The Origin of Life: Part 2

Editor's Note: The Science and Religion feature this month completes the two-part series begun in the May issue. This is the last section of a presentation made by Dr. Gish at the Creation Convention II in Milwaukee, August 18-21, 1974. In the first article, Dr. Gish began to discuss four stages which would be necessitated by the spontaneous development of life through natural processes. He covered two in the May presentation—Stage One: The primitive earth would have had to exist at first in a reducing atmosphere, but there is no evidence for anything but an oxidizing atmosphere; Stage Two: The accumulation of sufficient quantities of simple organic compounds to produce a significant concentration in the hypothetical primordial ocean seems to be precluded by thermodynamic and chemical kinetic considerations. This month's article begins with Gish's stage three.

STAGE THREE: Origin of Complex Biologically Active Compounds

Here we are referring to the origin of proteins, DNA, RNA, complex carbohydrates and lipids, and other complex compounds necessary for life. These very large complex molecules are polymers (long chainlike compounds in which each unit is joined "head" and "tail" to adjoining units, like the links in a chain). Proteins are critically important molecules because they include molecules that make up important structures such as skin, cartilage, muscle, and the protein of red blood cells; enzymes, which are vital catalysts; and hormones. DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is the chemical stuff that chromosomes are made of, and RNA (ribonucleic acid) must be there to work with DNA in transmitting the genetic mes sage.

The polymerization of the sub-units (amino acids in case of proteins, nucleotides in case of DNA and RNA, and sugars in the case of carbohydrates) into these long chainlike compounds involves the formation of chemical bonds. The synthesis of each one of these chemical bonds requires the input of energy. The breakdown of these chemical bonds, on the other hand, releases energy. What happens naturally and spontaneously, therefore,,is the break down of these compounds and not their formation. In other words, there is a thermodynamic barrier to the formation of these compounds that would have to be overcome. This again is in full accord with the Second Law of Thermodynamics. A rough analogy is that energy must be used to drive a car uphill, but it will run downhill spontaneously.

A number of schemes have been pro posed to explain how these compounds may have formed against their tendency to break down. Some investigators have obtained some success in their experiments. It cannot be emphasized too strongly, however, that their success, as limited as it was, occurred only because of the imposition of man-made conditions that would not be possible on the primordial earth. Space will permit us to discuss only one of these schemes.

Sidney Fox has advocated a thermal model to explain the polymerization of amino acids into proteinlike compounds that he calls proteinoids. Fox heats a dry mixture of amino acids at 175 C. (water boils at 100 C.) for about six hours. When the product is leached out with hot water and the resultant solution is allowed to cool, droplets of a polymerized product precipitate, his so-called proteinoid microspheres. The product consists of a mixture of polymers of amino acids. Fox claims that these microspheres are almost living, and refers to them as protocells. His claims are ridiculous in the extreme.

When questioned about a locale that would provide dry heat at 175 , Fox proposed that the edge of a volcano would provide such a setting. When re minded that exposure of his reaction mixture to 175 beyond a few hours results in destruction of the product, Fox advances the idea that rain might occur at the right time to carry away the product!

Fox's model for the origin of life via thermal polymerization of amino acids is riddled with fallacies. His reaction mixture, for example, consists solely of pure amino acids. The only place such a mixture could be found is in the lab oratory of a 20th-century scientist! All other schemes offered to explain the origin of proteins also suffer fatal flaws. No one has yet offered a plausible scheme for overcoming the thermodynamic barrier encountered in the polymerization of amino acids to proteins.

So little has been done in polymerizing nucleotides to nucleic acids (DNA and RNA) or in polymerizing sugars to carbohydrates under conditions even remotely relevant to the origin of life that such work can be dismissed without discussion.

In any case, as mentioned earlier, all sugars would be destroyed by interaction with amino acids, leaving none for in corporation into nucleic acids and carbohydrates. Furthermore, insolubility of alkaline earth phosphates would leave no available phosphate for incorporation into nucleic acids.

As great as the problem may be in overcoming the thermodynamic barrier to polymerization, this problem is dwarfed by a vastly greater problem—the origin of highly ordered, specific structures that give biological activity to proteins, nucleic acids and other biological macro-molecules.

Human growth hormone consists of 188 amino acids arranged in a certain order in the protein chain. This specific arrangement gives this molecule its particular properties. Rearrange it slightly and it no longer functions as human growth hormone, or as any thing else, for that matter. The arrangement required for human growth hormone is highly specific, just as the letters in this sentence had to be arranged in just one specific sequence. Take approximately this same mixture of amino acids and arrange them differently (but in a highly specific manner, of course) and you may have a different hormone, or an enzyme, or a structural protein. The key to biological activity is in each case a highly specific and unique arrangement of the amino acids in each molecule. The same holds true for DNA and RNA. Evolutionists have no way whatsoever of explaining the origin of these unique structures.

The type of chemical syntheses that might be imagined as taking place on the primordial earth, thermal or other wise, can only give rise to randomly arranged structures. The number of different possible combinations in creases rapidly with increase in the number of amino acids, the number soon becoming unimaginably large. Six different amino acids can be arranged in 720 different ways in a molecule containing one each of these amino acids. If the molecule contains 10 different amino acids, there are 3,628,000 combinations. Seventeen amino acids can be arranged in more than 300 trillion different ways.

