Water and evolution

[Phi for All]

Sorry but "You've been debunked" isn't a valid refutation. But since reality demonstrates that apes or monkeys don't turn into humans, I'll stick with reality. ;)You can live in the twilight zone where aliens and half-apes & half - humans live.

Mistake #1: I said your arguments have been debunked, time and time again (please use the Search function to see the ground that's been covered ad infinauseum), not "You've been debunked". That would be an ad hominem argument and not very logical.

 

Mistake #2: You think evolution says that humans are descended from modern apes or monkeys. In fact, it's well-established that modern apes share a common ancestor with modern humans. Exactly which ancestor is still to be established, something that makes science a bit more rigorous than religion on the subject.

 

Mistake #3: Your logic has been replaced by faith in your beliefs. You argue from incredulity (the Twilight Zone comment), very shaky logic. You argue with Misleading Vividness (the alien comment), another logical fallacy.

 

Again, this ground has been covered so many times here and I, for one, don't have the time to explain every instance of why a creationist (who won't bother to learn any decent science from an unbiased source) can't give a more plausible explanation for the biodiversity we observe on earth than evolution does. Just stop interjecting your poorly developed, illogical arguments into the mainstream, accepted science sub-fora. You have been told what the consequences are and frankly, I don't care how it offends you. You aren't important enough to me because of your intractable beliefs, and I'm probably the most tolerant Mod on the boards when it comes to the possibility of an unobservable higher power.

[pioneer]

The angle I was trying to address, is what role water plays in life. Simple dehydration experiments, show it is critical to the operation at almost all levels from simple to complete. If we could go back to the science version of the creation of life, and take a sample every year over the billion of so years and dehydrate it , water would also be critical. Based on that, water is part of the blend at every step of the way. Its solvent properties are needed every step of the way. We might be able to argue 5-10 % exceptions. But even the lipid bilayer needs aqueous surface tension to form.

 

Since this seems logical, the next question is, what about water makes this possible? The unique properties of water, that can account for all its unique properties and anomalies, have hydrogen bonding related explanations. Therefore the dehydration, that stops the process, at all levels, also stops the hydrogen bonding interaction of water, any every step of the evolution of the living state. This is logic 101.

 

That being said, the next question is, if aqueous hydrogen bonding is needed for hydration and to jump start dehydrated life, I wonder if the C,N,O,H, backbone molecules of life also use hydrogen bonding as a critical part of its operation? The answer is yes. If we get rid of the hydrogen bonding nothing works right, even though we can still have long chain molecules.

 

We should be trying to understand the why behind this night and day difference between with or without water.

[lucaspa]

In other words, what better way for water to retain its critical role to life than to push evolution in the direction where it could interface based on the same variable that gives water its unique properties. This keeps water always at the forefront of continuing evolution.

 

Natural selection is such that water can't "push" evolution. Water has no volition. What you have hit upon is what is stated in every biochemistry text I've seen: that water has a relatively high boiling point and can thus remain a liquid at relatively high temperatures compared to other liquids and waters bipolar nature (which contributes to the high boiling point) has strongly affected biochemistry.

 

Water although just H2O is the most complicated substance in nature with at least 63 anomalies relative to trends of other similar molecules.

 

That's unsupported hyperbole. Liquid ammonia is also bipolar and will engage in hydrogen bonding like water does.

 

In terms of speculation, maybe life is evolving to take into consideration the range that is inherent within the water. This is an area of evolution I would like to investigate and discuss in a rational way, even if empirical can ignore this critical variable for a good first approximation.

 

I would say that natural selection has already incorporated the properties of water into life. Remember, the basic biochemical pathways evolved over the first billion years or so of life and have not changed significantly since. Protein folding, catalysis, etc. already make use of hydrophobicity, hydrophilicity, and hydrogen bonding.

 

I am not discounting the role of C,N,O, etc, but this doesn't work without water as the mediator.

 

C, N, O do not exist as atoms. By themselves, they have no role. The "roles" for these 3 elements come due to the fact that they combine to make molecules that are used by living organisms: amino acids, sugars, bases, and lipids. So, on the one hand you are looking at the molecule water and the other elements that don't exist as elements in living systems. Apples and oranges.

 

Pioneer, I think what you need to do is get ahold of the 1972 edition of Lehninger's Biochemistry. The first chapter is devoted to water and it is going to have all the information you need. I'm sorry, but you are trying to re-invent the wheel. However, you seem to be making it hexagonal rather than circular. Before you go off on wild speculation, go back and read about things that are so basic that they are not covered in detail in modern texts. That's what you are doing here.

 

If we could go back to the science version of the creation of life, and take a sample every year over the billion of so years and dehydrate it , water would also be critical.

