Abiogenesis is not that hard of a problem. The creationists have partially given up on sending out their anti-evolution propaganda and have moved the goal post to producing anti-abiogenesis propaganda. Don't drink the Kool-Aid.
ABIOGENESIS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis
Life functions through the specialized chemistry of carbon and water, and builds largely upon four key families of chemicals:
Lipids for cell membranes,
Carbohydrates such as sugars,
Amino acids for protein metabolism, and
Nucleic acid DNA and RNA for the mechanisms of heredity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLzyco3Q_Rg&ab_channel=ASUSchoolofMolecularSciences
54:00
"I think we are close to having a coherent pathway for how things could have happened" - Jack W. Szostak
1:18:00
"We used to think that there were a lot of difficult steps in the process, but now we are realizing that a lot of the steps are easy" - Jack W. Szostak
1:06:00
CLUE THAT RNA IS THE ORIGIN OF LIFE
RNA 3 functional relationships to protein
1. Messenger RNA codes proteins
2. Ribosomal RNA builds the proteins
3. T RNA gathers amino acids to Ribosomal RNA
AMINO ACIDS / PEPTIDES
1:24:00
"There are many ways of making peptides. Its not hard."
Amino acids come from cyanide, they are easy to randomly produce (since the 1950s, researchers have found that amino acids can spontaneously form peptides), and they exist on asteroids (glutamic acid and glycine, with lesser amounts of aspartic acid, serine, alanine, β-alanine, and γ-amino-n-butyric acid (γ-ABA) have all been detected on asteroids).
"Purdue University chemists have discovered a mechanism for peptide-forming reactions to occur in water — something that has baffled scientists for decades." - https://scitechdaily.com/the-fountain-of-life-scientists-uncover-the-chemistry-behind-the-origin-of-life/?expand_article=1&fbclid=IwAR2jH75AqY4xRqnSw9lx0XH8kBuxAODyZqNZoSPCJMHSytewNDGXvRNT6XA
RNA WORLD HYPOTHESIS
"The beginnings of an answer to this question were obtained in 1982, when it was discovered that RNA molecules themselves can act as catalysts."
Autocatalysis is the key to abiogenesis. Autocatalysis = self-initiating chemical action. When you have autocatalysis, the chemicals build themselves.
"The first empirical support came from Lincoln and Joyce, who obtained autocatalytic sets in which "two [RNA] enzymes catalyze each other’s synthesis from a total of four component substrates."[1] Furthermore, an evolutionary process that began with a population of these self-replicators yielded a population dominated by recombinant replicators."
CHEMICAL EVOLUTION
When things build themselves, guess what happens? You get evolution - in this case chemical evolution.
NATURAL CHEMICAL FLOW
Random chemicals bump into eachother and form new molecules
Random molecules bump into eachother to form complex structures
Some new complex structures degrade overtime and release energy (catabolism)
Released energy helps fuel the combination of more molecules into complex structures
Some new complex structure will not degrade but rather replicate (autocatalysis)
NATURAL LOOP FOR CREATING THE FIRST REPLICATOR
Builds self randomly (birth)
Degrade via catabolism (death)
Release energy for next generation (cycle of life)
CHEMICAL EVOLUTION BEGINS WITH THE FIRST REPLICATOR
Builds self randomly (birth)
Replicate self via autocatalysis (reproduction)
New chemicals absorbed into the replication (mutation)
Mutations that survive longer and replicate better beat competition (natural selection)
ABIOGENESIS SIMPLIFIED
Earth + Sun's light = continuous negentropy-inducing flow of energy into earth's system
Materials + energy = more stable materials.
More stable materials + energy = replicating materials.
Replicating materials + energy = primordial life.
Primordial life + energy = Better and better life.
If you have a soup of stuff repeatedly building itself over and over, you get optimization for better mutations, better chemical structures. The chemicals that failed to reproduce disappear. The chemicals that were able to reproduce keep going.
"Studies in the late 1970s showed that membranes could indeed assemble spontaneously from plain fatty acids"
"In the past year Ting Zhu, a graduate student in our lab, has observed the growth of model protocells"
"Given the right building blocks, then, the formation of protocells does not seem that difficult:
membranes self-assemble,
genetic polymers self-assemble, and the
two components can be brought together in a variety of ways, for example, if the membranes form around preexisting polymers."
AUTHORS: Alonso Ricardo, Jack W. Szostak - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/lindau-nobel-laureate-speak-in-scientific-american/
EXISTENCE
The fundamental principle of existence is this - "That which can exist will exist". This is an axiomatic principle. If things exist, there MUST be a way for them to exist. If there exists a way, then there might exist better and worse ways. If there is randomness, then the things that exist can take advantage of randomness to explore both better and worse ways to exist. This exploration becomes the phenomenon of evolution. A random exploration can produce better existence value, and is hence preserved.
