Did scientists create life … or did the media create hype?

by Jonathan Sarfati

Newspapers around the world proclaimed: ‘German chemists have produced living cells from a combination of amino acids …’¹

If true, then this would be remarkable. Even the simplest free-living cell has 482 genes coding for all the necessary enzymes, the chemical machines of life. The enzymes are composed of about 400 building blocks (amino acids) each on average, in precise sequences, and all in the ‘left-handed’ form.² Of course, these genes are functional only in the presence of pre-existing translational and replicating machinery, a cell membrane, etc. But Mycoplasma can survive only by parasitizing other more complex organisms, which provide many of the nutrients it cannot manufacture for itself. So evolutionists must postulate a more complex first living organism with even more genes.

As usual, the media pro-evolutionary hype is deceptive. Upon reading the original scientific paper by the chemists involved, Claudia Huber and Günter Wächterhäuser,³ we find that all that was produced were a few building blocks joined in pairs (dipeptides) and a minuscule amount joined in threes (tripeptides). A few paired building blocks are a far cry from even one enzyme, let alone a living cell.

The exclusive ‘left-handedness’ required for life (see The origin of life—the left-handed problem) was destroyed in the process. They excuse that by pointing out that some cell wall peptides have right-handed amino acids. But this misses the point—enzymes that break down cell walls are designed for exclusively left-handed amino acids, so an occasional right-handed amino acid is the perfect defence in a left-handed world.

Huber and Wächterhäuser also reported that these pairs were broken down rapidly under the same conditions! The famous pioneer of evolutionary origin of life experiments, Stanley Miller, points out that polymers are ‘too unstable to exist in a hot prebiotic environment’⁴ as Wächterhäuser advocates. Actually, over the long periods of time postulated by evolution, polymers are unstable in water in general, not just at high temperatures. A recent article in New Scientist also described the instability of polymers in water as a ‘headache’ for researchers working on evolutionary ideas on the origin of life. It also showed its materialistic bias by saying this was not ‘good news’.⁵ But the real bad news is that faith in evolution (everything made itself) overrides objective science.

We should also note that Huber and Wächterhäuser started off with very favourable conditions for evolution. Although ‘the researchers have not yet shown that this recipe can produce amino acids’,⁶ they used a strong solution (0.05 mol/l) of left-handed amino acids (or the achiral glycine), with no other organic material. Of course, any ‘primordial soup’ would have been dilute, impure and racemic (50/50 mixture of left and right handed molecules). Even so, all they produced was a small percentage of dipeptides (0.4–12.4%) and an even tinier amount of tripeptides (0.003%) — calculated from reported quantities.

Stanley Miller also points out that Huber and Wächterhäuser used concentrations of carbon monoxide far higher than is realistic in nature.⁶

The next day, the same newspaper wrote ‘WA Museum evolutionary biologist Ken McNamara said if life could be created artificially, it could emerge naturally given the right conditions.’⁷ How absurd—does this mean that because we can create cars artificially (with loads of intelligent input!), it proves they could emerge naturally (without intelligence!)?

References

1. The West Australian, 11 August 1998. Return to text.
2. C.M. Fraser et al., ‘The minimal gene complement of Mycoplasma genitalium’, Science, 270(5235):397–403, 20 October 1995; perspective by A. Goffeau, ‘Life With 482 Genes’, same issue, pp. 445–6. See also How Simple Can Life Be?. Return to text.
3. C. Huber and G. Wächterhäuser, ‘Peptides by activation of amino acids with CO on (Ni,Fe)S surfaces: implications for the origin of life’, Science 281(5377):670–672, 31 July 31 1998. See also Origin of life: the polymerization problem. Return to text. Return to text.
4. S. Miller and A. Lazcano, ‘The origin of life—did it occur at high temperatures?’ Journal of Molecular Evolution 41:689–692, 1995. Hydrothermal origin of life? Return to text.
5. R. Matthews, ‘Wacky Water’, New Scientist 154(2087):40–43, 21 June 1997. Return to text.
6. G. Vogel, ‘A sulfurous start for protein synthesis?’ Science 281(5377): 627–629, 31 July 1998 (perspective on Ref. 3). Return to text.
7. The West Australian, 12 August 1998. Return to text.

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