I meant, sorry. YEC are really the ones making most of the
noise and raising most of the money for stuff like school board electiosn,
so...

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return0
Don't hold your breath; it's gonna take 4 billion years.

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pertinhower
Scientists need to be extraordinarily careful about this kind of vague, "might
be", "coulda been" kind of speculation. Finding the "spark of life" would be
amazing, but speculating about how it might have formed without actual
evidence shows a lack of skepticism that runs counter to the whole ethos of
science and ultimately undermines it. When the public sees scientists hoping
and wishing that they can find the "spark of life," and raising up hands of
praise when some vague suggestion of how it might have happened is proffered,
they're bound to gain suspicions that this part of science, anyway, is nearer
to a religion that a cold, surgical pursuit of verifiable truth.

If you don't see the handwaving speculative wishfulness of the article, note
this sentence: "A related issue is that the reactions observed so far only go
in one direction; from complex sugars to simpler molecules like pyruvate." Ah,
so when you heat up sugars they decompose into simpler molecules? Amazing!
Must have created life! God is dead; long live Nature! Praise be!

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dalke
It sounds like your concern is more with the language of Linda Geddes, who
wrote the New Scientist article, than with the scientists. Are you sure your
caution shouldn't instead be more applied to science journalists?

For example, the "spark of life" is from the New Scientist, not from the
researchers, and the word "spark" doesn't exist in the underlying paper except
in the references, in the title of another paper.

Nor does the paper say something as simple as "when you heat up sugars ...".
Instead:

> Due to the complexity of the metabolic pathways, it has been argued that
> metabolism‐like chemical reaction sequences are unlikely to be catalysed by
> simple environmental catalysts (Lazcano & Miller, 1999; Anet, 2004).
> However, to our knowledge, this possibility has not been tested
> systematically, and at present stage, thermodynamic approaches are not
> predictive about which molecules form in the presence of simple catalysts
> from a precursor (Amend et al, 2013). Here, we studied the reactivity of
> intermediates of glycolysis and the pentose phosphate pathway upon
> replicating a plausible chemical composition of the prebiotic Archean ocean.
> We report that under these conditions, the intermediates of the two pathways
> undergo non‐enzymatic interconversion reactions and form neighbouring
> intermediates that constitute these pathways in modern cells.

That is, the goal was to look for 'metabolism‐like chemical reaction
sequences', and not the creation of more complex sugars.

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falcor84
I agree regarding science journalists and feel the need to put this here:
[http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?n=1174](http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?n=1174)

