Origin of Life - A New Concept

Discussion in 'Pseudoscience Archive' started by krishnagopal, Dec 11, 2010.

  1. krishnagopal Registered Senior Member

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    I have read your essay with considerable interest. I appeciate your effort to collate all known 'facts' on the origin of life and present them for systematic scrutiny.

    I have a refreshingly new theory. That life on the earth has originated from primordial membranes.

    To justify my analogy I will ask a simple question. In a cell (consider a unicellular organism) what structure possesses life? Is it the genetic material or cytoplasm or the membrane? Or let me ask, what is most basic charecteristic of life. Surely it is the consciousness (or irritability) which is fundamental to form life. What is the seat of consciousness? Obviously it is the cell membarne with all its membrane potentials which shows the property of irritability. So, membrane potentials forms the consciousness. The genes and metabolism subserve the essential purpose of consciousness.

    How can a membrane form de novo? It is possible that primordial membranes have formed on the earth from hydrocarbon chains that accumulated in the earth's crust. It is also ergonomically possible for the hydrocarbon chains to form bilayes. So the theory goes on ...

    I have written a book "The Role of Cell Membrane in the Origin of Life and in Cell Biology" and also opened a website for the book. If you are interested I will discuss the matter further.

    Regards Dr D Krishnagopal
     
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  3. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    The consensus of biologists is that in order to qualify as alive, an object must have most of the following traits:
    • Homeostasis
    • Organization
    • Metabolism
    • Growth
    • Adaptation
    • Response to stimuli
    • Reproduction
    Response to stimuli is only one of these eight. Furthermore, if the object had all of the other seven but lacked this one, it might very well still be considered alive.

    So your hypothesis, that response to stimuli or "irritability" (which carries the connotation of hostile reaction, which perhaps you did not intend) is the basic and fundamental attribute of life, seems a little weak to me.
     
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  5. Skeptical Registered Senior Member

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    Fraggle

    You left out evolution.
    All living things evolve.
     
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  7. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    The paradigm I saw included evolution as trans-generational adaptation. AFAIK there is no "standard" paradigm.
     
  8. Ophiolite Valued Senior Member

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    This makes no sense. What analogy? Are you saying life has orignated from primordial membrane, or it is like life had originated from primordial membranes. the first is a hypothesis, the second is an undefined analogy. Which did you mean?

    The entire cell. It is the unity of the cell and the interaction of its parts that constitute life. One might make arguments for each constituent part, but none can exist for long independently. It is all or nothing.


    At a recent (2005?) exobilogy conference the participants submitted almost one hundred definitions of life. We seem to know it when we see it, but we can't really agree on what it is.


    You need to find an alternative term to consciousness. The word evokes in most people, including most educated people and most scientists, the sense of self awareness. This is not what you intend, but by using the term in an unfamiliar way you will automatically prejudice many against your subsequent arguments.

    This is hardly new. It is probable, but hardly worth describing as a 'refreshing new theory'.

    May I recommend that you construct a more telling and incisive summary of your theory than you have offered here if you wish anyone to give your work any attention whatsoever.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 16, 2010
  9. jmpet Valued Senior Member

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    Just love anonymous "Doctors" who "figured everything out for us simple folk".
     
  10. Saquist Banned Banned

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    I would definitely be interested in hearing more.
    Is there a website for study?
     
  11. r.grannell Registered Member

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    I'm a tiny bit confused? Is he postulating that reactivity to external events is the key property of life, or that molecular segregation is?
     
  12. superstring01 Moderator

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    Besides, "evolution" is a form of adaption.

    ~String
     
  13. river-wind Valued Senior Member

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    I have a theory that evolution and reproduction as a whole are the result of life developing within a changing/volitile environment. So while this applies to all known life, I hypothesis that if we were to discover life which began in a perfectly stable environment, that it would have no need for evolution. Reproduction possibly due to accidents, but only through budding/splitting, and without genetic material.
     
  14. krishnagopal Registered Senior Member

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    Thanks

    Dear sir
    Sorry for the inordinate delay in reponding to your request. I do have a web site. You send an e-mail to me to: cmem.kg@rediffmail.com
     
  15. krishnagopal Registered Senior Member

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    Clarification

    Your proposition - that there was no need for evolution to occur if the primitive life be perfect - is profound. Yes, but the environment did change from time to time, and there was some scarecity of available resources which prompted the primitive cells to evolve into more competitive beings. But the primitive organisms (like archaea, bacteria etc etc) themselves were perfect enough. Otherwise how do you explain their sustanence all these billions of years, without an attempt to mutate over trillions and trillions of generations?
     
  16. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    What are you talking about??? They have mutated. The timescale of bacteria is so much more compressed than ours that we can actually observe them mutating in laboratory experiments.

    As for the archaea, they have been studied so little that we don't know enough about them to draw conclusions. We don't even know if Archaea is actually a Kingdom, or merely a catch-all for diverse creatures that have some vague characteristics in common and may in fact belong to multiple Kingdoms--like Prokaryota and Eukaryota.

    There are only six Kingdoms in the more-or-less standard taxonomy, so I'm not sure what you meant by the "etc. etc." Algae and fungi are considerably less "primitive" than archaea, which themselves are somewhat less primitive than bacteria.
     
  17. Skeptical Registered Senior Member

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    1,449
    Except, of course, that the very word "primitive" is misleading. As far as we can tell, all life originated at the same time and possibly from exactly the same precursor to life. That means that all life has been evolving for the same length of time. So calling some more 'primitive' than others carries an implication that is not correct.
     
