En relación a [CrashList] Reply to Nestor,
el 29 Jan 01, a las 17:08, Charles Brown dijo:
> Why not Oparin? Well, I thought four people were enough, in addition to my two
> sons and dad. I read a translation of Oparin's Origin of Life in pamphlet form
> in the mid 1950s (being a "red diaper" baby, my dad bring it home) and had the
> pleasure of seeing Oparin in person at an origin of life meeting at the Univ. of
> Md (hosted by Ponnamperuma) in the late 70s.
Lucky you. Lucky you. Oh, I envy you to the guts...
> Oparin is certainly the father of
> the origin of life scientific research program (Haldane acknowledged his
> priority), and his primordial soup scenario still is a powerful heuristic in
> state of the art research. However, I am convinced that Wachtershauser's
> hydrothermal origin is the more probable explanation (note e.g., Fe4S4 groups
> in primitive coenzymes remarkably similar in symmetry to the mineral substrate
> (FeS and pyrite) postulated in Wachtershauser's scenario, the evidence the last
> common ancestor was thermophilic and the step by step success in the
> experimental verification of Wachtershauser's theory; see Science, 8/25/00,v
> 289: 1307-8).
Did not know about the step by step verification, but I was aware of the most
probably termophillic origin of life.
I believe, however, that Oparin's merits (as you state above) do not lie in the
specific solution he posed to the problem. They lie in that he thought the
whole thing out dialectically, that he proposed the guidelines of a stage of
inorganic evolution, and so on.
And, of course, who on Earth am I to suggest anyone's inclusion in
your books?
Néstor Miguel Gorojovsky
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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