I thought this paper might warrant some conversation:
It touches on a central issue in origin of life research - could life be simpler than the simplest forms we observe today?
All known ferredoxins (a key component in many electron transfer pathways) are composed of two distinct parts, making them asymmetrical. How do you evolve a ferredoxin if you need two different parts simultaneously? A likely answer is that ferredoxins started as symmetrical pairs of a single part, which is easier to evolve. But can a symmetrical ferredoxin function? That is the main question this paper seeks to answer.
The result is âyesâ a symmetrical ferredoxin homodimer is functional. This lends credence to the idea that ancestral organisms existed (or at least could have existed) which were simpler than any currently living organism.
A symmetric origin for bacterial ferredoxins was first proposed over 50 y ago, yet, to date, no functional symmetric molecule has been constructed.
I think this also speaks to the argument that OoL research has âgone nowhereâ. It takes time, development of new instruments and methodologies, and so much these days, the computational resources, to investigate these very complicated issues.
Based on my âthirdâ world view, my opinion is that Ool is not only going nowhere, but it will stop without a solution. The problem is that the academic mindset is dividing Universal Evolution into two separated blocks (Cosmological and Biological Evolution). So they never will meet the lost evolutionary link between the two blocks. I began to suspect that this division is not rational, evolution must be a unique universal process, so, I applied the method of comparative anatomy between living and non-living things, the final results suggests an evolutionary link, biological systems are direct product from the evolution of astronomic systems and these astronomic systems contains all biological properties. But, then, was necessary to build a different astronomic model for to fit as ancestor of the first cell system.
And I think that Jewish/Christian religions are in the same boat, they will arrive to a point where their assertions can not be supported by our knowledge of reality. The problem with these religions is that they can not grasp the size, the magnitude, the complexity, of the unknown being ( which they call âGodâ), that was existing before the Big Bang and beyond this material Universe. When they will realize the right size of their God they will come back in the track and fix what is going wrong. Ok,⌠merely my humble opinionâŚ
any biological system has its limit. so even if we can reduce a system from 4-5 parts to about 2-3 its still a lot. actually even a single gene can be a lot.