 

It looks like initially you need to dry heat amino acids to polymerize them to proteins. Then add water. The proteins then form cells due to hydrophobic interactions.

 

We should be trying to understand the why behind this night and day difference between with or without water.

 

Biochemists have been there and done that. So long ago that it is half forgotten today. The newer versions of Lehninger devoted only a couple of paragraphs to water; there was simply way too much new information in biochemistry and something had to be cut to keep the book a reasonable size (under 20 pounds). So you need to do some historical research and look at what was done from 1900 - the early 1960s.

[pioneer]

It looks like initially you need to dry heat amino acids to polymerize them to proteins. Then add water. The proteins then form cells due to hydrophobic interactions.

 

Evolution is slow boat if it took a billion years to make a cell, so this artificial technique is too fast. I once proposed ethylene polymerization using an UV initiator to make the precursors of membranes. I got the slow boat rule read to me. It was too fast and starts to look creationism. I was not given the luxury of the dual standard.

 

Let us go back to a seed. This is what you get when you remove most, but not all, the water. This is the perfect way to preserve life in a state of suspended animation. It can't evolve from there. We can mess with the DNA or proteins and it will continue to evolve, but don't mess with the water.

 

Once you add water and the seed is hydrated the shapes of materials begin to change so everything becomes active in an 3-D or integrated way, not possible in the dehydrated state. Nearly all of the known biochemistry of the seed does not appear too work well without water.

 

The DNA is useless without water mediation. The DNA is just a natural plastic without water. Add water and this plastic becomes active. The difference is so huge but the bias of science is so dogmatic, to where even common common sense is forbidden. I am trying to add something new and not take away anything. Instead of seeing the DNA mutating in a void, I am trying to add its natural environment, water.

[npts2020]

Pioneer: I think your objection about being too fast is not valid. it may have easily taken millions or more years for the relatively ideal conditions of the lab to occur in nature. Furthermore, it could have started, got wiped out by a volcano, solar flare, meteorite, etc. many times before successful propogation ever occurred.

[pioneer]

I was being grouchy when i wrote that. The formation of early protein on clays sort of makes sense, since the dehydration is a perfect way to concentrate amino acids so the polymerization is possible in a sustained way. In a highly diluted form, with molecular diffusion, the amount of amino acids in a lake or ocean would need to be very high, which may not be supported by evidence. If we evaporate the water the concentration gets high enough even starting with very dilute solutions of amino acids.

 

The formation of the peptide bond and proteins from animo acids gives off water. This could be pushed forward with dehydration since the removal of the product of a reaction prevents reversal and helps move the reaction forward. But it is interesting that water has to form to make proteins. Here is water still showing its face. Even if the clays helped at the very beginning, the clay formed protein plastics were going nowhere without water. They would form an inert solid that needed water to to soften then up. For a cell to eventually form, protein formation needed to develop a way to remove water to form the peptide linkage within water. Water set a constraint right at the beginning of evolution. Clays are no longer used, but removal of water in water is used for modern protein formation in cells.

 

Water removal in water make the constraint of life easier. By adding water to the protein plastics stemming from clay, they softened the intermolecular bonding that kept them solid at room temperature. This also required they assume minimum energy shapes which required the polar groups go to the surface and organics in the center. The shape is now right for these to evolve a way to make proteins in water. By forming protein directly in water, water is now there at the very beginning as the protein grows using hydrophobic and hydrophilic push and pull to perfect the shapes. As the protein grows exposure of the fresh end has water push and pull causing it to stacking differently than if we put a finished dehydrated protein directly in water (assumes side group variety).

 

Once life begins to use ATP energy in this process, it can defy the natural push and pull of water to add tension or energy into the shapes by changing the ordering of amino acids. This may not be able to happen spontaneously or will limit how many animo acids that can be added to proteins in water using dilute solutions. Without that push by water there is no back pressure to sustain these higher energy structural states. But with the back pressure, the induced structured energy can then be used as part of the potential for catalysis. What you also have is surface water, around a protein shape, that is not close to zero surface water energy, allowing the surface water to assist in activation energy states.

 

DNA and water

 

Before replicators were around nature had to decide on what RNA and DNA needed to look like. Water set some of the constraints for the design. I am only going to concentrate on one aspect, the phosphate linkage.

 

The pentose sugars and the aromatic bases of DNA and RNA are heavy in organic content and therefore will increase the surface tension in water. If nature had substituted a carbon link (1-3 carbons) for the phosphate, you might still get base pairing and a helix, however, the surface tension between water and the organic rich genetic material would increase. The DNA or RNA would ball up in water, sort of like a bead of oil. This is a poor design and may have been tried. But since it would require an extra energy step to open the ball before you can do anything, it was put in the circular file. To compensate for the push of water to form a ball, nature needed to lower the surface tension with the highly polar phosphate linkage making it possible for the RNA and DNA to spread open as long extended chains. This is easier to use as a template.

