Text 627, 59 rader
Skriven 2004-11-03 05:57:00 av Catherine Woodgold (1:278/230)
Ärende: Re: First Mutation Was Bi
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tinyurl.com/uh3t (rem642b@Yahoo.Com) writes:
> I don't agree with this conclusion, unless you allow that a mere chance
> closing of a catalytic loop to form the first replictor would qualify
> as a "mutation". I would prefer to restrict the use of that word to a
> change in something that was already replicating, in which case I would
> disagree with your claim.

Thanks for your comments, tinyurl and Tom H.
Tom H., I'd be interested to read a description of how
you think life started;  if you've already posted this,
perhaps you could direct me to the post.

Having thought things over in response to these comments,
I've come up with what I think is a somewhat more rigorous
statement:

1. Right from the beginning, except perhaps for a few generations
supported by luck, Life had to be substantially better at
replicating than was anything in the vicinity that was
using the same resources and being spontaneously generated
at a substantial rate.

I think statement 1. has to be true no matter what the
details of the beginning of Life were.

If we accept tinyurl's view of how things happened,
statement 1. is true but rather obvious, trivial and
not particularly interesting.  If I understand correctly,
tinyurl's scenario implies that there was zero replication
among non-Life, and a sudden dramatic appearance of Life.

In my own view, conditions occurred favouring replication,
and there was a lot of replication going on but not Life.
Nothing lasted more than a few generations.  Then suddenly
there was a substantially beneficial mutation, and Life
began.

It had to be sudden and substantially beneficial for
the reasons I described before:  there can be no
gradual evolution if everything dies out after a
few generations, overwhelmed by the supply of new,
spontaneously generated replicands.

In this view, it wasn't so much the absolute
competence at replicating that was important, but
the relative competence as compared to the non-Life
competing for the same resources.

--
Cathy
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