Louis
Posts: 6436
Joined: Jan. 2006
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Russell,
Thanks very much.
I missed a question of yours earlier:
| Quote | But I guess I might add to your list of hurdles that have to be overcome: how was the link between particular nucleotides and particular amino acids forged? Perhaps that's more of a fine point compared with your 3 hurdles, but from my perch it looms pretty large.
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This is one of the really interesting "modern, high tech" questions. I must confess I know vastly less about it than other areas of abiogenesis research, but I do know it's broadly part of the "RNA world" hypotheses, so looking in those refs of Orgel's that refer to that might help.
I think it's important to bear in mind just how high tech the DNA/protein/ribosome system is. I have a series of guesses about it, all of varying degrees of totally dumb. As far as I remember such a system must have had some sort of scaffolding to get going, and we don't know what that scaffolding is. I could be wrong about that.I need to read up. My guess based on what I remember is that we're looking in the wrong place by focussing on the genome and the proteome. I think the glycome, which is vastly more varied and contains hugely more "information" than either is the smoking gun. I also think that if we go back to the dead ends of primary metabolites in archea (i.e. secondary metabolites, natural products) we may also find some smoking guns there. I stress these are only midly informed guesses, and this whole section is a long way of saying "I don't know yet!".
The paper you cite about surfactants is a good example of a possible scaffold. Certainly simple bipolar molecules exist in space etc, and we know that at certain concentrations some molecules can aggregate to form micelles. They really are a good candidante in many ways. Also some of them are carbohydrate like (which is part of my reason to probe the glycome ;-) ).
My background is chemistry. My first taste of research was physical organometallic chemistry (My undergrad self despised organic chemists as being horribly limited and narrow, a bit stupid and dull. Oh how wrong I was! ). My second taste was synthetic organic chemistry both in industry and academia. I then realised how totally daft my undergrad opinion was as the universe literally opened out before me. Organic chemistry is far from limited. Basically I think I grew up! I then left industry to go back and do a PhD in natural product synthesis and I've never looked back. Since then I ahve yet again done a bit of academic work and most recently a bit of industry work. I haven't settled yet (hey I'm only a bairn at 32! ) Unfortunately getting into academic jobs as an organic chemist is frighteningly difficult compared to many if not most fields of study. I really don't know why this should be the case, or if it is the consequence of the market. Organic chem isn't somehow special or more advanced than say biology or particle physics, it just seems to be oversubscribed by people who want to be academics perhaps. What I do know is that I don't want to take the management track that some many of my friends have so that I can stay close to the research. It isn't the most lucrative or glorious career choice (despite the assurances of the entire pharma industry) but it is the most fun. Day job is in process chem at a big pharma atm, but not for much longer, I'm moving on. What's your background and day job?
I've yet to meet Orgel properly, although I have seen him talk and chatted anonymously as part of a crowd. He's someone I'd love to work for/with but I get the impression that would be a really hard position to acheive.
Louis
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Bye.
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