real life wrote:Put RNA or DNA out into the environment, away from the protection and interdependent systems that comprise a living organism and it will be chemically degraded and destroyed in the very environment you say would cause it to be fruitful and multiply.
Another bullshit ID-iot red herring - it is not proposed by other than Creationists/ID-iots that RNA or DNA developed naked, "out into the environment, away from the protection and interdependent systems that comprise a living organism" - that is a patently absurd assumption. As pointed out to you before, naturally occurring chemistry of the sort currently most reasonably understood to approximate that of pre-biotic Earth results in organphosphates, peptides, polypeptides, lipids both hydrophylic and hydrophoboic, which under the presumed environmental conditions most likely would result in abiotic microspheres which spontaneously would assemble into protobionts, which were the precursors of cells. A microsphere, a protobiont, and a cell all share one particular property; they have an "inside" discretely contained within an "outside". There is absolutely no reasonable basis to presume other than that something "inside" would be to some extent or another isolated from "outside" - that's how "inside" and "outside" work.
Now, whatever chemistry happens to be going on "inside" is going on more or less in an environment other than that "outside", and in all likelihood would interact chemically, even catalytically, since that's the way chemistry works. Some of theme even self-replicate, given material from which to grow and energy - whether radiation or whatever (heat/IR, UV, kinetic/shock, gravity, pressure, chemical ... lotsa energy around) - to drive the growth. Along with that, under certain conditions consistent with those reasonably to be expected to have prevailed at the time, some of these chemical encapsulations would aggregate, forming even more complex assemblies of "outsides" with "insides" So, we have oceansfull of these "outsides" that have "insides", and they're jostling around together, under all sortsa environmental conditions, for millions of years. It is absurd to presume some pretty interesting stuff might not have been going on - some which went places, developed further, some which didn't. Anyhow - we have "places" to be which would afford considerable containment apart from, isolation from, protection from, internal conditions other than, the overall "outside" environment.
OK - now, how did we get from there - which we're pretty sure was "there" - to the precursors of RNA? Well, right now, we don't really know. We've figured some pathways which evidently aren't the answer, and we've glimpsed some very interesting, even plausible, candidate mechanisms - for just one glimpse from one lab (and there are many labs working on it) - here are some ideas:
Several plausible scenarios proposed for RNA's origin:
Orgel, L. E. (2004)
Prebiotic Chemistry and the Origin of the RNA World (note: 25 page .pdf download)
Critical Reviews in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 39:99-123
Quote:(EXCERPT)
... Another substantial body of experimental evidence concerns chemistry that occurs within vesicles formed from simple, but not prebiotically synthesized, organic molecules. Not surprisingly, protein enzymes function more or less normally within large-enough bilayer vesicles, and the enzymatic synthesis of nucleic acids within vesicles has been described (Chakrabarti et al., 1994; Oberholzer et al., 1995). In a related study, it was reported that particles of the clay mineral montmorillonite catalyze the formation of closed vesicles from micelles composed of simple aliphatic carboxylic acids and that particles of the clay become encapsulated within the vesicles (Hanczyc et al., 2003). Since montmorillonite is an excellent catalyst for the oligomerization of a number of activated nucleotides this might point to a route to a nucleic-acid-synthesizing system enclosed within a vesicle. It remains to be shown that montmorillonite catalysis of polynucleotide synthesis can occur within the vesicles and lead to the formation of trapped products.
The generation of an autonomous self-replicating system of RNA within a lipid vesicle requires the vesicle, as well as its contents, to be capable of exponential growth. In one series of experiments it was shown that vesicles composed of caprylic acid were effective catalysts for the hydrolysis of ethyl caprylate. The newly formed caprylic acid never appeared in solution but was incorporated directly into the vesicle walls, causing the vesicles to grow and ultimately to divide (Bachmann et al., 1992). Similar behavior was observed with suspensions of the insoluble anhydrides of oleic and caprylic acids (Walde et al., 1994).
In summary, it seems almost certain that RNA organisms as complicated as those that "invented" protein synthesis must have been enclosed in relatively impermeable membranes. However, it is not clear whether the very first self-replicating RNA molecules were enclosed in vesicles, attached to organic colloids, or adsorbed on mineral surfaces. Perhaps they were adsorbed to mineral particles within lipid membranes (Hanczyc et al., 2003).
These and more are proposed in the above paper, with details of indication and frank discussion of unknowns and possible counter indications.
None of that is to say "That's how RNA came about", it says several promising avenues of research are being pursued ... none of which involves poofism.
