From: parker@ehsn17.cen.uiuc.edu (Robert S. Parker)
Subject: Re: Life begins at ...
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 06:26:35 GMT

Kurt Ludwick <KEL111@psuvm.psu.edu> writes:

>In article <1993Jan22.202321.15474@ncar.ucar.edu>, kauff@neit.cgd.ucar.edu
>(Brian Kauffman) says:

>>>>['Life HAS no beginning' idea is kicked around]
>>>Life ends, though. Doesn't that imply a beginning as well?
>>No.
>>[...]
>>EG: family trees can end, but they don't begin out of non-living matter.

>I can tell you with certainty when a tree's 'life' begins, and when it ends.
>Ditto for a human (though you won't agree. :)

Really?  Please do.  (the family tree, I mean)  I would like to know how you
can be *certain* about something that obviously occurred long before you were
ever born.  Of course if you refer to the *recorded* family tree, well that
is an artificial human construction and hardly relevant to debate about the
"reality" of life.

>>Note: I'm assuming you don't want to talk about the beginning
>>of all life on earth, many moons ago.

>Of course not.  The whole idea I don't understand is that an individual's
>life doesn't begin, but it ends.  You can't use multiple definitions of 'life'
>at once: first to mean an individual life, and second to mean life in general
>(which has no beginning and no ending).  One has clear beginnings and endings,
>the other does not.

The question didn't say "individual's life" it simply said "life".  The poster
was in error when he said that life ends (and implied that it doesn't begin).
Only *parts* of life end, just as *parts* of life may be considered to begin
through the growth of plants from non-lived CO2.  (since abiogenesis does not
occur very often these days  ;)  However, these *parts* do not realy "begin"
life, they continue it in a new way.  We chose to distinguish the offspring
from the parent(s), but life does not fundamentally change; it is still a
continuous process of organic chemical and physical interactions.

> Kurt  E.  Ludwick

-Rob

As an interesting asside, I once read an article that claimed that Louis
Pasteur had disproven the Theory of Abiogenesis (about the origin of life)
with his experiments which (at the time) were directed against the supernatural
belief in common abiogenesis (frogs come from rocks, etc).  [I consider it
"supernatural" as it is most logical to assume that frogs come from other
frogs.]  The article then went on to assert that this proved the Special
Creation Theory (7 days) because life could only come from the "living" God.

They totally ignored the fact that the Theory of Abiogenesis explains that
life could have come from the non-living material and conditions that is
believed to have existed billions of years ago, while Pasteur's experiments
were conducted under modern conditions.  Experiments conducted with
simulations of supposedly primordial conditions *have* demonstrated that
the building-blocks of life (amino acids, nucleic acids, etc) can be created
where no life exist.

There is some debate over which came first:  DNA or RNA.  My bio-evolution
instructor advanced the theory to us that it was actually *structure* that
came first as life; DNA/RNA came later as a more efficient way to procreate
and evolve.  If you take a simple flask with various non-living materials in
it (I forget the particulars but I think CO2, CO, CH4, NH3, and of course H2O
were the main ones.) and send some sparcs through the "primordial atmosphere"
to simulate lightning that you can get little spheres of fatty acids that
would "grow" as molecules of similar lipoids randomly bumped into them.  They
consisted of a water-insoluble membrane separating the world into and "inside"
and an "outside" which could differ.  The spheres would "grow" as similar
molecules of fatty acids randomly bumped into them.  Eventually the volume
would be too great for the surface area and the sphere would divide.  A
process of natural selection would tend to favor those membranes that were
"better" at accumulating matherial.  Occasionally one might incorporate a
piece of protein (an enzyme actually, which is like a small protein) which
would help by "grabing" material outside--that happened to be useful inside--
and pulling it through the membrane.  Evolution starts to occur before DNA
or RNA ever get involved.  Eventually only the "life forms" that are *very*
good at pulling desired things in and keeping unwanted things out would be
able to survive.  Occasionally one such "expert" might pull in some RNA that
happens to help build a useful enzyme (rather than have to wait until you
bump into it).  That would give that individual a distinct advantage.  As
the number of such super-spheres increases, the chance that one will pull
in a strand of DNA that will code for that RNA increases.  It is plausible
that cells could develop from those humble beginnings, following the basic
principles of evolution.

I kinda like that theory because it seems a little more plausible than the
self-replicating DNA (or ...RNA) *happening* to code for a complete primitive
cell.

Sorry for the tangent from the newsgroup's theme, but I don't have time to
read talk.origins (or whatever) as I can barely keep up with t.a, and I'd
like to be able to read any comments about it.  (perhaps you could use a
mailed reply to save the group from further distraction...   ;)

-Rob
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