Like some seedy honkytonk used-car sales lot where "anything goes," the world of so-called "science news" nowadays is a hall-of-mirrors "carnival barker" world in which truth is all mixed up with hype and misleading claims. These days most science news comes from press releases written by the copy writers of corporate and university press offices, who are notorious for making claims not warranted by anything found in the scientific papers they are promoting, and who often lack strong knowledge of the complex and deep topics being discussed. Moreover, quotes by professors in press releases are often wildly inaccurate. The professors know that the more paper citation counts they get, the more highly they are rated. Sadly, many a professor asked about his latest research will make some sensationalist claim that simply isn't true, to make his research sound like something much more worthy of attention and citation than it is. By reading my 47 posts with the label "overblown hype," you can find countless examples of lies and misleading statements that appeared in articles I found while reading the so-called "science news."
Some of the worst examples of phony-baloney "science news" comes when the topic of abiogenesis is discussed. Abiogenesis is the idea that life can naturally arise from non-life. Everything we know about the complexity and amount of organization in living things argues against this idea. Even the simplest living thing is a cell that requires hundreds of different types of protein molecules to exist and reproduce. Each of those types of protein molecules is a separate complex invention as unlikely to arise by chance as a well-written 100-word paragraph from a random arrangement of shells and pebbles and seaweed at a seashore.
There are no experiments supporting the idea of abiogenesis. No one has ever produced a living thing from any experiment realistically simulating lifeless early Earth conditions. No one has ever produced a functional protein molecule (one of the building blocks of one-celled life) from any experiment realistically simulating early Earth conditions. No one has ever even produced one of the building blocks of the building blocks of one-celled life (an amino acid) from any experiment realistically simulating early Earth conditions. The Miller-Urey experiment which produced some amino acids was not a realistic simulation of early Earth conditions, for reasons discussed in my post here. The apparatus used by the Miller-Urey experiment was a manufacturing device unlike anything that would have existed in the early Earth. We have had seventy years of lies from the mainstream press about the Miller-Urey experiment, claims that it revealed something that it did not actually reveal.
The latest bit of untrue news in the long, long series of very misleading news stories about the origin of life is a pure baloney press release from Purdue University with the extremely untrue headline "The fountain of life: Water droplets hold the secret ingredient for building life."
We read that Purdue University chemists have discovered a path by which two amino acids can form into a peptide. That is as unimpressive a result as "one plus one equals two."
The basic facts are these:
(1) There are twenty types of amino acids used by the proteins in living organisms, with each amino acid being a particular arrangement of between 9 and about 25 atoms.
(2) When two or a few amino acids combine, they form something called a peptide.
(3) To produce the starting point of a functional protein molecule, you need hundreds of amino acids arranged in just the right way to form a very long molecule that is called a polypeptide.
(4) To produce a molecule with biological function, such a polypeptide has to somehow do a very hard-to-achieve thing called folding, so that a very special and complex three-dimensional shape arises, which can serve as a functional protein molecule. We see one of those shapes in the visual below.
(5) Just as it is not at all true that any old combination of hundreds of letters produces functional meaningful paragraphs, it is not at all true that any old combination of hundreds of amino acids produces a functional protein molecule. There is every reason to believe that within the set of all possible polypeptide chains, not even 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 are polypeptide chains that lead to functional protein molecules. Similarly, within the the set of all random character 400-character combinations, not even 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 result in meaningful, functional instructions. The number of combinations of amino acids that do not result in functional folding protein molecules is almost infinitely greater than the relatively tiny number of combinations of amino acids that do result in functional folding protein molecules like the one shown below, just as the number of combinations of letters resulting in unreadable nonsense is almost infinitely greater than the number of such combinations resulting in functional instructions.
(6) A living cell capable of reproduction requires hundreds of different types of protein molecules, just as a complex computer requires hundreds of different subroutines, most being a well-arranged set of hundreds of individual characters. The amino acid sequence needed to make a protein is specified in a particular gene in the organism's DNA. Humans have about 20,000 genes, but one-celled microbes require far fewer genes. A team of 9 scientists wrote a scientific paper entitled, “Essential genes of a minimal bacterium.” It analyzed a type of bacteria (Mycoplasma genitalium) that has “the smallest genome of any organism that can be grown in pure culture.” According to wikipedia's article, this bacteria has 525 genes consisting of 580,070 base pairs. The paper concluded that 382 of this bacteria's protein-coding genes (72 percent) are essential. So multiplying that 580,070 by 72 percent, we get a figure of about 418,000 base pairs in the genome that are essential functionality. This is all information that must be arranged in just the right way for the tiny microbe to be capable of self-reproduction. Even the simplest living thing capable of self-reproduction requires hundreds of protein molecules, and hundreds of genes specifying the amino acid sequence of such protein molecules. Each type of protein molecule has a unique sequence of hundreds of amino acids.
One of thousands of protein molecule shapes (Credit: RCSB Protein Data Bank)
All that is pretty complicated, but nothing could be simpler than what the press release is reporting. It is reporting merely one amino acid combining with another amino acid to produce a mere peptide. Just like a two-character string such as "AB" doesn't get you anywhere if you are trying to produce software, a peptide of two amino acids doesn't get you anywhere if you are trying to make a living thing. By using the term "dipeptide" the scientific paper makes clear that all that was found was a peptide of merely two amino acids. A dipeptide is a molecule consisting of only two amino acids connected to each other.
