Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by sockpuppet_12 1481 days ago
Theorising that high carbon steel can form by mistake in some scenarios is no where even remotely close to the information management necessary to spontaneously create a tesla.

And even a Tesla is no where remotely close to the organic cell. The smallest known functional, and most importantly, stable biological unit.

Even if rna is formed, what will read it?

2 comments

> Even if rna is formed, what will read it?

That's the interesting part of RNA. You don't need a reader!

RNA can act like an enzyme. They can fold and form strange shapes and have some "sticky" parts, so they can replace the activity of enzymes. Enzymes made of proteins are more efficient, so now most(all?) enzymes are made of proteins. But in the initial form of life perhaps enzymes were just a short RNA strip.

RNA can be copied. They can be in a single strain, and they can collect the parts [1] and make an inverse copy, and then separate. DNA is better with a lot of helper enzymes is much better, but in the initial form of life perhaps RNA is good enough.

None of these steps need a reader, so perhaps they can form an initial and very inefficient life(almost-life) form.

[1] the parts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleoside_triphosphate

Thats fascinating and I appreciate knowing that.

About this:

> None of these steps need a reader, so perhaps they can form an initial and very inefficient life(almost-life) form.

May I ask, have you ever considered if any of these systems that you're researching or investigating are the product of deliberate engineering rather than random chance?

Those are good questions, but having questions doesn't decrease my interest, it just gives it context.