  18. wellwisher Banned Banned

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    5,160
    In another topic, I showed that the sodium/potassium pumps not only create potential energy within the membrane, but also define a situation where entropy is lowered in the membrane. This boundary condition, as an induction for the rest of the cellular innards, coordinated the logic sequence of biogenesis leading to the first life.

    For example, only left handed proteins are now the rules, which implies a 50% loss of degrees of freedom (loss of entropy) for all life's proteins. One woould expect this from the boundary condition. RNA has lower entropy than proteins (more limited degrees of freedom). It should evolve from proteins in light of the boundary condition. While the change to DNA reflects even lower entropy than RNA. Only life where RNA is replaced by DNA, can move up the next steps of lower entropy. If not, life remains stuck at higher entropy and won't form multicellular.

    Experiments have shown that cells can continue to establish the cationic gradient, even in the absence of an intact cell membrane. This is due to long term evolutionary induction by the boundary condition. It makes sense that even the genetic aspects of evolution are dependent on the push of the boundary, such as methylation of genes, which reflects an induction into even lower entropy. This can take genes out of play.
     
  19. krishnagopal Registered Senior Member

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    Entropy and Life

    Dear wellwisher, it is worderful that you are trying to work out entropy (decrease or increase) at the membrane level. Generally, for all life processes there is a DECREASE in entropy. But all catabolic processes in the cell like glycolysis, cellular respiration result in an INCREASE in entropy. But the ultimate purpose of all the energy consumed by the cell (or organism as a whole) is to uphold the membrane potentials across the membrane, which results in increased entropy. Membrane potentials manifest as alertness.
     
  20. krishnagopal Registered Senior Member

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    Origin of life

    Thank you, I will continue the discussion on the boards. Regarding the origin of life: there is some problem with the Metabolism-First theories (chiefly RNA World theory).

    Firstly, When there was no metabolism or any other activity for the RNA to perform, what was it coding for? It cannot be presumed that it coded for the proteins (enzymes) first and later metabolism appeared. How did a multitude of RNA molecules formed at a given time and coded for an array of enzymes? One cannot say that, first RNA coded for proteins randomly and then these proteins catalyzed various metabolic pathways. Metabolism, as we know now, cannot function so randomly.orld theory).

    Second: All these polymerizations are highly endergonic events, meaning that they need a lot of energy input to build these molecules. This is thermodynamically unfavorable. From where did the urge come to defy entropy, what was the drive?

    Third: What has driven the polymerized macromolecules to replicate and reproduce themselves?
     
  21. krishnagopal Registered Senior Member

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    Origin of life (contd..)

    The problem with metabolism-first theories: The idea of metabolism-first theories was that amino acids lined up automatically forming proteins which catalyzed various chemical reactions which was the start of metabolism. Soon a drawback became obvious – how could the sequence of amino acids be decided without a code.

    Argument: To start with, metabolism needs energy, driving force and guidance. These theories can account for only the energy part of metabolism. Clearly, the drive or guidance was absent at the time of origin of life. Enzymes (proteins) to form need a particular sequence of amino acids, for which a genetic code is necessary. This means that either RNA or DNA should have originated first. Furthermore, all metabolic pathways can be simulated in a lab, but that does not represent life.

    If replication started first, there was nothing for it to code for; If metabolism started first there was no coding to order a direction. So, What was it that stared them both?
     
  22. AlphaNumeric Fully ionized Registered Senior Member

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    Please provide the journal citations for the papers you have written on this work which have been peer review and have experimental evidence to back up your ideas. After all, you are a 'doctor' and thus should understand the important of peer review in science and you wouldn't publish a book on some non-reviewed, unsubstantiated, untested notion you have developed, right? Right?

    You shouldn't be needing to argue with people in this thread, you should just provide the citations so everyone can see you've done the research and it has been reviewed by reputable academics/researchers. In fact, why didn't you just open with such citations, when you mentioned your book? You do have such citations, right?
     
  23. krishnagopal Registered Senior Member

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    The Concept

    My hypothesis has two aspects: one is the concept, and the other is an evidence-based thesis. I am presently describing a concept wherein I am describing the three fundamental properties of life, viz reproduction, metabolism and awareness, and laying foundation to the idea that awareness (or consciousness or adaptive irritability) is most primary characteristic feature. This needs a sort of explanation, which presently I am doing. I ahve suggested that this formed the guiding force for all other cellular processes.

    Now is my theory (the experiment): I have mulled over the question of origin (or generation) of this awareness. There has to be a seat for it to arise, is it not. At this age of scientific advancement you canNOT say that ENTIRE cell is responsible for this phenomenon. We know what a genome does, what cytoplasm does and other such details. We are also aware that membrane potentials are generated by the ionic disequilibrium. I have argued that this creates awareness and is responsible for adaptation and 'irritability'. My natural deduction was that primordial membranes formed first on the earth which acquired membrane potentials and generated consciuosness, which subsequently formed (and organized) other cellular architecture.

    When I propose such elaborate theory I must substantiate. Here comes the EVIDENCES and CITATIONS. I have proposed a theory that the primordial membranes have formed in the Earth's crust about 3.7 billion years ago and, there goes my theory... I DO have citations and evidences for all there propositions.

    I regret to say that I have no peer reviews, as you sought. It appears a pretty long way, if ever. One has to follow the analogy of my hypothesis first, though this is conjectural. One last thing: When Prof Craig Venter created life he DID put his genome into a ghost cell, did he not? Until then then the genome did not replicate. You may say membrane a cover, but that is REALLY the life in the form of consciousness or awareness or whatever. THERE ARE MAY MORE EXAMPLES.
     

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