Page 31 - The Origin of Life and the Universe - International Conference 2016

The Origin of Life and the Universe

chemistry studies. It is highly questionable if these highly-controlled
conditions would have ever existed on the early Earth. While chemists may
be present in the laboratory today, they were not present on the early Earth
to oversee prebiotic chemistry. To put it another way, intelligent agency
insures the success of these prebiotic reactions in the lab.
Let me illustrate this point by discussing the RNA World Hypothesis.
This centerpiece of this idea is the notion that the very first biochemistry
was based on RNA. Later the RNA World evolved to give rise to the
DNA-Protein World that characterizes contemporary biochemistry. There
are a number of lines of evidence that origin-of-life researchers like to
point to in favor of the RNA World Hypothesis. I’m only going to tell you
one of those lines of evidence and this has to do with the ability to make
RNA on clay surfaces in the laboratory. In the mid-1990s, when this was
accomplished this was heralded as a huge breakthrough in favor of the
RNA World Hypothesis. But, when you examine the details of the exper-
iments it very quickly becomes evident that Intelligent agency was critical
for this process to take place.
The researchers for example have to operate under highly chemically
pristine conditions. They have to exclude materials that would interfere
with the production of the RNA chains. They have to exclude materials
that would cause the RNA molecules to break down once they form.
These materials would have been present in abundance on the early
Earth. But again they are excluded from their experiments. They have to
stop the reaction before the RNA chain gets too long. Because if it gets
too long it becomes irreversibly attached to the clay surface. They also
have to use what are called chemically-activated nucleotides. These
materials would never have existed on the early Earth if they did somehow
they would be so chemically reactive they would react with everything in
sight and would not be available to make RNA molecules. In addition the
clay they use has to come from a specific supplier in the United States.
That clay has to be treated in the just right way in the laboratory if not it
could not be used as a catalyst for this reaction.

29