 

The next question is why phosphate? Theoretically, nature could have substituted other polar linkages to compensate for surface tension and still open up the genetic material so the future replicators could form easier. We might have been able to use O or S, or even gotten fancier, using NOx, SOx, C with polar side groups, or maybe SiO4, etc. But nature had to think longer term, in terms of other water requirements.

 

The way the DNA and RNA form today involved tri-phosphates as the energy source. The difference between diphosphate plus phosphate and tri-phosphate is the formation and the destruction of water. The formation of the tri-phosphate involves removing an -OH group, which will not stay free in water but will react with H to form water. The reverse to store energy indirectly destroys water inside water to set a potential in the tri-phosphate. This just so happens to be at the level of a strong hydrogen bond, which water relies exclusively on for its properties. With phosphate, water has again been satisfied, longer term, and life is ripe to practice replicators.

 

If we look at RNA replicators, since RNA typically forms a single helix, this allows nature to skip the separation of the double helix step. We only have to practice one thing instead of two. This makes it more likely to happen. Water defined this first step. The RNA single helix forms because it creates less surface tension in water than a DNA single helix. With DNA we need to bury the bases and sugars more due to the extra -CH3 group on one of the bases of DNA and the loss of the polar -OH group on its sugar. This give more of a bead of oil affect, which water would like to get rid of. The double helix can bury it deeper. But with RNA this is less a problem, although we still get base stacking but slightly more water surface contact. This makes it easier to practice on. Once we got that down, we can try the two step requiring extra energy to expose the DNA single helix to the water.

 

If we go back to the DNA and phosphate, all the O's on the phosphate implies water will interact with the phosphate by facing their H sides toward the phosphate for H-bonds. This creates a sense of order in the water. This is good and bad. It is good for the water in terms of ordering the water matrix for lower energy, but it puts the DNA sort of in a water cage.

 

Mother nature had to figure out a way around this water cage. It has to do with the accumulation of K+ ions in the cell. K+ ions are chaotropic or will form chaos in water, and are useful to bust up extended water structure. The accumulation of K+ helps break the water cage around the DNA. The Na+ is the opposite and is kosmotropic and assists with water structure more than the K+. Nature needed to figure out how to shift this naturl water balance created by how water interacts differently with almost similar cations. Maybe in the early days a K+ rich water blend may have helped to do this naturally to assist replicator 101.

[iNow]

The P&S Forum beckons...

[lucaspa]

Evolution is slow boat if it took a billion years to make a cell, so this artificial technique is too fast.

 

I'm afraid you misunderstood. Chemistry took only a few hours to make the cell, but that is a long way from a modern cell. The catalytic activity in thermal proteins are about 0.1% of those in modern enzymes. It took a billion years for evolution to standardize and optimizeall the metabolic pathways in modern cells.

 

This is the perfect way to preserve life in a state of suspended animation. It can't evolve from there. We can mess with the DNA or proteins and it will continue to evolve, but don't mess with the water.

 

You say it "can't evolve from there" but then say "it will continue to evolve". Can't be both.

 

Instead of seeing the DNA mutating in a void, I am trying to add its natural environment, water.

 

Again, been done. All studies of DNA mutation take place in a cell -- water. No one looks at DNA in a dry state mutating. Seriously, you need to go back 30-100 years and look at the research done then.

 

IThe formation of early protein on clays sort of makes sense, since the dehydration is a perfect way to concentrate amino acids so the polymerization is possible in a sustained way.

 

That isn't the theory. You are confusing theories. The clay hypothesis belongs to the RNA World theory. It is RNAs that are thought to have been made on clay, not proteins.

 

Proteins can be, and are today, made in hydrothermal vents.

 

If we evaporate the water the concentration gets high enough even starting with very dilute solutions of amino acids.

 

Very good. The most common scenario for protocell formation is evaporation of a tidal pool with a dilute solution of amino acids, sugars, nucleotides, etc. The evaporation will first concentrate the solution and then, when dry, the amino acids will polymerize. When the tide comes back in, the proteins form cells.

 

Another more speculative hypothesis is that thermal proteins were made on hot lava. As the lava reached the sea, the dilute solution was splashed up onto the hot lava, where the heat evaporated the water and then made the proteins. Later waves washing up on the lava made the cells.

 

Water set a constraint right at the beginning of evolution.