But the Purdue University press release quotes a chemist stating the following outrageous baloney:
" 'This is essentially the chemistry behind the origin of life,' said Graham Cooks. He is the Henry Bohn Hass Distinguished Professor of Analytical Chemistry in Purdue’s College of Science. 'This is the first demonstration that primordial molecules, simple amino acids, spontaneously form peptides, the building blocks of life, in droplets of pure water.' "
Hogwash. Bunk. Pure unadulterated baloney. The chemistry needed to start a living thing would be almost infinitely more complicated than the mere combination of two amino acids to make a peptide. It is not peptides that are the building blocks of one-celled life, but vastly more complicated molecules (protein molecules). Claiming that you have produced "the chemistry behind the origin of life" by merely making a peptide from two amino acids is as pure baloney a statement as claiming that you wrote a good 100-page instruction manual when you merely combined one letter (such as the character "A") with another letter, such as the character "B."
Very eager to pick up page views that make money from people viewing ads on their web pages, mainstream online web sites these days always uncritically parrot whatever nonsense is being trumpeted by university press releases, no matter how transparently absurd the assertions are. So we heard many a web site uncritically parrot the rubbish in the Purdue University press release. One headline was "The Fountain of Life: Scientists Uncover the 'Chemistry Behind the Origin of Life.' " The Popular Science site had a nonsense headline of "Here’s how life on Earth might have formed out of thin air and water."
Apparently the Popular Science writer has got the incorrect idea that the two amino acids that combined to make a lowly peptide were produced from scratch from water and thin air. That's impossible, because the amino acids involved (glycine and L-alanine) contain carbon atoms that are not found anywhere in water (H2O) and thin air consisting of nitrogen and oxygen. Given that the paper makes no claim at all to have produced amino acids from scratch or through any natural process, we may presume with high likelihood that the scientists added to water some amino acids that were not naturally produced. Referring to a highly artificial high-tech manufacturing processing involving "electrified nano-sprays that were blasted at a mass spectrometer," the Salon article on the experiment suggests that the amino acids were not naturally produced, telling us this: "The sprays were filled with two amino acids, glycine or L-alanine, and squirted out of an opening just a few millionths of a meter across." Such a manufacturing process is unlike anything that would have occurred in the natural world, where there are no electrified super-fast water jets aimed at microscopic holes.
The word "spontaneous" used in the quote above by Graham Cooks is a word meaning "performed or occurring as a result of a sudden inner impulse or inclination and without premeditation or external stimulus." Instead of observing anything like any natural "spontaneous formation," the scientists produced the unimpressive combination of two amino acids using a high-voltage technique called electrospray ionization, which uses a very fancy piece of hi-tech equipment (like this) to produce chemical reactions. Claiming that the result from the use of such high-voltage equipment was "spontaneous" is as misleading as electrocuting an animal in an electric chair and then claiming the animal's death was "spontaneous."
The same type of hogwash and baloney peddled by Graham Cooks in the quote above is given us by another chemist named Nick Lane. In a recent interview in Quanta Magazine, Lane states this bunk:
"So you have a random sequence of RNA that generates a nonrandom peptide. And that nonrandom peptide could by chance have some function in a growing proto-cell. It could make the cell grow better or grow worse; it could help the RNA replicate itself; it could bind to cofactors. Then you have selection for that peptide and the RNA sequence that gave rise to it. Although it’s a very rudimentary system, this means we’ve just entered the world of genes, information and natural selection."
This is nonsense. Peptides (combinations of only a few amino acids) don't produce biological functions. It requires vastly more complicated and vastly more hard-to-achieve molecules called proteins (consisting of hundreds of well-arranged amino acids) before you can get any biological benefit. It would be exponentially harder (like a billion trillion quadrillion times harder) for natural processes to produce a functional protein molecule than for natural processes to produce a mere peptide. And you can't get any so-called natural selection until you have a living, self-reproducing cell, which requires hundreds of different types of proteins, each consisting of very special arrangements of hundreds of amino acids, not just two or three of them. And how silly is it to claim that you have "entered the world of genes" from some event which merely formed a peptide? Genes are parts of a DNA molecule, something totally different (and vastly more complicated) than a mere peptide.
When origin-of-life theorists talk about "proto-cells" they mean merely fatty bubbles. Lane's insinuation that all you need is a proto-cell (a fatty bubble) and a peptide to get life rolling is every bit as false as claiming that a child can survive okay if it is born with only a tooth and a fingernail -- no brain, no heart, no stomach, no liver, no kidneys, but only a tooth and a fingernail.
I can give you a good analogy for the baloney hogwash claims made in the Purdue University press release quoted above. Imagine if someone were to train his dog to move two wooden letter blocks together, training the dog to push the little blocks by using the dog's nose. Suppose that person were to then claim that this proved that dogs can write long useful instruction manuals, because when people write books it is "essentially the same" as the dog combining two letters with his nose. How should you respond to such a person? By saying something like this:
"What, do you think I'm the stupidest person in the world? Do you think I have an IQ of only 1 or 2 points?"
Postscript: We get more of Nick Lane's baloney about life's origins in the interview here. It includes this false-as-false-can-be statement:
"What we are beginning to learn is that if we find carbon dioxide and hydrogen in a specific environment most of metabolism happens spontaneously. It recapitulates in the absence of genes and cells."
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Metabolism is defined as "the chemical processes that occur within a living organism in order to maintain life." No metabolism has occurred in Lane's origin-of-life experiments, which have not produced life, have not produced genes, have not produced cells, have not produced proteins, and have not even produced any of the building blocks of the building blocks of life (amino acids) in any experiment realistically simulating early Earth conditions.
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