Abiogenesis is a reasonable theory for the beginnings of life

Rebuttals to my opponent's arguments will come immediately after. First, since Pro has conceded that there is no known RNA which can self-replicate without proteins, it must be assumed that Pro's prehistoric earth contained both RNA and the required proteins. These are both macromolecules (read: large and complex) who would have had to arise spontaneously at the same time to allow the RNA to develop into something that we can call life. Pro has not demonstrated that the required proteins also could have theoretically arisen with early RNA. Since my citing of testimony from a late Nobel Chemistry Prize winner doesn't sit well with my opponent, I will present an expert testimonial from 2013. According to Charles Carter, an ancient biology expert for 40 years: "The RNA world hypothesis is extremely unlikely[. .. ] It would take forever. "4 (emphasis mine) Extremely unlikely. That is directly contrary to my opponent's claim it's “reasonable”. Mr. Carter even goes on to say that in his opinion, the RNA World is “little more than a popular fantasy. ” Ring a bell? In a previous round, I quoted the late Leslie Orgel calling the RNA World a “Molecular Biologist's Dream”. Dreams and fantasies aren't real! But it gets even better. Charles Kurland, holding a Ph. D in Biochemistry for half a century, had the following to say in 2010, in a paper titled The RNA Dreamtime: “[The] RNA world is an expression of the infatuation of molecular biologists with base pairing in nucleic acids played out in a one-dimensional space with no reference to time or energy”6 Wow. Moving on. Science Daily calls my opponent's position “a hard sell”, explaining how it would take “much longer than the age of the universe for randomly generated RNA molecules to evolve sufficiently to achieve the modern level of sophistication. ”5 In other words, it's impossible. “Since many of the papers I've cited have utilized materials that were likely available in early earth, it is now Con's responsibility to present the "millions" of compounds somehow capable of interfering with this process[. .. ] he also has to prove that they were at high enough concentration to inhibit everything across the whole planet. ” One of the compounds capable of interfering with the replication process is actually the RNA molecule itself. It's extremely unstable, and inherently so. “RNA is particularly labile at moderate to high temperatures”,1 which has prompted the theorizing of a very icy and frigid RNA world; however, cold temperatures are also a problem: RNA deforms to a dimer formation at a very quickly while frozen,indicating thata freezing environment causes “formation of intermolecular RNA complexes from stable RNA”. These deformations reduce the ability of RNA to catalyze reactions necessary to replicate.2 So neither hot nor cold temperatures resolve the problem of instability which is inherent to RNA. Both of the cited sources above reflect recent scientific research; the first one is actually dated 2012 and the other is from 2007. Another manifestation of the inherent instability of RNA is it's vulnerability to base-catalyzed hydrolysis.3 This means that at a pH higher than 6, RNA breaks down. What does this mean? Basically, for RNA to merely maintain it's own existence, much-less propagate, it requires a very specific environment. Also, the conditions required to even get any of Pro's experiments off the ground are extremely unrealistic and to expect they would have existed anywhere on prehistoric Earth is unreasonable. One example is that pools of RNA clump together into a useless, tangled mess. One method used to counteract this in the lab is tethering each molecule to agarose beads. This is a trick that the primordial soup would not have been clever enough to discover by itself.10 All of Pro's experiments involve extensive, pro-active measures to lead the process along to the likings of the scientists. However, those 2 girls in lab coats that I posted earlier unfortunately weren't around to babysit the RNA molecules, so these experiments (which do not even meet the goal of creating self-replicating RNA) are not representative of how RNA actually came to be. “Does it say in that quote that RNA is the only thing that exists in that world? ” I think so, but just to be sure, let's read it again: "One can contemplate an RNA World, containing only RNA molecules that serve to catalyze the synthesis of themselves. " Yes, it does. The next 4 shaded arguments from my opponent will be rebutted as one argument. “They could exceed 20 nucleotides of extension, [. .. ] had a lower error rate, was faster at incorporating nucleotides, and could function in a variety of environments that weren't optimal for its activity. ” “They had at least partially solved for the problems involved in isolating more efficient ribozymes. ” “Two, ever heard of lagging-strand synthesis? [. .. ] The replication process slower, but entirely plausible. ” “My number [2] presents an advance over the ribozyme made in this paper, one that is higher fidelity (less mistakes) and more efficiency (longer products). Further evolution is obviously possible, producing a ribozyme capable of replication of longer strands. ” The most efficient ribozyme created so far is 200 nucleotides in length7, which is “far too long a sequence to have arisen through any conceivable process of random assembly. ”1 So these experiments produce results that can only happen in a lab, and would have never had the chance to happen naturally. Further, Charles Carter explains that these laboratory-synthesized ribozymes “bear little resemblance to anything anyone has ever isolated from a living system. ” In summary, nature cannot produce a ribozyme half as good as Pro's synthesized example, which can't even cause auto-replication. “A long-term selection system could well have produced the RNA polymerase ribozymes necessary to make [true, complete auto-replication] possible. ” No, because as I already demonstrated, the hypothetical long-term selection system would be longer than the selection system used in the lab, and even this selection system is already impossible to fit within the time constraints of the age of the Earth without human intervention. 11 For elaboration on this argument, scroll down to the gigantic number I posted. “Lastly, Con seems to believe that the selection process utilized in [3] was only possible because of a lot of "babysitting. " He is either deliberately ignoring natural selection or else doesn't believe it. ” Of course I believe in Natural Selection; it's hard to deny when there are examples of it happening in day-to-day life. However, the magnitude of selection required in this instance is unreasonably large. For example, the number of randomized RNA needed to begin isolation of ribozymic activity is a whopping 5O5,OOO,OOO,OOO,OOO. OO8 I'm convinced that is the number that Science Daily was referring to when they said that “living systems run entirely by RNA could not have reproduced and evolved either fast or accurately enough to give rise to the vast biological complexity on Earth today. ”5 “Con seems to believe that the selection process utilized in [3] was only possible because of a lot of "babysitting. "” That giant number I just showed is the number of starting RNAs that are needed under specific laboratory conditions (read: babysitting). The number required on prehistoric Earth would be orders of magnitude greater, since the odds would be in even less favor of successful RNA replication. I will end this round by reminding everyone that “not one self-replicating RNA has emerged to date from quadrillions (1024) of artificially synthesized, random RNA sequences. ”9This statement, although made a decade ago, still holds true today. Pro's self-replicating RNA molecules have not even been produced in a lab setting, so his position that these hypothetical chemicals arose spontaneously, millions of years ago, is far from reasonable; it's absurd. 1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... 2. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... 3. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... 5. http://www.sciencedaily.com... 4. http://www.darwinthenandnow.com... 6The RNA dreamtime: [. .. ]. Kurland CG Bioessays. 2010 Oct; 32(10):866-71. 7Ribozyme-catalyzed transcription of an active ribozyme. Wochner A, Attwater J, Coulson A, Holliger P Science. 2011 Apr 8; 332(6026):209-12. 8This number is the average of the two in source 1. 9Dover, Gabby L. , "Looping the Evolutionary loop, review of the origin of life from the birth of life to the origin of language," Nature, 1999, vol. 399, p. 218. 10David P. Bartel and Jack W. Szostak, "Isolation of New Ribozymes from a Large Pool of Random Sequences, " Science 261 (1993): 1411-1418; p. 1412. 11Crystal structure of the catalytic core of an RNA-polymerase ribozyme (MMDB ID: 79360; PDB ID: 3HHN)