 

Pioneer, let's get our terms straight. You are talking about abiogenesis, not evolution. Evolution does not happen until you already have a living organism. Getting a living organism from non-living chemicals is chemistry, not evolution.

 

By adding water to the protein plastics stemming from clay, they softened the intermolecular bonding that kept them solid at room temperature.

 

The chemistry does not work that way. The reason proteins are solid is that there is no water. Like sugar, proteins dissolve in water.

 

This also required they assume minimum energy shapes which required the polar groups go to the surface and organics in the center. The shape is now right for these to evolve a way to make proteins in water.

 

You've got the reason the proteins folded correct, but the result is getting shape for the protein to be dissolved in water, not "evolve a way to make proteins in water". the proteins are already made.

 

By forming protein directly in water, water is now there at the very beginning as the protein grows using hydrophobic and hydrophilic push and pull to perfect the shapes.

 

"Perfect" in what sense? Each protein is going to fold. Each protein is going to have a biological activity. But most of those activities are going to be slight. The way to get "perfect" function is then evolution by natural selection.

 

Once life begins to use ATP energy in this process, it can defy the natural push and pull of water to add tension or energy into the shapes by changing the ordering of amino acids.

 

Sorry, but it doesn't work this way. ATP doesn't let proteins defy hydrophobic interactions. Instead, ATP is by enzymes to force reactions that require energy. As it turns out, some proteins formed by thermal polymerization can already do this and can, with ATP, make proteins or RNA/DNA.

 

Before replicators were around nature had to decide on what RNA and DNA needed to look like.

 

You are injecting consciousness into the process. RNA and DNA take the shapes they do from chemical reactions: interaction with water and hydrogen bonding between complementary bases on other DNA/RNA molecules.

 

Please, Pioneer, get a basic biochemistry text!. I know there are used copies of the 1972 edition of Biochemistry by Lehninger out there. GET ONE. Look at what is already known so you can please stop mangling science.

[foodchain]

Mother nature had to figure out a way around this water cage. It has to do with the accumulation of K+ ions in the cell. K+ ions are chaotropic or will form chaos in water, and are useful to bust up extended water structure. The accumulation of K+ helps break the water cage around the DNA. The Na+ is the opposite and is kosmotropic and assists with water structure more than the K+. Nature needed to figure out how to shift this naturl water balance created by how water interacts differently with almost similar cations. Maybe in the early days a K+ rich water blend may have helped to do this naturally to assist replicator 101.

 

I think biologic evolution breaks down currently into three domains, two of which are archaea and bacteria, the other being eukaryota. The last one is what we are in but even then from what, I mean our genome is less then 2% different then our closest living relatives in the animal kingdom right? So using genetics I think evolution of course supports microbial life at least being the first life to appear, bacteria I think appearing billions of years ago. I think the autotrophic part of microbes in regards to evolution have bearing possibly on the chemical evolution of life on earth. Like was selection in regards to that kind of metabolism retrospective of chemical evolution?

 

I mean can we define the oldest genes on earth in some microbes to be built around being a chemoautotroph?

[pioneer]

I understand basic biochemistry. Just basic biochemical mechanisms isolate the chemical reactions out of the context of the phenomena being dissolved in water. We know and imply these occur in water, but we never say water is helping support structures. I also understand this isolation assumption is done for simplicity. If these bio-chemical mechanisms were actually free standing they should occur in any solvent as well as in air. But they don't, so logic says water plays a role.

 

I am not trying to reinvent the wheel, but rather trying to explain why these reactions don't occur in air, like it is implied in the text books. The implied in the air assumption is not valid and requires a random variable that lumps the water affect.

 

I keep coming back to basic logic. Just dehydrate any of these isolated chemical mechanisms in the biochemistry text books, run a test, to see if water is not important They should work with the same efficiency if these mechanisms are complete.

 

The in the air assumption will not give an assist to water even though it won't happen without it. Instead of citing the riot act for breaking the law, maybe someone can explain the logic that says that the water medium, which makes it all possible, has no impact. A philosophical assumption due to tradition is not the same. This may satisfy those entrenched in the philosophical assumption, but I looking for logic why we leave out water as a direct component.

 

Here is an analogy. We have a parent teaching his child to ride a bike. The parent is holding the bike while the child is peddling. The way we do it now is assume the child is riding the bike by himself and the parent affect of water is not even there. When we dehydrate, the parent lets go and child stops riding and falls over. We add the parent back and the child can once again pretend he is in control of the ride. This is dehydration and life.

 

The philosophical bias is analogous to the child who can't give any credit to dad (water) holding the bike even though at every turn, start and stop, the little child will just sit there without dad. The evolution of life is the child who has free riding stretches, where he is riding alone. But if he begins to tip, dad is there to give a little push to straighten him out and to teach him how to turn and do stunts.

