Re:Cells Talk and Help One Another via Tiny Tube Networks
by zaarn on Monday June 04, 2018 @07:47AM
(#17226856)
To my knowledge early life most likely used RNA not DNA, the difference being that RNA is capable of doing some basic chemistry and protein stuff so you get away with a lot less RNA than DNA (to my knowledge)
The Bacteriophage MS2 encodes only 4 genes (4 proteins, in about 4000 basepairs). That puts us down to 1067 orders of magnitude instead of 349236.
Since we know that meteorites carried water and basic prebiotic compounds we can increase the chance that a random functional RNA organism forms.
For very basic life to form, you don't need cell walls luckily. warm A puddle with the right compounds and RNA with self-replicating capabilities is sufficient for this.
Additionally it should be noted that mutation and biogenesis aren't fully random processes. Things get tried and evolved or discarded.
We didn't get to humans by randomly attaching hairy arms to a fish, rather, at some point a fish got better at breathing surface air than the others and obtained a survival advantage from it. And then this random "minor but useful advantage" mutation process continues for every generation since about 4.5 billion years ago. If you took a picture of every child and parent, you will never find a picture where you can clearly call "inbetween here we went from ape to human".
The Bacteriophage MS2 encodes only 4 genes (4 proteins, in about 4000 basepairs). That puts us down to 1067 orders of magnitude instead of 349236.
Since we know that meteorites carried water and basic prebiotic compounds we can increase the chance that a random functional RNA organism forms.
For very basic life to form, you don't need cell walls luckily. warm A puddle with the right compounds and RNA with self-replicating capabilities is sufficient for this.
Additionally it should be noted that mutation and biogenesis aren't fully random processes. Things get tried and evolved or discarded.
We didn't get to humans by randomly attaching hairy arms to a fish, rather, at some point a fish got better at breathing surface air than the others and obtained a survival advantage from it. And then this random "minor but useful advantage" mutation process continues for every generation since about 4.5 billion years ago. If you took a picture of every child and parent, you will never find a picture where you can clearly call "inbetween here we went from ape to human".