The current theory holds that back in the Earth's early days, amino acids swimming around in a primordial soup randomly came together in a viable sequence. This theory doesn't hold much water with Tanaka. For one thing, he says, there hasn't been enough time since the beginning of the universe to try all the possible combinations. With 20 existing amino acids and 400 possible working sequences, that is a mind-boggling number. So Tanaka, as if seeking to fathom the intentions of an inventor when all he had was the inventor's wondrous but complex machine, posed questions about why the machine works the ways it does.
Polymers make up proteins, genetic material and synthetic substances such as nylon.
The chemical makeup of each polymer gel determines with which substance it will interact. Like a Venus flytrap lying in wait, one kind of gel may have open oxygen bonds available to capture any oxygen molecules that happen along. Hemoglobin are protein polymers that can, with a slight change in pH, capture oxygen in the lungs and release it in the muscles. In the brain, neurotransmitters are released and captured by protein receptors. Knowing that certain polymers react with target substances, Tanaka and his colleagues created a computer simulation of their own primordial soup, throwing together a target substance and a slew of monomers.