The lottery of the origin of life.

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All current living beings, past and present, from the whale to bacteria, from dinosaurs to humans, have something in common and it is the structure, a basic structure of genetic code. Of course, each living being has a different combination or its code may have more. or fewer elements, which thus confers unique and particular properties and characteristics to that species.

And of course the code can also evolve over time, we can compare the genetic code with diverse buildings where each living being would have a building with slightly different characteristics, they all share a basic structure, they are all built with brick or concrete foundations. , with wood too, have basic elements such as a roof, a door, windows, rooms, bathrooms, although later the number and size of the elements change and personalized complements can be added, so the genetic code would work a little.

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The question is that all living beings share the basic structure of the genetic code, the simple answer would be because we all descend from a common ancestor as Charles Robert Darwin theorized, that common ancestor is currently called Luca, for the English acronym for last common ancestor. , emerged according to the latest research 4.2 billion years ago, just about 300 million years after the origin of the earth, which is quite surprising, but if you think about it a little, this answer seems a little strange.

Why are there no other living beings with a completely different genetic code, with a different structure, why in all these billions of years other different Lucas has not emerged or have not emerged in plural, why did that one emerge and we are all descended from him, perhaps the answer is a curious paradox and that is that the current earth may be a very suitable place for life as we know it, but it is not a suitable place for life to arise, it may be that for Luca to arise specific conditions had to be met that were not later They repeated again.

And if you are thinking about panspermia, that is, that Luca came from outside the Earth, perhaps inside an asteroid or a comet, this option rules out that possibility because we could also wonder why if the Earth carries billions of For years receiving impacts from comets and asteroids, no other Lucas has arrived, with other different genetic structures.

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Souce

There is another option and that is that perhaps life, like the jackpot in the Christmas lottery, only has one possible and exact combination that leads to the basic genetic code, the one that Luca had, in that case other Lucas would have emerged throughout billions of years of the earth's existence, even today we would not be able to differentiate them from the original Luca since they would have the same life lottery number, the same basic combination of genetic code, but this option is also quite strange, since the combinations necessary for life to arise as we know it here on earth or anywhere else are very complex and still full of mysteries.

And here we come to the research published by the University of Arizona on December 12, Luca would be the first living being, the first living being that could reproduce and from which we all descend and that had the basic genetic structure that we all have, then That structure became more complicated depending on each species, expanding or reducing depending on the species, but the basic structure was that of that ancestral being.

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That experiment where with some test tubes an attempt was made to reproduce the conditions of the primitive earth and that electricity and electrical charges were introduced and that some amino acids and some precursor substances of life were obtained, but according to the authors of this research from the University of Arizona, The current understanding of how the code evolved is flawed, because it is based on misleading laboratory experiments, are terms they put in their statement.

Instead of analyzing the evolutionary evidence, in fact, what they complain most is that there were no substances such as sulfur in that mixture, in that flask, in that experiment, for example, which apparently was very important in the early times of the origin of the earth and this is interesting for the search for extraterrestrial life.

These researchers criticize that 1952 experiment because sulfur was not included and it was apparently one of the essential elements and according to the research, those worlds like Mars, Enceladus and Europa predominate sulfur compounds and this could guide our search for life to highlight those biogeochemical cycles where sulfur metabolism comes in, which is something very important, apparently it was very important in the early days of the origin of life on earth.

Another detail, this investigation discovered clues about genetic codes that existed before Luca and that have been lost, perhaps those genetic codes did not find the key, with that winning tenth of the lottery of life, they came close, but did not reach that prize that Luca won or perhaps Luca ended up absorbing those pre-existing, previous ancestral genetic codes that were lost.

Study Source

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