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| Creation Truth Outreach, Inc. Pamphlet |
| Chapter 3. Sixteen Fatal Roadblocks against a Purely Natural Formation of Life. Fatal Roadblock Number 2. Early Termination. The next two roadblocks deal with different facets of a common situation. If the various kinds of organic chemicals in a pre-life “soup” were to combine with each other randomly, most of the combinations formed would contribute nothing to the formation of life. The number of useless combinations greatly exceeds the number of useful combinations. Furthermore, the biologically active molecules of living systems tend to be extremely large, being made up of hundreds of small building block molecules. Getting a random combination of soup components to come together to form useful large, biologically useful molecules, is for all practical purposes impossible. Instead, most random combinations of raw-building block molecules will simply end up in the tar goo. Indeed, this is what is observed experimentally. This is not a neutral issue, for the tar then essentially “sucks up” all of the available raw materials. In the next two roadblocks, our goal will be to produce some rough calculations of the likelihood of a random chemical combination producing tar instead of something useful. Most of the chemicals found in living cells are in the form of extremely long chains that are composed of many small molecules joined together into large molecules. If the wrong kind of molecule is joined to the end of a forming chain, then it effectively terminates chain growth and makes the chain useless. We will call any kind of molecule capable of terminating a chain a terminator. Unfortunately, a pre-life “soup” invariably contains many more potential terminators than potential “linkers.” Since Origin-of-life processes combine chemicals randomly out of the soup, the odds favor chain termination over chain extension. The basic structure of an amino acid consists of four parts. (See Appendix A.2.) A central methane atom is bonded to a formic acid molecule at one of its ends. It is bonded to an ammonia molecule at another end. Finally, it is bonded to what is called a side-chain along one of its sides. Amino acids can connect to each other in a chain. This chain is made by the ammonia portion of one amino acid bonding to the formic acid portion of another amino acid. A molecule of water is released during this reaction. The bond formed by this process is called a peptide bond. It tends to be a quite strong, relatively stable bond. Let’s suppose we have a soup made up of a relative high percentage of Miller’s products, ignoring the tar. We want to join a series of amino acids together to form a long chain. Notice, there was a lot more formic acid formed than amino acids. This is a problem. If the formic acid segment of an amino acid can bond to the ammonia molecule at the end of a chain, then an individual formic acid molecule can also bond to it. If this happens, there is no longer an amino group at the end of the chain and the chain has been terminated. It is no longer capable of growth. Here is the problem. There are a lot of terminators in Miller’s soup. Indeed, the basic components used to make amino acids will always be present in a soup in a high concentration. However, formic acid is not the only possible terminator. All of the various other non-amino acid molecules he produced are also capable of bonding to a chain and terminating its progress. If we consider the ratios of the actual numbers of the various kinds of molecules in Miller’s soup, we find that there are about 4 times as many terminator molecules as amino acids. Let’s assume that in a pre-life soup the various terminators and amino acids all have approximately the same likelihood of connecting to an ammonia molecule at the end of a chain of amino acids. This means that every time something new gets added to the end of a chain, 4 out of 5 times it will be a terminator and only 1 out of 5 will it be an amino acid. How hard will it be to get an unterminated chain of amino acids? Well, pick your length. Enzymes in real life normally vary between 200 and 1,000 amino acids each, although a small percentage can be either shorter or longer. Let’s take an unusually small enzyme of only 101 amino acids. What are the odds of getting a sequence of 100 amino acids added to an initial amino acid without the chain being terminated early? Well, each time a new link is formed, the odds are four in five that the amino acid will join to a terminator and only one in five that it will join to another amino acid. So, the odds are 1 in 5 against getting a single amino acid to link to a first one. To get two additions in a row without termination is 1 in 5 times 1 in 5, or 1 in 25. Extrapolating, the odds against making all 100 additions without early termination are 1 in 5^100. This has the same value as Fatal Roadblock Number 2. Early Termination. (If you are unfamiliar with the exponent symbol "^", click here. The next two roadblocks deal with different facets of a common situation. If the various kinds of organic chemicals in a pre-life “soup” were to combine with each other randomly, most of the combinations formed would contribute nothing to the formation of life. The number of useless combinations greatly exceeds the number of useful combinations. Furthermore, the biologically active molecules of living systems tend to be extremely large, being made up of hundreds of small building block molecules. Getting a random combination of soup components to come together to form useful large, biologically useful molecules, is for all practical purposes impossible. Instead, most random combinations of raw-building block molecules will simply end up in the tar goo. Indeed, this is what is observed experimentally. This is not a neutral issue, for the