A protein having a molecular weight of 34,000 would be an average-size protein containing roughly 340 amino acids. If this protein contained only 12 different kinds of amino acids, rather than the 20 different kinds that are common to protein, these 12 amino acids in such a protein could still be arranged in 10300 different ways (1 followed by 300 zeros). Such a number is so large it is incomprehensible. There are 28 grams in one ounce, yet the earth weighs only about 1027 grams. If all the space of the known universe were packed solid with protein, the weight of this protein would not approach 10280 grams (the immensity of this number may be grasped when it is realized that if the entire universe were packed absolutely solid with electrons, it could hold only 10130 electrons).

What we are attempting to illustrate in the above discussion is the fact that if the amino acids of proteins (or the nucleotides of nucleic acids such as DNA and RNA) had been combined by ordinary chemical methods, as is supposed to have taken place on the primordial earth, these combinations would have been random combinations, and the number of such random combinations would have been unimaginably large. This would have reduced the possibility to zero of even one specific combination accumulating in a significant amount.

The total number of different proteins that exist in all living things upon the face of the earth probably could be numbered in the tens of thousands, an infinitesimally small number compared with all the proteins that could have possibly arisen by purely chemical processes. If we resort to the laws of chemistry and physics alone there is no way this ever could have come about. Evolutionists are asking for miracles but demand the exclusion of the miraculous!

STAGE FOUR: The Origin of Stable, Complex, Metabolically Active Systems

If in spite of everything that the laws of chemistry and physics and the laws of probability tell us could not happen, the primordial ocean did become populated with huge amounts of a relatively few different kinds of protein and nucleic acid molecules, the association of these molecules into metabolically active and coordinated systems defy explanation. There is a tremendous gap between a mixture of diverse molecules dissolved in a hypothetical primordial "soup" and the concentration of these molecules into collections of stable systems coordinated in time and space, all functioning in such a way as to maintain and replicate the system.

Even if there were some way of concentrating these large molecules into blobs, the collection of such catalytically active molecules as enzymes into a globule of matter would be meaningless without coordination and controls. As a matter of fact, such a collection of catalytically active molecules without controls and coordination would be extremely destructive. For instance, the proteolytic enzymes (enzymes which greatly accelerate the splitting of proteins into amino acids) would catalyze the breakdown of proteins, oxidative enzymes would catalyze the oxidation of many molecules, and deaminases would catalyze the deamination of amines. In a short time, there would be nothing left having any activity at all!

Fox has claimed that his proteinoid microspheres bridge the gap between molecules and cells. His claim is patently absurd. These microspheres cannot possibly contain anything more than a collection of polymers of amino acids which are completely random in structure. Randomized structures can not be endowed with unique catalytic, hormonal, or structural properities. In his microspheres there are no DNA or RNA molecules, of course, nor none of the many smaller but vitally important chemical compounds found in cells.

As mentioned earlier, coordination and control of all activities is a vital necessity in the living cell. If Fox's microspheres did contain catalytically active molecules, there would be no control of these activities and the results would be disastrous. For example, sup posing there were a significant quantity of molecules in these microspheres that were catalytically active as proteolytic enzymes; that is, they possess the ability to catalyze the hydrolysis (breakdown) of proteins to smaller fragments and eventually to the constituent amino acids. These molecules would, therefore, very happily set about chewing up all the protein in sight, and after a while there would be no more proteinoid and, of course, no more microspheres!

D. E. Green and R. F. Goldberger have stated, "The macromolecule-to-cell transition is a jump of fantastic dimensions which lies beyond the range of testable hypothesis. In this area all is conjecture. The available facts do not provide a basis for postulating that cells arose on this planet." —Molecular In sights Into the Living Process, Academic Press, New York, 1967, p. 407. This certainly supports our contention that origin-of-life investigators are practitioners of pseudoscience, for any theory that cannot be tested is not a scientific theory.

Origin of the Cell

We can be very brief in this section, since it is obvious that if it is impossible to explain the origin of stable metabolically active systems that were precursors to the first cell, neither can the origin of the cell be amenable to science. A true living cell would be defined as a self-sufficient, self-maintaining, self-replicating unit capable of deriving from its surroundings the materials and energy necessary for these activities in a manner completely independent of any other agency.

Evolutionists have no basis whatsoever for explaining the origin of stable, self-regulating, self-perpetuating systems in which the metabolic activities are coordinated in time and space. All of this would be required in systems preceding the first cell. The first cell would be born when one of these systems could persistently and with great fidelity reproduce itself.

The need for accurate self-replication sounds the final death-knell for any origin-of-life scheme. Accurate self-replication requires an extremely complex organization, the origin of which could be expected to be the last to appear in an evolutionary process. Yet such a capability would have had to be there from the very beginning!

The only way any species is preserved is by extremely accurate reproduction or self-replication. Immediate extinction would result without replication. Replication would be the last capability to appear in an evolutionary scheme. What would preserve a system before it acquired the ability to self-replicate? The inevitable fate of any system (since all systems are unstable) is dissolution. Even if it were possible for a system to form and accrete additional material, it would break up long before a self-replication stage could arise. Thus any acquired complexity would inevitably be lost.

It must be concluded that the origin of life by a naturalistic, mechanistic basis is excluded. Life can come only from pre-existing life. "In the beginning God created. . ." is the only tenable statement that can be made concerning the origin of life.