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posted by martyb on Wednesday March 15 2017, @01:39PM   Printer-friendly
from the It's-the-end^W-beginning-of-the-world-as-we-know-it? dept.

Researchers have demonstrated that an enzyme-free metabolic pathway using sulfate radicals can mirror the Krebs cycle:

A set of biochemical processes crucial to cellular life on Earth could have originated in chemical reactions taking place on the early Earth four billion years ago, believes a group of scientists from the Francis Crick Institute and the University of Cambridge. The researchers have demonstrated a network of chemical reactions in the lab which mimic the important Krebs cycle present in living organisms today. In a study published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, they say it could explain an important step in how life developed on Earth.

[...] One central metabolic pathway learned by every A-level biology student is the Krebs cycle. But how did this essential set of chemical reactions, each step catalyzed by an enzyme, first arise? Each step in the cycle is not enough by itself. Life needs a sequence of these reactions, and it would have needed it before biological enzymes were around: Amino acids, the molecular components of enzymes, are made from products of the Krebs cycle.

The research group from the Francis Crick Institute and the University of Cambridge say their demonstration offers an answer. They have shown an enzyme-free metabolic pathway that mirrors the Krebs cycle. It is sparked by particles called sulphate radicals under conditions similar to those on Earth four billion years ago. Senior author Dr Markus Ralser of the Francis Crick Institute and University of Cambridge explains: "This non-enzymatic precursor of the Krebs cycle that we have demonstrated forms spontaneously, is biologically sensible and efficient. It could have helped ignite life four billion years ago."

Found at ScienceDaily.

Sulfate radicals enable a non-enzymatic Krebs cycle precursor (open, DOI: 10.1038/s41559-017-0083) (DX)


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  • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday March 16 2017, @01:35AM (1 child)

    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Thursday March 16 2017, @01:35AM (#479629) Journal

    Okay, number one, you type like a schizophrenic, and number two, I'm actually a Deist, not an atheist. I know an evil spirit when I see one, and that is what Yahweh (a.k.a. "The Flying Canaanite Genocide Fairy") is.

    The irony here is that you don't believe in God; *I* do. You, my babbling friend, are a demon worshiper, as I can think of no being in all the world's history, literature, and religions more deserving of the appellation of Devil-with-a-capital-D than Yahweh.

    --
    I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
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  • (Score: 2) by marcello_dl on Thursday March 16 2017, @04:18PM

    by marcello_dl (2685) on Thursday March 16 2017, @04:18PM (#479870)

    I did not call you atheist. And I am speaking as atheist now, in fact if I were a true atheist I would insult you and all the fake atheists a bit more, because absence of evidence arguments or rationalizations are a big "trick me" sign hanging on your back. You cannot tell a deity from a sufficiently powerful impostor from the inside of the universe, fullstop. No true Christian can force you to believe, because Christ forced nobody and forcing automatically excludes free will, so your actions are really unwarranted.

    You think you can do moral judgements on the act of a god. Protip you cannot. Let's put the problem in a tractable context. I run a simulation, I wipe out half of the simulated universe. Can I do it? Maybe not, I am external to the simulation engine. Let's say I am also the simulation engine, that is I am lucid-dreaming the simulation. Can somebody tell me what I can or cannot dream? Can the dream tell me what I can or I cannot dream? Am I not directly feeling what everybody in the dream is feeling so every act is done on me too (Mt 25:40)?
    More prosaically, can anybody prove or disprove the assertion that "any act of mine is done for the greater good", or "the greater evil"? NO. Deal with it and please don't move from here to introduce the concept of duality in god, because that is still a useless rationalization.

    I type every time the same things in forums, so if it looks schizo then I likely took some shortcuts.

    > devil worshiper
    if so, the devil painted itself into a corner when he said he is the truth and the life, because then I don't do things against either truth or life and so the devil raised an enemy. If you were catholic and the pope told you to go against a commandment, and you did it, are you still catholic?
    Or maybe the real devil worshipers like to come in sheep's clothing Mt 7:15, and you are conflating a bit.

    Luckily for me, Christians has never been so overcome by pagan and spiritual and gnostic doctrine like these last few centuries, you witnessed JPII receiving the sign of shiva, or other such rites, right? so "your" team has planted quite a tree. Let's see the fruit it bears.