tar then essentially “sucks up” all of the available raw materials. In the next two roadblocks, our goal will be to produce some rough calculations of the likelihood of a random chemical combination producing tar instead of something useful. Most of the chemicals found in living cells are in the form of extremely long chains that are composed of many small molecules joined together into large molecules. If the wrong kind of molecule is joined to the end of a forming chain, then it effectively terminates chain growth and makes the chain useless. We will call any kind of molecule capable of terminating a chain a terminator. Unfortunately, a pre-life “soup” invariably contains many more potential terminators than potential “linkers.” Since Origin-of-life processes combine chemicals randomly out of the soup, the odds favor chain termination over chain extension. The basic structure of an amino acid consists of four parts. (See Appendix A.2.) A central methane atom is bonded to a formic acid molecule at one of its ends. It is bonded to an ammonia molecule at another end. Finally, it is bonded to what is called a side-chain along one of its sides. Amino acids can connect to each other in a chain. This chain is made by the ammonia portion of one amino acid bonding to the formic acid portion of another amino acid. A molecule of water is released during this reaction. The bond formed by this process is called a peptide bond. It tends to be a quite strong, relatively stable bond. Let’s suppose we have a soup made up of a relative high percentage of Miller’s products, ignoring the tar. We want to join a series of amino acids together to form a long chain. Notice, there was a lot more formic acid formed than amino acids. This is a problem. If the formic acid segment of an amino acid can bond to the ammonia molecule at the end of a chain, then an individual formic acid molecule can also bond to it. If this happens, there is no longer an amino group at the end of the chain and the chain has been terminated. It is no longer capable of growth. Here is the problem. There are a lot of terminators in Miller’s soup. Indeed, the basic components used to make amino acids will always be present in a soup in a high concentration. However, formic acid is not the only possible terminator. All of the various other non-amino acid molecules he produced are also capable of bonding to a chain and terminating its progress. If we consider the ratios of the actual numbers of the various kinds of molecules in Miller’s soup, we find that there are about 4 times as many terminator molecules as amino acids. Let’s assume that in a pre-life soup the various terminators and amino acids all have approximately the same likelihood of connecting to an ammonia molecule at the end of a chain of amino acids. This means that every time something new gets added to the end of a chain, 4 out of 5 times it will be a terminator and only 1 out of 5 will it be an amino acid. How hard will it be to get an unterminated chain of amino acids? Well, pick your length. Enzymes in real life normally vary between 200 and 1,000 amino acids each, although a small percentage can be either shorter or longer. Let’s take an unusually small enzyme of only 101 amino acids. What are the odds of getting a sequence of 100 amino acids added to an initial amino acid without the chain being terminated early? Well, each time a new link is formed, the odds are four in five that the amino acid will join to a terminator and only one in five that it will join to another amino acid. So, the odds are 1 in 5 against getting a single amino acid to link to a first one. To get two additions in a row without termination is 1 in 5 times 1 in 5, or 1 in 25. Extrapolating, the odds against making all 100 additions without early termination are 1 in 5^100. This has the same value as 1 in 10^70. How big is 10^70? It is the number 1 with 70 zeroes after it. It looks like this: 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000 By comparison, the odds against you winning a huge lottery and retiring the rest of your life from a two-dollar ticket are only about one in 100,000,000. So, this number is really huge. For instance, there are an estimated 1069 atoms in the Milky Way galaxy. A typical amino acid weighs about as much as 100 of these atoms, since the galaxy is composed mostly of hydrogen. That means that if all of the atoms in the Milky Way Galaxy could be converted to nothing but amino acids, that there would only be 10^67 amino acids in the galaxy. Yet, the odds against getting an unterminated enzyme are 1 in 10^70. Notice, this number is 1,000 times larger than the number of amino acids in our amino acid galaxy. Now let’s run an imaginary experiment. There is a very strong tendency for long molecules to stick to each other and aggregate into tar. Let’s suppose that every time we get an amino acid sequence which is terminated early, that it will either go directly to the tar goo or will eventually get modified in such a manner that it still ends up there. In other words, if an attempt fails, it becomes tar. In this situation, the entire mass of the Milky Way Galaxy would normally end up in the tar goo before we could get even a small, 100 amino acid chain put together. Notice, this is not the odds against getting a useful sequence of amino acids capable of functioning as an enzyme. It simply represents the odds of getting any kind of sequence, useful or not. We can now begin to understand why Miller produced so much tar. For you who are mathematically inclined, you might want to try doing the same calculations for an enzyme of a more realistic size, such as 300 or 400 amino acids in length. Of course, all this would do would be to make the impossible even more impossible. The issue of early termination presents a fatal roadblock against a natural formation of life. |