Let’s put it this way, I don’t see any other good reason for Tour to present this challenge. If you can see one, let me know.
Certainly we can do this, but a critical question remains, how it can happen in nature, without our intervention? But even assembly doesn’t start up a cell! That was not Tour’s challenge, the second problem, and a critical one, is we need an interactome. Yes, put it together, but also make it work!
But this is not pointing me to anything.
I don’t know what you mean by “distribution of functionality”, again, can you point me to a specific post?
But ATP is a molecule for energy supply! Making a larger molecule with it, that is not the way to use ATP. That is not what people will think you mean when you say ATP is being used in your protocell.
You understand that when enzymes use ATP (Adenosine Tri-Phosphate) as an energy currency, they either convert it to ADP+Pi (Adenosine Di-Phosphate) or AMP+PPi (Adenosine Mono-Phosphate)? The question was rhetorical because you’ve just proved that you didn’t.
Isn’t it brilliant that the energy required for RNA polymerization comes from using the NTPs (Nucleotide Tri-Phosphates), and therefore converting them to NMPs, to polymerize RNA?
When an NTP is added to a growing chain of RNA, NTP is converted to NMP and pyrophosphate (PPi) released is a byproduct. The energy for the reaction performed by the RNA polymerase is obtained from the nucleotide triphosphate that is also used to build up the polymer. So this is in fact a perfectly good example of the use of ATP (and GTP, CTP, and UTP) to drive a chemical reaction.
Then “people” such as you are simply misinformed and I’m happy to correct their misapprehensions.
I note that you have not even tried to move the discussion as you said should be done.
It’s pointing to my posts in a specific thread.
I’ll do better than that. I direct you to Axe’s reply to what he calls the second objection. What evidence does he offer for the idea that functional proteins are isolated in sequence space?
Yet that is how it is used. It is in no way limited as you assume. You’re trying to sneak in design (a molecule for energy supply) and making laughably wrong conclusions because of it.
Which would be … denying the goalposts exist? Nice try! 
Irrelevant - that was not the challenge.
I will also point out that this is an example of the Third Law of Creationism:
- The Law of Reproducible Results : Anything found in nature was Designed, unless it can be reproduced in the lab. Corollary: Anything intentionally done in a lab is not natural; it’s a purposeful result. Therefore, all lab results are evidence of Intelligent Design.
I will have to wait till tomorrow to respond in this thread, I took a three-hour nap from lack of sleep. I will mention though the problem of Chirality-induced spin selectivity. Tour has spoken of the previous OOL view, that we could do without strictly homochiral molecules, and evolution could sort it out, along the way. This however, is untrue, we need homochirality from the start, otherwise electron flow gets disrupted, and overheating would occur.
So the field is going backwards! Like the realization that the formose reaction is not a good option.for making sugars on early earth. The field is not advancing, the opposite is occurring.
As usual, Tour is full of shit.
‘Breakthrough’ could explain why life molecules are left- or right-handed | Science | AAAS
Enjoy your break.
Prove it.
But if “ATP is one of the four RNA nucleotides (the three others being UTP, GTP, and CTP)”, that implies it’s not being turned into ADP / AMP, correct?
But I meant a link, please. Not just claims, which thread? Which post?
But this challenge does not inform me of what you meant by “distribution of functionality”. And I could just as well, reply to you by challenging you to prove him wrong! Now we are having a discussion? Well, no. But I think I’ll do that, given your claim to have refuted his points.
Wow. How is challenging someone to create a living cell out of its parts, anything like this? Tour’s challenge is not about design, it’s a challenge to do what OOL scientists have claimed time and again to be on the verge of doing (they keep missing deadlines, though), to make a simple, living cell. Let’s have it on the table, please.
“The quest that began with Pasteur isn’t quite over, though. One loose end, Sasselov acknowledges, is that RAO has only been shown to lead to the synthesis of two of RNA’s four nucleotides, cytosine and uracil. It isn’t known to produce the other two, adenine and guanine, although Sasselov says there’s a “big push” to search for RAO reactions that could do it. If they can, the mystery of biological handedness might be another step closer to being solved.”
So no home run, yet. Maybe we got to second base. And then there’s all the other molecules, that have to be homochiral. So we’re still not back to where we were, when OOL researchers were proposing that we can manage without homochirality.
And somehow you skipped the problem where the formose reaction has been abandoned. Alas, we’re still going backwards.
Well, I posted Tour’s description of the problem, which has references to support what he says.
No, I’m repeating what I’ve said the goal actually is.
So how is my conclusion wrong? Flat assertions, I can do that, too, that was the challenge.
Both yes and no. Technically polymers of DNA and RNA contain a phosphodiester bond, which you don’t find in the monomers. However (NMP)n is a commonly used description of polymers of RNA, in that the elongation reaction can be described as:
(NMP)n + NTP → (NMP)n+1 + PPi
In either case it doesn’t matter because whatever your original point was is now completely worthless. The energy for the reaction comes from NTPs, the fact that those same NTPs are also used in a chemical reaction that builds up a larger macromolecule is neither here nor there. They diffuse across the membrane from the outside to the inside and are then used in an internal reaction where the product (RNA polymers) aren’t lost to the environment afterwards.
It’s one of those things reading Tour’s materials will make you think couldn’t happen and has never even been attempted. We know, because that’s what all your questions reveal that you believed.
and you said …
- Assembly of components into a cell
I think we are having a disconnect at “Assembly”. Proteins are generally self-assembling, and so long as the cell has the means to transcribe RNA/DNA then they will assemble themselves. I am perhaps over simplifying, but that’s the short version.
What step is it that you think is missing where functional parts placed into a cell will “not be assembled” simply by being present? Again, we have example of this being done, so the biochemists are certainly aware of this step, if it exists.
What else is there you think is missing from the challenge?