Professional paper
https://doi.org/10.15255/KUI.2018.033
Chemistry in Teaching:
Origin of Life and Chemical Combinatorics
Nenad Raos
; Institute for Medical Research and Occupational Health Ksaverska c. 2 10 000 Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The calculation of permutations and variations of biopolymers reveals an enormous number of possible structures of proteins and nucleic acids; there is about 10260 possible polypeptides of length 200 formed of 20 protein amino acids and 103246 genomes with the same number of base pairs as the phage φX174 genome (5386 bp). Besides being a nice introduction into chemical combinatorics and combinatorics in general, such calculations provide an insight into the phenomenon of biological selectivity, as a general property of all living, from biomolecules to cells and species. Instead of being an argument in favour of intelligent design (because a functional, “live”, protein molecule cannot be allegedly formed by “pure chance” among the myriads of non-functional ones), it is rather an argument against the origin of life by design. Namely, the enormous number of randomly synthesized molecules on early Earth had enabled selection processes that gradually led to more and more developed systems.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Keywords
proteins; nucleic acids; origin of life; creationism; intelligent design; evolution
Hrčak ID:
218144
URI
Publication date:
17.4.2019.
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