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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
 Posted - 03/02/2008 : 05:46:41
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New research at the Scripps Institute takes science closer to understanding the possible chemical modes of abiogenesis -- a nonbiological (and nontheological) origin of life.
This from Science Daily: How did the very first biological molecules assemble out of a presumed mixture of right and left- handed building blocks?To answer this, Ghadiri and his colleagues asked if a molecule that was correctly composed of all right or all left-handed components could replicate itself. They used peptides--short proteins of 32 amino acids--that naturally fold into a long helix and stick to another similar peptide, somewhat like the double barrels of a shotgun. They mixed right and left-handed versions of these peptides together with a mixture of their right and left-hand components.
For the "template" peptides to replicate, the correctly-handed components in the mixture would have to stick to the correct location on the peptides and then link up, forming exact copies of the template molecules, and this is exactly what they observed. The left-handed templates made more left-handed copies and the right-handed templates made right-handed copies from the mixed components.
Not only did the results show that the peptides favored the synthesis of correct duplicates, but the duplicates auto-catalyzed the reaction, speeding it up. They further discovered that if they added "mutant" peptide templates with a single incorrectly handed molecule, these would not make more mutant templates. They would instead correct the mistake and catalyze the formation of new molecules with the correct composition. |
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
Edited by - HalfMooner on 03/02/2008 05:47:44
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Randy
SFN Regular
USA
1990 Posts |
Posted - 03/02/2008 : 08:08:37 [Permalink]
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| What's up with the date of the article? It shows 2001 as the year. Must be a typo, ya think? |
"We are all connected; to each other biologically, to the earth chemically, to the rest of the universe atomically."
"So you're made of detritus [from exploded stars]. Get over it. Or better yet, celebrate it. After all, what nobler thought can one cherish than that the universe lives within us all?"
-Neil DeGrasse Tyson |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 03/02/2008 : 09:17:03 [Permalink]
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No, the date is correct.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v409/n6822/abs/409797a0.html
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 03/02/2008 : 13:37:16 [Permalink]
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Hmmm... missed that date. Well, it was big news to me. But so is HDTV, and pretty soon my old TV will stop receiving signals.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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Replicating, self-correcting peptides created
