"abiogenesis" - definition, usage and history

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abiogenesis

Abiogenesis (Greek a-bio-genesis, "non biological origins") is the formation of life from non-living matter. Today the term is primarily used to refer to hypotheses about the chemical origin of life, such as from a 'primeval soup' or in the vicinity of hydrothermal vents, and most probably through a number of intermediate steps, such as non-living but self-replicating molecules (biopoiesis). The current models of abiogenesis are still being scientifically tested. (compare abiogenesis v. creationism).

spontaneous generation

Classical notions of abiogenesis, now more precisely known as spontaneous generation, held that complex, living organisms are generated by decaying organic substances, e.g. that mice spontaneously appear in stored grain or maggots spontaneously appear in meat.

According to Aristotle it was a readily observable truth that aphids arise from the dew which falls on plants, fleas from putrid matter, mice from dirty hay, and so forth. In the 17th century such assumptions started to be questioned; such as that by Sir Thomas Browne in his Pseudodoxia Epidemica, subtitled Enquiries into Very many Received Tenets, and Commonly Presumed Truths, of 1646, an attack on false beliefs and "vulgar errors."

Replication of the Urey-Miller experiment
(larger image)

His conclusions were not widely accepted, e.g. his contemporary, Alexander Ross wrote: "To question this (i.e., spontaneous generation) is to question reason, sense and experience. If he doubts of this let him go to Egypt, and there he will find the fields swarming with mice, begot of the mud of Nylus, to the great calamity of the inhabitants."

However, experimental scientists continued to decrease the conditions within which the spontaneous generation of complex organisms could be observed. The first step was taken by the Italian Francesco Redi, who, in 1668, proved that no maggots appeared in meat when flies were prevented from laying eggs. From the seventeenth century onwards it was gradually shown that, at least in the case of all the higher and readily visible organisms, the previous sentiment regarding spontaneous generation was false. The alternative seemed to be omne vivum ex ovo: that every living thing came from a pre-existing living thing (literally, from an egg).

Then in 1683 Antony van Leeuwenhoek discovered bacteria, and it was soon found that however carefully organic matter might be protected by screens, or by being placed in stoppered receptacles, putrefaction set in, and was always accompanied by the appearance of myriad bacteria and other low organisms. As knowledge of microscopic forms of life increased, so the apparent realm of abiogenesis increased, and it became tempting to hypothesize that while abiogenesis might not take place for creatures visible to the naked eye, at the microscopic level, living organisms continually arose from inorganic matter.

In 1768 Lazzaro Spallanzani proved that microbes came from the air, and could be killed by boiling. Yet it was not until 1862 that Louis Pasteur performed a series of careful experiments which proved that organisms such as bacteria and fungi do not appear in nutrient rich media of their own accord in non-living material, and which supported cell theory.

Three years earlier, Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (published in 1859), had presented an argument that modern organisms had evolved, over immense periods of time, from simpler ancestral forms, and that species changed over time in accordance with cell theory. Darwin himself declined to speculate on some implications of his theory - that at some point there may have existed an ur-organism with no prior ancestor and that such an organism may have come into existence, formed from non-living molecules.

Although Pasteur had demonstrated that modern organisms do not generate spontaneously in nonliving nutrients, his experiments were limited to a smaller system, and for a shorter time, than the open surface of the planet over millions or billions of years. The ur-organism implied by Darwin's theories would have occurred in the deep geological past, 3.87 billion years ago, and it had a billion years from the beginning of the planet to be formed.

Primordial soup

In 1936 Aleksandr Ivanovich Oparin, in his "The Origin of Life on Earth", suggested that organic molecules could be created in an oxygen-less atmosphere, through the action of sunlight. These molecules, he suggested, combine in ever-more complex fashion until they are dissolved into a coacervate droplet. These droplets could then fuse with other droplets and break apart into two replicas of the original. This could be viewed as a primitive form of reproduction and metabolism. Favorable attributes such as increased durability in the structure would survive more often than nonfavorable attributes.

Experimental demonstration

In 1953, taking their cue from Oparin and Haldane, the chemist Stanley L. Miller working under Harold C. Urey carried out an experiment on the "primeval soup". Within two weeks a racemic mixture, containing 13 of the 22 amino acids used to synthesize proteins in cells, had formed from the highly reduced mixture of methane, ammonia, water vapor and hydrogen. While Miller and Urey did not actually create life, they demonstrated that more complex molecules could emerge spontaneously from simpler chemicals. The environment simulated atmospheric conditions as the researchers understood them to have been on the primeval earth, including an external energy source in the form of a spark, representing lightning, and an atmosphere largely devoid of oxygen.

