MadSci Network: Evolution
Query:

Re: Is life still spontaneously forming?

Area: Evolution
Posted By: Dean Jacobson, Faculty Biology, Whitworth College
Date: Wed Apr 16 18:11:22 1997
Message ID: 861165159.Ev


Great question!  If life did originate by natural, trial-and-error combinations
of organic chemicals, it is likely that its enzymatic effeciency was very
poor, at first.  If no other life is present, even an inefficient, weak enzyme
would always win, since it is the sole enzyme (or cell).  However, such a
primitive biochemical metabolism could not compete against the ultra-
sophisticated, fast, efficient enzyme capabilities of modern bacteria.  Once
you get some background into marine ecology, it will be clear that the 
competition for nutrients (nitrate, phosphate, iron, vitamins etc.) is fierce, 
and competitive exclusion is common.  (For example, now that the silica input
into the Black Sea has been interrupted by dams on the Danube that hold back
the sandy sediments that once entered the Black Sea, the phytoplankton 
community has been totally changed:  the silica-dependent diatoms have been
replaced by the slower-growing dinoflagellates that do not require silica.)
Another way of thinking about this is to use an human analogy:  a young inventer like
Alexander Graham Bell, working in his workshop in Nova Scotia, couldn't invent
the telephone and start up a company that could successfully compete against
ATT (unless a fundamentally different technology was involved, like the 
internet).  In the case of life on earth, there seems to be only one basic 
type of biochemistry, so life cannot originate a second time, unless all
life is first extinguished.

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