Reading both Mayhew and Dawkins, I tend to lean a bit more towards Dawkins in his primordial soup theory. This is the theory that I personally have been taught my entire life. I feel that Dawkins tends to agree more with Darwin in the theory of evolution by natural selection than maybe Mayhew expresses. Dawkins tells of the primordial soup which contained purines and pyrimidines, the "building blocks of DNA itself." Dawkins idea that, "the situation only had to arise once" appeals to my understanding because that is all nature really is, is chance meetings at the right place and right time. Dawkins view also holds that mistakes happen (that is why evolution happens) and that is how eventually the survival machines he speaks of came to exist. In order to protect themselves, the genes had to develop some sort of defense, then develop the capability to compete for resources, and later to pass on that information to future generations.
Mayhew on the other hand looks at an autotrophic origin of life which recently has re-emerged. his argument is that early life probably lacked protein enzymes to catalyze reactions, using RNA instead. The problem that I tend to have with this is that Dawkins idea of a primordial soup contained the precursors for DNA. And, laboratory experiments done on inorganic materials exposed to ultraviolet light and or "lightening" produced something along the order of amino acids. I do not think that Mayhew recognizes such studies have been performed.
It is obvious that not a single person was around at the time of creation and that we may never know what truly happened at the origin of life, but that is why scientist formulate hypothesis... educated guesses... We can only speculate and thus will be divided in theories.
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It is funny that you point out that in the end this is all basically a guess, albeit an educated one. I completely agree.
ReplyDeleteIt seems that if DNA can be synthesized from the materials in the "primevil soup" it is very likely that RNA could be created as well. Do you think this would be more supportive of either hypothesis?
I completely agree with you about Dawkins although I do think that Mayhew does bring up an interesting point about autotrophic origin of life.
ReplyDeleteI remember in my Micro class about the RNA Hypothesis which is that RNA may have originated before DNA, from Ben's post, I think he has a good point and in that maybe that instead of DNA and RNA being created in the "primevil soup", its possible instead that RNA was created and the RNA --> DNA over time, since DNA is probably more stable than RNA.
I like that you brought Darwin into the mix. The way Dawkins talks about competition and essentially mutations arising to better the population completely plays into Darwin's theory of natural selection. Dawkins also talks about how the best replicators went on to form organisms along with DNA and RNA and I think this is basically a restating of Darwin's "survival of the fittest".
ReplyDeleteI like how you brought up the idea that experiments on inorganic materials and UV light have been performed to simulate and prove the primordial soup hypothesis. You also pointed out Dawkins' stance on how the survival machines developed and evolved, which displayed how you considered other points beyond the autotrophic/heterotrophic argument. It would be interesting to consider the chemo-autotroph hypothesis that Mayhew holds and compare it with the Dawkins' primordial soup hypothesis.
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