The Miller–Urey experiment left many critical questions unanswered, even such basic ones as, ‘How did the chemicals combine to form the first molecules of living organisms?’ (Flowers, C., A Science Odyssey: 100 Years of Discovery, William Morrow and Company, New York, p. 173, 1998.) Chemicals do not produce life; only complex structures such as DNA and enzymes produce life. Also, even if the source of the amino acids and the many other compounds needed could be explained, how these many diverse elements became aggregated in the same area and then properly assembled themselves must still be dealt with. This problem is a major stumbling block to all abiogenesis theories because:

"… no one has ever satisfactorily explained how the widely distributed ingredients linked up into proteins. Presumed conditions of primordial earth would have driven the amino acids toward lonely isolation. That’s one of the strongest reasons that Wächtershäuser, Morowitz, and other hydrothermal vent theorists want to move the kitchen [that cooked life] to the ocean floor. If the process starts down deep at discrete vents, they say, it can build amino acids—and link them up—right there.
-Simpson, S., Life’s first scalding steps, Science News 155(2):24–26, 1999; p. 26.

The generally accepted view of modern scientists is that, there is simply no evidence for a primitive methane-ammonida atmosphere.

"What is the evidence for a primitive methane-ammonida atmosphere on earth? The answer is that there is no evididence for it, but much against it.
-Philip h. Abelson, "Chemical Events on the Primitive Earch," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 55 (1966), 1365-72.

Jonathan Wells, Ph.D.

In his interview with Lee Strobel, when discussing the famous Miller-Urey experiment, Jonathan wells said,

"Now, it's true that a good organic chemist can turn formaldehyde and cyanide into biological molecules. But to suggest that formaldehyde and cyanide give you the right substrate for the origin of life, Well, it's just a joke."
He let the point sink in before delivering the clincher. "Do you know what you get?" he asked. "Embalming fluid!"

The Case For A Creator A Journalist Investigates Scientific Evidence That Points Toward God, Lee Strobel, ISBN 0-310-24050-6

Subsequent work

Christopher Wills and Jeffrey Bada at the University of California, San Diego said small organic molecules could react with larger organic molecules in oily films on beaches and in tide pools. Some molecules which remained in the films and were able to resist being washed away were "selected" according to the rules of natural selection. Gradually, more complex systems developed which possessed primitive biochemical functions. The theory says materials could replicate by genetic mechanisms which were simpler than RNA or DNA.

Ribozymes made in the laboratory, but not found in nature, can catalyze the assembly of short oligonucleotides into exact complements of themselves, according to the rules of base pairing. It is possible that life began with RNA before proteins began to act as enzymes and help make DNA the basis of the genetic code. Supporting evidence for this notion is the importance that ribose plays in ATP, NAD, FAD, coenzyme A, cyclic AMP and GTP.

Around the same time J. B. S. Haldane suggested that the earth's pre-biotic oceans - very different from their modern counterparts - would have formed a "hot dilute soup" in which organic compounds, the building blocks of life, could have formed. This idea was called biopoiesis or biopoesis, the process of living matter evolving from self-replicating but nonliving molecules.

Alternative hypotheses

Panspermia

Panspermia, a hypothesis that allows life on Earth to have originated elsewhere in the universe, is viewed by some as an alternative to abiogenesis. All forms of the theory posit that life has spread through space to Earth, perhaps from other star systems. In its strongest form, Panspermia says that life has always existed. More common forms, however, simply transfer the origin problem elsewhere, and as such have no contention with abiogenesis; indeed they mitigate the potential problem of time constraints on abiogenesis occurring on Earth.

Clay hypothesis

Clay hypothesis (sometimes called clay theory) has been presented by Graham Cairns-Smith as a possible solution of the problem of origin of life from inorganic non-living matter. It is based on the assumption that original living organisms were low-complexity "naked genes", whose shape and chemical properties influenced their survival chances; the transition from inorganic lifeforms to DNA-based organisms was a "genetic takeover".

Cairns-Smith suggests crystals as original naked genes, and in particular clays. Clays can also include other atoms and molecules in their structures, and perhaps evolved including more and more complex structures, until DNA-related molecules would have taken control of the organism, becoming the genetic driver of its life.