[foodchain]

The philosophical bias is analogous to the child who can't give any credit to dad (water) holding the bike even though at every turn, start and stop, the little child will just sit there without dad. The evolution of life is the child who has free riding stretches, where he is riding alone. But if he begins to tip, dad is there to give a little push to straighten him out and to teach him how to turn and do stunts.

 

 

Thats why I think microbes are important. I think going from evolution using microbes really should be beneficial towards trying to deduce possible origins of life. Could thermoacidophiles have chemistry that could evolve from some pre-biotic chemical soup, what interplay with geology must be considered such as with mud, or thermal vents? I mean microbial life is hardly understood as much as it could be, take life living in the earths crust or at the sea floor for example.

 

I think just going from scratch on a chemistry perspective alone is not good enough, I mean sure life has to have H2O as we know it, but it also has to have carbon and RNA and so on. So you also deal with at what point does life actually exist? Here is an example of what I am talking about with the virus and its definition of being alive or dead. I mean with the example that the gene could be the most reduced unit of selection, could that basically explain how the virus could persist?

 

Yet even with that in humans or any form of life the DNA by itself does not constitute life, which just leads back to the idea of some larger chemical interplay. This is why I think saying one particular chemical has the most importance really cant make it. If the precursor to life and basically the backbone chemically that always produced it primarily was H2O or hydrogen I would think life to be more evident in the universe giving hydrogens presence elementally in the environment in some form or another. So again I think it may point more towards certain combinations of elements or compounds or even functional groups if I can escape with that working in some kind of a collective environmental system. I mean the presence of oxygen and the subsequent impact that has had on evolution is all microbial really.

[pioneer]

The distinction I am trying to make is the C based aspects of life is the essence of life. But this works in the context of being dissolved in water. The simple dehydration experiments suggested places an extreme limit of what can work using C based life. Once you add water, the options are more wide open. Let me give an example of water and DNA.

 

 

In DNA, the bases are involved in hydrogen-bonded pairing. However even these groups, except for the hydrogen-bonded ring nitrogen atoms (pyrimidine N3 and purine N1) are capable of one further hydrogen-bonding link to water within the major or minor grooves in B-DNA. A molecular dynamics simulation indicated that both grooves were equally hydrated with hydration roughly CN4/GN2/TO2 > AN6/CO2/GO6 > AN3/GN3/GN7/TO4 >> AN7

 

The base pairs have extra H bonding hydrogen that don't participate in the hydrogen bonding between base pairs. I often wondered why the extra H bonding hydrogen were there, if they aren't used by the DNA. It turns out, these were designed by nature to hold water. This water, in turn, is not only grease for the gears, but plays a role in DNA recognition.

 

The processing of the genetic information within DNA is facilitated by highly discriminatory and strong protein binding. It has been shown that the interfacial water molecules can serve as 'hydration fingerprints' of a given DNA sequence [889]. The major driving force for the specificity is the entropy increase due to the release of bound water molecules (estimated at 3.6 kJ mol-1 for minor groove water and 2.3 kJ mol-1 for major groove water, both at 300 K [1096]), with the DNA sequence determining the hydration pattern in the major and minor grooves

 

http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/water/index2.html

 

Let us look at a defect on a gene, that involves inserting the wrong base. The base pairing is not optimized there. That means the hydrogen bonding is not right or optimized relative to the DNA. This means we have more places for water to attach, since water can hydrogen bond to the same places as the base pairing, plus a bunch of other places. According to above, the specificity has a connection to the entropy change in this binding water. This type of defect, by offering the potential to add more water inside the DNA offers a little more entropy potential if that gene is used and the larger water pattern is disrupted. This may be tiny but it gives a slight statistical advantage to evolution in the sense of trying this new gene.

[foodchain]

Let us look at a defect on a gene, that involves inserting the wrong base. The base pairing is not optimized there. That means the hydrogen bonding is not right or optimized relative to the DNA. This means we have more places for water to attach, since water can hydrogen bond to the same places as the base pairing, plus a bunch of other places. According to above, the specificity has a connection to the entropy change in this binding water. This type of defect, by offering the potential to add more water inside the DNA offers a little more entropy potential if that gene is used and the larger water pattern is disrupted. This may be tiny but it gives a slight statistical advantage to evolution in the sense of trying this new gene.

 

 

The above is just not an accurate description of such. Mutation for instance does not just come in one form from a point mutation. I mean could point mutations act as something producing single nucleotide polymorphisms, is this change in genetic material good or bad?

 

Also again just as you would subscribe to carbon and hydrogen or organic chemistry this in time has lead to biochemistry.

