Science
Related: About this forumChemists show life on Earth was not a fluke
How life came about from inanimate sets of chemicals is still a mystery. While we may never be certain which chemicals existed on prebiotic Earth, we can study the biomolecules we have today to give us clues about what happened three billion years ago.
Now scientists have used a set of these biomolecules to show one way in which life might have started. They found that these molecular machines, which exist in living cells today, don't do much on their own. But as soon as they add fatty chemicals, which form a primitive version of a cell membrane, it got the chemicals close enough to react in a highly specific manner.
This form of self-organisation is remarkable, and figuring out how it happens may hold the key to understanding life on earth formed and perhaps how it might form on other planets.
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Computer calculations reveal that even by chance, five liposomes in 1,000 could not have trapped all 83 molecules of the assembly. Their calculated probability for even one such liposome to form is essentially zero. The fact that any such liposomes formed and that GFP was produced means something quite unique is happening.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-10-chemists-life-earth-fluke.html
longship
(40,416 posts)DontTreadOnMe
(2,442 posts)"the chances of"... is like the same chances of actually counting all the stars. The numbers are so large, that yes, the chance of "something" happening... is highly likely.
So when they state that the chance of something is so "low"... that is like saying there is a "low" chance that you could actually count all the star in the universe. But we "think" that it actually could be done... so it is likely that is "could" happen.
FiveGoodMen
(20,018 posts)Stano reports in the journal Angewandte Chemie that many of these liposomes trapped some molecules of the assembly. But remarkably, five in every 1,000 such liposomes had all 83 of the molecules needed to produce a protein. These liposomes produced large amount of GFP and glowed green under a microscope.
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Stano and his colleagues do not yet understand why this happened. It may yet be a random process that a better statistical model will explain. It may be that these particular molecules are suited to this kind of self-organisation because they are already highly evolved. An important next step is to see if similar, but less complex, molecules are also capable of this feat.
So even though the statistical model says this should never happen, it happened right in front of them.