Criticisms

The modern concept of abiogenesis has been criticized by scientists throughout the years. Astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle did so based on the probability of abiogenesis actually occurring. Hubert Yockey did so by saying that it is closer to theology than science.

Other scientists have proposed counterpoints to abiogenesis, such as, Harold Urey, Stanley Miller, Francis Crick (a molecular biologist), and Leslie Orgel's Directed Panspermia hypothesis.

Beyond making the trivial observation that life exists, it is difficult to prove or falsify abiogenesis; therefore the hypothesis has many such critics, both in the scientific and non-scientific communities. Nonetheless, research and hypothesizing continue in the hope of developing a satisfactory theoretical mechanism of abiogenesis.

Hoyle

Sir Fred Hoyle, with Chandra Wickramasinghe, was a critic of Earth-bound chemical evolution. Specifically Hoyle rejected chemical evolution to explain the naturalistic origin of life. His argument was mainly based on the improbability of what were thought to be the necessary components coming together for chemical evolution. Though modern theories address his argument, Hoyle never saw chemical evolution limited to Earth as a reasonable explanation. Hoyle preferred panspermia as an alternative natural explanation to the origin of life on Earth.

Yockey

Information theorist Hubert Yockey argued that chemical evolutionary research faces the following problem:

Research on the origin of life seems to be unique in that the conclusion has already been authoritatively accepted … . What remains to be done is to find the scenarios which describe the detailed mechanisms and processes by which this happened. One must conclude that, contrary to the established and current wisdom a scenario describing the genesis of life on earth by chance and natural causes which can be accepted on the basis of fact and not faith has not yet been written.

In a book he wrote 15 years later, Yockey argued that the idea of abiogenesis from a primordial soup is a failed paradigm:

Although at the beginning the paradigm was worth consideration, now the entire effort in the primeval soup paradigm is self-deception on the ideology of its champions. … The history of science shows that a paradigm, once it has achieved the status of acceptance (and is incorporated in textbooks) and regardless of its failures, is declared invalid only when a new paradigm is available to replace it. Nevertheless, in order to make progress in science, it is necessary to clear the decks, so to speak, of failed paradigms. This must be done even if this leaves the decks entirely clear and no paradigms survive. It is a characteristic of the true believer in religion, philosophy and ideology that he must have a set of beliefs, come what may (Hoffer, 1951). Belief in a primeval soup on the grounds that no other paradigm is available is an example of the logical fallacy of the false alternative. In science it is a virtue to acknowledge ignorance. This has been universally the case in the history of science as Kuhn (1970) has discussed in detail. There is no reason that this should be different in the research on the origin of life.

Yockey, in general, possesses a highly critical attitude toward people who give credence toward natural origins of life, often invoking words like "faith" and "ideology". Yockey's publications have become favorites to quote among creationists, though he is not a creationist himself (as noted in this 1995 email).

The second law of thermodynamics

The second law of thermodynamics states that entropy (dispersal of energy) will tend to increase in an isolated system as time continues and differences in temperature, pressure and density tend to even out. More strictly, the entropy of a system can decrease only if work is done, i.e. energy is transferred from outside the system.

Intelligent design proponent Stuart Pullen challenged the concept of abiogenesis on the grounds that the creation of life from nonlife would violate the above law, since creation of living organisms must be associated with a decrease in the entropy of the system. Math professor J. Rosenhouse counters that the Earth is not an isolated system, but an open system receiving energy from the Sun. Furthermore, he points out that the time scales in which such large systems reach equilibrium can be very long, during which time local fluctuations in entropy are perfectly feasible, and may be observed all the time. Furthermore, the concept of entropy in thermodynamics is not identical to the common notion of "disorder". For example, a thermodynamically closed system of certain solutions will eventually transform from a cloudy liquid to a clear solution containing large "orderly" crystals. Most people would characterize the former state as having "more disorder" than the latter state. However, in a purely thermodynamic sense, the entropy has increased in this system, not decreased. The units of measure of entropy in thermodynamics are "units of energy per unit of temperature". Whether a human perceives one state of a system as "more orderly" than another has no bearing on the calculation of this quantity. The common notion that entropy in thermodynamics is equivalent to a popular conception of "disorder" has caused many non-physicists to completely misinterpret what the second law of thermodynamics is really about.

Current research

NASA Astrobiology Institute: Earth's Early Environment and Life
NASA Specialized Center of Research and Training in Exobiology: Gustaf O. Arrhenius

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