 

You also have molecular biology, which no real difference exists I think save the later is built around the central dogma. I think origin of life studies have emphasis here as to do you suggest that the central dogma itself referring to some molecular mechanism like transcription could be a product of a evolution/selection, such as in the rna world hypothesis? I think ribosomes are in question for such as due to composition of RNA and of course you have ribozymes and the self catalytic behavior of RNA. Plus RNA can exist alone as a virus and is central to the central dogma which could suggest a close evolutionary significance which again should impact origin of life studies.

[pioneer]

I was applying water to a point mutation to show how natural laws would favor trying this, until the time came when cells could censor this. The proof reading enzymes would find these point defects or improper base pairing, easier by them being at higher energy and could use the extra water to help drive their own dynamics.

 

I also agree with the importance of virus in evolution. We usually associate a virus with something bad, but there is no logical reason they can't insert something good or innocuous. This could explain why small things can have so much extra DNA. The scenario I can see is a good virus causing an affect similar to a bad virus. The cell tries to keep up with the output partially going into internal recycle. This causes changes in the cell as the protein(S) produced by the good virus finds a place in the cell where it can be of use. If a virus was to cause a good change, wouldn't we just assume it was already part of the DNA? We are not looking for good affects since there is no reason to investigate healthy with the same effort as sick.

 

Virus have to begin somewhere, being maybe a nature output of DNA. For example, a virus may start in a flea. Maybe back in the early days, one life form's progress is shared this way. Just like a bad virus can cause its affect to occur in days or weeks, maybe the same can be said for a good virus. Nature takes care of the bad virus source with predators. But the good virus would give a selective advantage.

 

But getting back to water, once a gene is inserted by a virus, it has to hook up into the water double helix and will create its own hydration finger print. The fact that this isn't just buried but often becomes selectively active show energy favorability at some level. One way to explain that is a group of genes have an optimized group thumb print pattern, with the insert sort of a defect in the wider hydration pattern. It adds a new line to the regional thumb print that stands out since it affects the patterns of adjacent genes. It is suppose to stand out to be affective.

[Moontanman]

Pioneer, how do you know that only water can do the amazing things you say? You are still only working from one data point. For all we know hydrocarbons might be the fluid of choice in 99.999999999999% of all life in the universe and we are just an anomaly. Our life has managed to use water in amazing ways for sure but we have no data to support water as being either an absolute necessity for life or even the preferred fluid for life.

[pioneer]

Based on science the top three most abundant atoms in the universe are hydrogen, then helium, then oxygen. What that means is H2O and maybe H2 are two most common molecules in the universe. But besides universal commonality, you really need to look at the properties of water that make it unique.

 

Instead of the obvious, it is better to look at the anomalies, since these represent uniqueness for water that other molecules do not possess in such a wide range. These anomalies stem from the H-bonding of water, with the wide variety of anomalies showing the wide range of odd behavior this bond gives to water. Water is the wild card molecule of the universe. C can form the most variety of molecules, while water has the greatest variety of odd special affects. They are the odd couple of nature and team up to make life possible. Below is the current list of water anomalies.

 

1)Water has unusually high melting point. [Explanation]

2)Water has unusually high boiling point. [Explanation]

3)Water has unusually high critical point. [Explanation]

4)Solid water exists in a wider variety of stable (and metastable) crystal and amorphous structures than other materials. [Explanation]

5)The thermal conductivity of ice reduces with increasing pressure. [Explanation]

6)The structure of liquid water changes at high pressure. [Explanation]

(66) Supercooled water has two phases and a second critical point at about -91°C. [Explanation]

7)Liquid water is easily supercooled but glassified with difficulty. [Explanation]

8)Liquid water exists at very low temperatures and freezes on heating. [Explanation]

9)Liquid water may be easily superheated. [Explanation]

10)Hot water may freeze faster than cold water; the Mpemba effect. [Explanation]

11)Warm water vibrates longer than cold water. [Explanation]

 

Water density anomalies

 

12)The density of ice increases on heating (up to 70 K). [Explanation]

13)Water shrinks on melting. [Explanation]

14)Pressure reduces ice's melting point. [Explanation]

15)Liquid water has a high density that increases on heating (up to 3.984°C). [Explanation]

16)The surface of water is more dense than the bulk. [Explanation]

17)Pressure reduces the temperature of maximum density. [Explanation]

18)There is a minimum in the density of supercooled water. [Explanation]

19)Water has a low coefficient of expansion (thermal expansivity). [Explanation]

20)Water's thermal expansivity reduces increasingly (becoming negative) at low temperatures. [Explanation]

