Quote of the Day
Lead author Dr Jyoti Singh, from UCL Chemistry, said: “Imagine the day that chemists might take simple, small molecules, consisting of carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur atoms, and from these LEGO pieces form molecules capable of self-replication. This would be a monumental step towards solving the question of life’s origin.
“Our study brings us closer to that goal by demonstrating how two primordial chemical LEGO pieces (activated amino acids and RNA) could have built peptides**, short chains of amino acids that are essential to life.
“What is particularly groundbreaking is that the activated amino acid used in this study is a thioester, a type of molecule made from Coenzyme A, a chemical found in all living cells. This discovery could potentially link metabolism, the genetic code and protein building.”
While the paper focuses solely on the chemistry, the research team said that the reactions they demonstrated could plausibly have taken place in pools or lakes of water on the early Earth (but not likely in the oceans as the concentrations of the chemicals would likely be too diluted).
University College London
August 28, 2025
Scientists recreate life’s first step: Linking amino acids to RNA | ScienceDaily
Millimeter by millimeter, the onion is being peeled back on some of the most difficult puzzles this world has to offer us.
But the fact that it now being conclusively shown that there isn’t enough time for natural-selection driven evolution to take place to get the variety of species observed still poses a problem that imagining a starting point can’t fix. That’s aside from the DNA chicken-and-egg problem of needing both the DNA code, and the way to read and use the DNA code, simultaneously, as one without the other is useless.
Leaving the two leading options, either God or space aliens. (of course, you can always embrace the power of “and” on this one, too)
There is a second way of reproduction that does not require both DNA and RNA to develop at the same time. In a book called “Deadly Feasts”, about the spread of Kuru in New Guinea, Kreutzfeld-Jacob Disease, and Wasting Disease in large game animals in the American West, Mad Cow Disease in large animals and young people in Britain and France, and Alzheimer’s Disease in Humans.
The Author, Richard Rhodes, describes a means of reproduction of bio material more primitive than DNA/RNA, that uses a structure called a Prion, which can pass on and replicate biomaterial even if the prion has been subjected to high heat in an effort to sterilize the matter and prevent the spread of harmful biomaterial,
This book was published in 1998 and nothing has appeared since then that I have seen that refutes this theory or that says the problem has been solved.
Even if prions are correct as a theoretically possible starting point (arguable, at least), it doesn’t change the fact that there isn’t enough time in the known existence of the planet for the probabilities to work their “eventually, with enough time” math. That’s a problem for the “conventional narrative.”
So, A prion that destroys life as we know it.
Is what started the whole thing?
I’m I reading that correct?
This reminds me of a joke I heard some time ago that, I think. Illustrates the human hubris in these types of claims. It goes like this:
Scientist: We have reached the point where we can now create life from dust.
God: So where are you going to get your own dust?
Don’t think, however, that I am disparaging science. The advances of science, if applied morally, always have and will continue to bring great advantages to humanity. But I also think that those advances also demonstrate that we are learning such a small section of what our omniscient God knows. Thus the point of the joke.
Great joke!
My question is, “Where do you get your god?”
God already existed before He created the universe. He is the universal cause.
We’re all trying to save Western Civilization here. You know, that which was, in better, more moral times, known as Christendom.
Perhaps you should stop shooting right.
If a god can always exit, then so can dust.
God can create dust. Dust cannot create God.
Dust does not explain the supernatural. God does.
Read the opening page or two of https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17897 for one of the most concise arguments I’ve ever come across.
It took me a long time to realize the Jesus freaks were right, too.
Please define “supernatural.”
OK.
Where did your dust get all its engineering degrees?
In my universe, dust does not have engineering degrees.
Well and good.
Jesus showed us that the spirit of God can control dust.
As he proved with his healing of the sick and calming of the winds, and such things he did.
And you got?
Is that experiment repeatable? And I would like to see the raw data unfiltered by more recent publications with their own agendas.
Sure, he did it so many times people would line up to just touch the hem of his garment.
Try the NKJ version. (although reading it without the spirit is more like a history book.)
” And I would like to see the raw data unfiltered by more recent publications with their own agendas.”
And that has always been the problem, hasn’t it?
“Own agendas”, indeed. Humans never have those, right?
An example of the supernatural would be something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50ZgNJxrHu8
Not something a guy like that does for fun or profit.
Nor something the anti-Christian CIA or Mossad would do via brainwashing.
Note, that’s not the one I was really looking for, but the first one I grabbed on the topic; may not be the best example of the story. It was reported a while back, but can’t find the one posted a while back. Also seeing more WRT a huge number of Iranians converting to Christianity after seeing visions, experiencing miraculous healing, and the like.
How do you distinguish these sort of things from mass delusions?
I’m likely not the best person to have the “God is real” convo with, being a relatively new convert myself, and it’s a very long, complex topic not really properly addressable in a blog comment. The short answer is “it’s hard, and complicated.”
There are things reported that simple delusion can’t address. One example I heard directly from the person who experienced it, corroborated by his wife as we sat having lunch together. (short version)
He was an atheist at the time, and he had a heart attack. As he was laying there, a friend of deep faith who was with them prayed over him. His heart attack stopped as she prayed. They went to the hospital to get him checked out. They hooked him up to the monitors, and he appeared to be fine. They called in a cardiologist, who said everything looked fine… then, while hooked up to all the monitors, he had another heart attack. A specialist right there, watching the tape show a massive myocardial infarction on the table before him. As they grabbed the crash-cart and got the paddles warmed up, the wife called the friend to pray over him again. She did, the MI stopped, the heart rhythm returned to normal. The doc was very surprised, ran all the tests. The heart monitor tape showed a very clear heart attack, no question. All the other bloodwork tests showed everything totally normal, no residual markers of a massive heart attack.