ELECTRONEGATIVITY
My understanding is that electronegativity is the main guiding force for all atomic relationships. Electronegativity is to atoms as gravity is to planets. Each atom has a different level of strength for pulling on electrons. They create little tug of wars, and sometimes the compromise with sharing electrons.
When two chemicals meet, one chemical might have a stronger electronegativity than the other one, so they can "steal" electrons (perhaps breaking down or dissolving the victim chemical). This means they steal energy and can activate their functions. Perhaps they will move around, fold, gather things, mutate, or reproduce with this energy. Their ability to steal electrons might cause the victim to follow the stolen electron. Then the victim might become absorbed into the predatory chemical, and the predator grows bigger. I only have a rudimentary understanding of chemistry so I can't explain it that much further than that, and might be a little off in my above description.
TYPES OF REPLICATION MODELS - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6315399/
• hypercycles (Eigen & Schuster, Germany),
• chemotons (Gánti, Hungary),
• autopoietic systems (Maturana & Varela, Chile),
• (M,R) systems (Rosen, USA/Canada),
collectively autocatalytic sets (Kauffman, USA).
"Some simple autopoietic chemical systems have been constructed experimentally [13]."
"Several experimental examples have been created in the lab, either with nucleic acids or with proteins [20,21,22,23,24]. The earliest examples consisted simply of a system of two mutually catalytic nucleotide sequences, but later examples involved a set of nine peptides that mutually catalyze each other’s formation from shorter peptide fragments in various ways [22], or up to 16 ribozymes (catalytic RNA molecules) in a network of mutual catalysis [23]. Moreover, several of these experimental examples have been studied in more detail using the formal RAF framework, providing additional insights, and bringing theory and experiments closer together [52,53,54]."
CARBOHYDRATES / SUGARS
Alexander Butlerov showed in 1861 that sugars such as tetroses, pentoses and hexoses were produced by the formose reaction when formaldehyde was heated with divalent metal ions such as calcium under basic conditions. R. Breslow proposed in his 1959 that this reaction is autocatalytic.
NUCLEOTIDES / NUCLEIC ACIDS
Formamide produces all four ribonucleotides when warmed with terrestrial minerals. Formamide is ubiquitous in the Universe.
Raffaele Saladino, 2011. "Formamide and the origin of life" https://art.torvergata.it/bitstream/2108/85168/1/PoLRev%202012.pdf
LIPIDS - FATTY MEMBRANES
"...certain kinds of organic compounds called amphiphilic molecules are able to self-assemble into microscopic bubble-like structures. Such structures form spontaneously, and perhaps provided the original membrane-bounded environment required for cellular life to begin." - https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/education/events/deamer1.html
Once you have a membrane that reproduces, you have evolution, which brings you - "competition for membrane molecules may favor stabilized membranes, suggesting a selective advantage for the evolution of cross-linked fatty acids and even today's phospholipids." - https://academic-accelerator.com/encyclopedia/abiogenesis
Colocalization of fatty membranes and amino acids - https://scitechdaily.com/researchers-solve-puzzle-of-origin-of-life-on-earth/?expand_article=1
“Cells are made up of very different types of structures with totally different types of building blocks, and it has never been clear why they would come together in a functional way,” - so they researched this question and found the following:
"[Amino acids]...the building blocks of RNA preferentially attach to fatty acid membranes and, surprisingly, also stabilize the fragile membranes against the detrimental effects of salt, a common compound on Earth past and present."
"Some amino acids even triggered large structural changes in membranes"
"The researchers also discovered that amino acids stabilized membranes through changes in concentration."
"The new findings that amino acids protect membranes"
ALTERNATIVE APPROACH TO ABIOGENESIS: Instead of the "start with the past circumstance and engineer forwards", there is the "start with the present DNA and trace backwards" method.
LUCA: The last universal common ancestor
"In 2016, a set of 355 genes likely present in the LUCA was identified.
355 genes appear to be common to all life;"
WHY IS ABIOGENESIS DIFFICULT TO REPLICATE?
So why have we not been able to create living organisms from non living material?
Just like you don't need to create planets to understand the laws of gravity, you don't need to create a cell to understand the laws of cell abiogenesis.
It’s easy to understand why we can’t create a planet due to our size but what are the specific reasons we can’t create life?
Due to time. The first cell evolved over 1 billion years. How many science experiments can recreate a billion years of chemical mutation?
VISUALIZATION OF CHEMICAL CIRCUMSTANCES THAT CAN PRODUCE ORGANIC MOLECULES