21)Water's thermal expansivity increases with increased pressure. [Explanation]

22)The number of nearest neighbors increases on melting. [Explanation]

23)The number of nearest neighbors increases with temperature. [Explanation]

24)Water has unusually low compressibility. [Explanation]

25)The compressibility drops as temperature increases up to 46.5°C. [Explanation]

26)There is a maximum in the compressibility-temperature relationship. [Explanation]

27)The speed of sound increases with temperature up to 74°C. [Explanation]

28)The speed of sound may show a minimum. [Explanation]

29)Fast sound' is found at high frequencies and shows an discontinuity at higher pressure. [Explanation]

30)NMR spin-lattice relaxation time is very small at low temperatures. [Explanation]

31)The NMR shift increases to a maximum at low (supercool) temperatures [Explanation]

32)The refractive index of water has a maximum value at just below 0°C. [Explanation]

33)The change in volume as liquid changes to gas is very large. [Explanation]

 

Water material anomalies

 

34)No aqueous solution is ideal. [Explanation]

35)D2O and T2O differ significantly from H2O in their physical properties. [Explanation]

36)Liquid H2O and D2O differ significantly in their phase behavior. [Explanation]

37)Solutes have varying effects on properties such as density and viscosity. [Explanation]

38)The solubilities of non-polar gases in water decrease with temperature to a minimum and then rise. [Explanation]

39)The dielectric constant of water is high. [Explanation]

40)The dielectric constant shows a temperature maximum. [Explanation]

41)Proton and hydroxide ion mobilities are anomalously fast in an electric field. [Explanation]

42)The electrical conductivity of water rises to a maximum at about 230°C. [Explanation]

43)Acidity constants of weak acids show temperature minima. [Explanation]

44)X-ray diffraction shows an unusually detailed structure. [Explanation]

45)Under high pressure water molecules move further away from each other with increasing pressure. [Explanation]

 

Water thermodynamic anomalies

 

46)The heat of fusion of water with temperature exhibits a maximum at -17°C. [Explanation]

47)Water has over twice the specific heat capacity of ice or steam. [Explanation]

48)The specific heat capacity (CP and CV) is unusually high. [Explanation]

49)The specific heat capacity CP has a minimum at 36°C. [Explanation]

50)The specific heat capacity (CP) has a maximum at about -45°C. [Explanation]

51)The specific heat capacity (CP) has a minimum with respect to pressure. [Explanation]

52)The heat capacity (CV) has a maximum. [Explanation]

53)High heat of vaporization. [Explanation]

54)High heat of sublimation. [Explanation]

55)High entropy of vaporization. [Explanation]

56)The thermal conductivity of water is high and rises to a maximum at about 130°C. [Explanation]

 

Water physical anomalies

 

57)Water has unusually high viscosity. [Explanation]

58)Large viscosity increase as the temperature is lowered. [Explanation]

59)Water's viscosity decreases with pressure below 33°C. [Explanation]

60)Large diffusion decrease as the temperature is lowered. [Explanation]

61)At low temperatures, the self-diffusion of water increases as the density and pressure increase. [Explanation]

62)The thermal diffusivity rises to a maximum at about 0.8 GPa. [Explanation]

63)Water has unusually high surface tension. [Explanation]

64)Some salts give a surface tension-concentration minimum; the Jones-Ray effect. [Explanation]

65)Some salts prevent the coalescence of small bubbles. [Explanation]

[iNow]

Pioneer - Have you ever heard of a copyright violation?

 

http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/water/anmlies.html

[pioneer]

I am sharing this knowledge with others, which I am sure the author will not mind. I never claimed this information was my own. If left the word [Explanation] in each anomaly so it was obvious this was copied. I even referenced this link in an earlier post.

 

Long before I found this information I was already speculating. This just give me a source of proof with hundreds of references to support my claims. There is no need for me to get so technical. The idea is to find a simple explanation for universal affects. The ideas of point mutations and viral insertions and water are my own ideas. The more I know the easier it is to focus my creativity. But the basic premise of water and life needs to be reinforced first.

[Moontanman]

Pioneer, what is your point? Can you really claim any of these things you list as unique properties of water are things absolutely required by life? I don't think so, I think you simply want to win this argument and water is your God. I see absolutely no reason to lay claim to water as the unique basis for all life or even most life. Lots of fluids could work even better, hydrocarbons, ammonia, HF, the list is large and the universe is larger.

