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Wednesday 21 December 2011

The Origin of Life - Abiogenesis - Dr. Jack Szostak

When I was surfing the internet for reading some information about the origin of life, I came across a video created by Prof. Jack William Szostak, a Noble Laureate in Physiology and Medicine 2009. I thought it will worth all of us to have a look in to that.


It's been 55 years since the Miller-Urey Experiment, and science has made enormous progress on solving the origin of life. This video summarizes one of the best leading models. Yes there are others. Science may never know exactly how life DID start, but we will know many ways how life COULD start. Don't be fooled by creationist arguments as even a minimal understanding of biology and chemistry is enough to realize they have no clue what they are talking about. 


Note on how competition works. Water will flow across a membrane to try to equalize the ion concentration. If there is a lot of polymer in a vesicle it will be surrounded by many ions, thus causing water to flow into the vesicle, increasing the internal pressure and stretching the membrane. Fatty acids are in equilibrium between the vesicle and solution. If 2 vesicles are near one another they will gradually swap fatty acids. If one membrane is under tension, the fatty acid "on rate" will be greater than the "off rate" (move to a lower energy state by relaxing the pressure). It will suck up fatty acids from solution. The other vesicle will still give them off, but they will disappear (sucked up by neighbor) and not return. Therefore, the vesicle with high internal pressure will grow and the neighbor will shrink.


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