The Core Premise: The Challenge of Co-Origination
The Concept of Co-Origination: The authors introduce the novel argument that the transition from non-life to life requires multiple specific events to happen simultaneously in both time and space.
The Enzyme-Vitamin Dilemma: Specifically, many essential biological enzymes cannot function without a corresponding coenzyme derived from a vitamin. For life to originate, both the complex enzyme and its required vitamin/coenzyme companion must emerge together.
The Failure of Natural Selection: Because an enzyme without its cofactor (or vice versa) provides no survival advantage and represents a futile expenditure of energy, Darwinian survival of the fittest cannot select or preserve them individually. Natural selection is impotent during abiogenesis because it cannot recognize or save changes that only have future value.
Defining the Minimal Living Cell
To evaluate the likelihood of abiogenesis, the authors focus on the threshold of a modern minimal cell model, referencing Mycoplasma genitalium and the synthetic JCVI-syn3.0.
For their calculations, they isolate a highly streamlined system consisting of 8 core biochemical processes (such as protein, DNA, RNA, and lipid synthesis), which require a total of 70 unique enzymes and 10 unique coenzymes.
Probability and Statistical Impossibility
Generous Assumptions: To test mainstream evolutionary doctrine, the authors choose highly generous, unrealistically favorable parameters—assuming a warm little pond already abiotically stocked with all required amino acids, nucleotides, lipids, and an energy source (ATP).
The Mathematical Verdict: Using mathematical models for an uninterrupted sequence of events required to build this minimal metabolic ensemble, the authors compute total probabilities based on varying ratios of generating an enzyme versus a coenzyme.
Even under the most absurdly optimistic assumptions, the probability ranges from 1 in 10^227 down to 1 in 10^1137. The authors note that an exponent of 80 is sufficient to account for all particles in the known universe, rendering the naturalistic assembly of first life statistically impossible and absurdly improbable.
Conclusion
The authors conclude that mainstream biology must reboot its approach to evolutionary theory. They assert that time alone cannot serve as the hero of abiogenesis, and that the necessity for the co-origination of essential components deals a fatal blow to the concept of survival of the fittest as a mechanism for explaining the origin of life.
“Published Journal Article from Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology
- Conclusions
Calculated probabilities for the origin of life are absurdly improbable even when highly favorable assumptions are made. This agrees with the use of ‘absurd’ for probability statements by Eigen and that Wald (1954) found it necessary to use ‘miracles’ to justify his use of ‘impossible becomes possible’. The origin of life and its evolution cannot be ‘explained’ by a near-infinite sequence of minute changes given direction via selection by survival of the fittest. The death knell is the necessity for co-origination in space and in time, in one genome or perhaps two contiguous genomes (or whatever assumed the function before there was a genome) of all the structures and functions that are essential for life.
The calculated probabilities reach absurd values as low as 1 chance in 10^1137 trials and rise to only one chance in 10^227 trials when one allows a coenzyme and an enzyme to be repeatedly created with an average absurdly high probability, respectively, of 1 in 10 to 1 in 1000 random trials. The exponents 1137 and 227 can be compared with exponents required for other large numbers: an exponent of 11 suffices for the number of stars in our galaxy and it is estimated that the exponent 80 is sufficient for all the particles in the universe. ‘Science’ has spent more than a century and a half worshiping at the altar of an idea that has few scientific clothes (surely no ensemble); we are on a yellow brick road leading only to a wonderful wizard. Like Alice we are not in Kansas anymore; natural selection is not natural but is given powers that are magical and miraculous. Natural selection, survival of the fittest and time are the great pretenders—they pretend we are doing well, but they pretend too much. We must reboot the computer called biological evolution. Time (even billions of years) is not the hero of the plot; however, for scientific understanding of biological evolution, time is of the essence.”
Citation:
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/pbiomolbio
Biological evolution is dead in the water of Darwin’s warm little pond
Olen R. Brown a,*
, David A. Hullender b
a Emeritus of Biomedical Sciences, At the University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, USA b Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington, USA
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