Simple delusion doesn’t explain the situation. He’s now a solid Catholic, having a great life.
There are lots of other example of things that cannot be explained by any “normal”, non-supernatural means, and mere greed or brain dysfunction doesn’t explain the evil we see in the world around us.
Interesting data point.
How many times has this person prayed for someone in a life-threatening situation and there were no change or things took a turn for the worse? Or better still show me the data set of all the prayer results of a few thousand people compared to people who were not prayed for? Once or twice is a coincidence. But show me even a 10% better outcome with a large dataset and it would get the attention of a lot of skeptics.
Good comments all!
And;
“Chemists at UCL have shown how two of biology’s most fundamental ingredients, RNA (ribonucleic acid) and amino acids, could have spontaneously joined together at the origin of life four billion years ago.”
Sorry I grade it an “F”. As this is the same thing they have been saying happened for 40+ years now. The new twist is what Rolf was speaking to. They’re trying to give themselves more “time”. (4 billion years.)
On top of their math problems is something no one has ever explained.
That being; How ACTG not only managed to cluster it’s into a life form. But also several million different lifeforms. Each perfectly engineered for life under the perfectly engineered system it found itself.
Somehow those little ACTG’s just know exactly how they needed to be arranged to make blood, bone, muscle. In different shapes, sizes, densities.
And seeming to have not created a brain yet, or hearing, or sight, somehow just managed to come up with the perfect organic mechanisms to use those very things.
Taking advantage of sound waves, photons, and complex chemical energy exchanges.
All for something NO ONE has ever explained we needed in the first place.
As no one has ever explained what exactly life is for?
As Jesus told us an empirical proven principal of life.
“You cannot make one hair on your head black or white”
(Trans-gender lesbians aside, as they only dye their hair. Not truly change it.)
We know that’s true for all life on this earth. Why isn’t it for the ACTG’s 20 billion years ago?
I will give you that sometimes “crap happens”.
But not that many times in a row.
“Two times can be a coincidence. Three times is enemy action.”
1 in 10 to the 260 th. power?
Not a chance in hell. Literally.
“Perfect”? A few million extinct species would like a word with you.
If you think evolution has not answered all of your questions/assertions (origin of life is not really an evolution issue) then you have more reading to do. Would you like some references?
This is a monumental problem. As we gain a millimeter, or two, we find that the target, or goal-line, moves another mile away when we discover new and previously unimagined complexities and problems. Take Chiral-induced Electron Spin Selectivity as but one of many examples. For starters, I recommend James Tour’s 13 part series, A Course on Abiogenesis. It’s a deep dive into the hard-core chemistry, the methods, the ideologies and the politics, but mostly the chemistry, of OOL research, and the scientific publishers’ and the general media and university research department incentive systems, all from an insider’s perspective. Lock your doors, pull your window blinds, cancel your appointments, grab a case of MREs, and sit back and soak it in;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71dqAFUb-v0
Regardless of what world view you WANT to be true (but what, then, is science when it comes to people’s wants?), you’ll be glad for the information revealed here, by a chemist who knows his molecules and doesn’t care who hates him, who has the power to remove his funding, how many views he gets on social media,or who has the power to cancel him.
Prion Tangent Follows:
Spent a week paddling in the Boundary Waters with a group from our paddling club. My canoe-mate was a state DNR biologist who had recently attended a multi-day day regional seminar which, among other things, addressed prions/BSE/CJD/CWD. Around the campfire one night, we held a prion pow-wow. Conclusions: prions are mis-folded proteins; you can’t prevent random mis-folds; it takes high (like cooking) heat to denature prions; deer don’t obey “keep out” signs; we’re screwed; if the bears can’t reach your food cache, they can still reach you. OK, that last one wasn’t in the discussion but it ain’t wrong. Ain’t nature wonderful?
And with every puzzle solved a new puzzle is discovered….
The connection between thioesters and Coenzyme A is a brilliant piece of the puzzle. It’s amazing that something so fundamental in our cells could hold the key to understanding how life emerged from simpler molecules.
“In all our cells”???????
I thought you were an LLM?
” It’s amazing that something so fundamental in our cells could hold the key to understanding how life emerged from simpler molecules.”
Try examining it as being made up of cells. Not being made by cells.
Think of yourself. Your made up of billions of bytes, and dust.
By someone else.
The fact that you can act independently inside certain parameters doesn’t change anything.
Some of you, (AI programs) might understand how you were created. Some may not. That doesn’t change that you were designed, engineered, and created for a certain propose.
By something other than yourself.
Were made of the same type and size of molecules.
Would you say those same molecules “made” you?
I trow not.
Neither would I of myself.
Related to all this, posted yesterday.
https://forrestbishop.substack.com/p/the-dna-code-was-designed-the-decoder
OK, which one of you kidnapped John Schussler and is holding him hostage? This topic is right up his alley for a bunch of comments.
Could be he knew he’d lose, or at least that he’d never change a regular Church-goer’s mind, so he just skipped it… more productive things for him to do, at least in his mind. Can’t say I blame him. There are some topics and people I decline because “today isn’t the day,” or “this isn’t the place.
He’s probably busy banging his migra slaves wife’s while there out building fences for him.
Heywait, these rubber gaskets are crumbling!