When the human genome was first presented to the world it had many gaps in it, especially from regions where there were lots of repetitive sequences. These tended to be around the two ends of each chromosome, called telomeres, and around a region called the centromere, where the chromosomes are held together and then separated […]
Japanese bring asteroid sample back to earth and all types of claims emerge about finally finding the origin of the solar system and life. Over the past few years scientists have sent probes to the far reaches of the solar system and collected comet dust, meteorites and now asteroid material, all with the purpose of […]
DNA sugar made in ‘fake’ space, claim NASA scientists in NASA News 19 December 2018 and Nature Communications, published online 18 December 2018, doi: 10.1038/s41467-018-07693-x. DNA is a large complex molecule consisting of a long chain of smaller components named nucleotides. Each nucleotide is three-part molecule that includes a sugar named deoxyribose (the D in […]
Software for stupid atoms puzzles well known Australian physicist Paul Davies as he speculates in New Scientist 18 September 1999 about the origin of life. He admits life is not just chemistry. It is information carried on chemicals that makes living cells work. He asks “How did stupid atoms spontaneously write their own software and […]
Shakespeare’s Monkeys. The idea that monkeys typing at random could eventually produce the works of Shakespeare by random typing was put the test by researchers at Plymouth University in England, as reported by Associated Press May 9, 2003. They found that six monkeys left with a computer for one month, attacked the machine and failed […]
Ribosome study challenges RNA world according to reports in ScienceDaily and PLoS ONE 2012; 7 (3): e32776 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0032776, 12 March 2012. Evolutionary biologists have long faced a “chicken and egg” problem of which biological molecules came first: proteins or nucleic acids (the NA in DNA and RNA). Both of these are highly complex molecules, […]
Primordial Pac-Man as moving oil droplets hint at life’s origin, according to New Scientist, 23 January 2011, p8 and 5 March 2011, p8-9. Researchers have injected oil drops with reactive chemicals which lower the oil’s surface tension and results in moving the oil drops forward. The droplets can even negotiate a maze if the entrance […]
Primeval soup re-brewed, as reported in Scientific American, 28 March 2007. Jeffrey Bada of Scripps Institute of Oceanography, California, has revisited the famous “origin of life” experiment made famous by Stanley Miller 1953. Miller’s experiment produced amino acids, which are essential building blocks for living cells, by exposing a mixture of methane and ammonia to […]