[foodchain]

 

Water physical anomalies

 

57)Water has unusually high viscosity. [Explanation]

58)Large viscosity increase as the temperature is lowered. [Explanation]

59)Water's viscosity decreases with pressure below 33°C. [Explanation]

60)Large diffusion decrease as the temperature is lowered. [Explanation]

61)At low temperatures, the self-diffusion of water increases as the density and pressure increase. [Explanation]

62)The thermal diffusivity rises to a maximum at about 0.8 GPa. [Explanation]

63)Water has unusually high surface tension. [Explanation]

64)Some salts give a surface tension-concentration minimum; the Jones-Ray effect. [Explanation]

65)Some salts prevent the coalescence of small bubbles. [Explanation]

 

I don't really get the idea of posting that list. Do you want to put as some number in it that its the base for life? I think my earlier question on the definition of life went unanswered. First we only have life on earth to use going from its evolution. People have produced artificial viruses in the lab from scratch and protocells exist. This chemistry involves bonding from all kinds of elements and compounds already, not just hydrogen. So in that instance you have to say even primordial chemistry we understand that could be lead to life is more then just hydrogen. Or an organism is not some uniform continuous molecular homolog of hydrogen bonding.

 

Protobionts will absorb local RNA molecules. Behavior of consuming nucleic acids I think is also found in transformation, a process employed by microbes or some microbes I think. Could this information have any bearing on trying to study RNA world hypothesis?

[pioneer]

One of the conceptual problems with existing evolutionary theory involves a time element. For example, an environmental change occurs, like cold, before there is time for a single reproductive cycle. This is hard to see with bacteria since they make so many generations in a short time. But say we have an animal that reproduces once per year and the environmental change occurs in less than one year. The whole mating Olympics, dominant male, genetic drift, etc. doesn't even apply. There are three ways for this species to adapt. First, the genetics were already in place before the stress. Second limited genetics, such as skin cells, need to change in a short period of time due to the stress. Or three, the brain and consciousness allows an adaptation modification that doesn't require genetics but gives time for the genetics to play catch up.

 

The existing theory works if we have leisurely change in a fixed environment, with the time element long enough for the reproductive cycles to throw the dice for drift and random change. But when we don't have the luxury of long time, there can still be change and evolution. The number 2 scenario, of the DNA being there before the need to change, implies adding genes with no real time selective advantage. It is implicit of future change or maximizing flexibility and not just real time advantage.

 

Where water can explain both scenarios is any perturbation in the living system affects the water too. Water can adapt immediately without requiring a lot of cycles. The DNA is conservative by being a stable molecule and is not designed to adapt as fast.

 

Mammals already had the capability to change with cold weather way before it was needed since this was the next logical step in the progress of life due to the advancing potential in the water. Even before the earth cooled, warmed blooded already had the potential to deal with such a change millions of years before it was necessary. THere may have been thousands of species with this fifth wheel. Was this random;doubtful. It is called the direction of future progress, which, it can be shown, would set the platform for all the next logical steps. Those species that obeyed modern evolutionary theory didn't have time and went extinct.

[iNow]

This is comical. =)

[pioneer]

Part of the reason this may be difficult to see is due to specialization. Specialization can cause one to lose track of the big picture and cause one to explain everything in terms of this specialty.

 

The big picture of life involves moderating the temperature on a forming planet. The earth was able to provide the basic conditions needed for life because of the oceans and surface water. Water is a small molecule with an unusually high heat capacity. Water is what is responsible for the moderate conditions on earth and the weather. Relative to life, chemical reactions become more reversible if temperature is too high and reaction rates fall if temperature is too low. The range of water 0C to 100C is perfect for life chemistry. Most other solvents have a different range and don't have the same high heat capacity.

 

If we use another solvent to form life this means that same solvent needs to moderate the temperature on that planet, to set the stage before life can even begin. Water is hard to replace. Since other solvents aren't as ideal for moderating a planet for life, let us assume water is still doing this for us, to get the right conditions. We will use another solvent for life. What will happen is we will run into problems because of the water. We have rain, which means polar solvents will end up in the water. Organic solvents can maintain phase separation, but will still need to compete with water for organic molecules with polar groups. So much for simple animo acids. The alternative solvents might work in controlled environments but not if they are also needed to control the environment.

[iNow]

Part of the reason this may be difficult to see is due to specialization. Specialization can cause one to lose track of the big picture and cause one to explain everything in terms of this specialty.

No, I'm pretty sure it's the lack of citations and lack of grounding in reality that is causing the difficulty.

[pioneer]

The terms animo and nucleic acids, with the operative work acid, define their acid-base properties with respect to water. Water is the standard or zero point of chemistry with the self ionization of water to 10-7 sort of the zero point. If we replace the solvent, the acid-base affects of amino and nucleic acids are not the same. These were tuned to water. For another solvent, you would need something different to compensate for the solvent power and the movement of the H and still get the same relative affects.

 

For example, HCl and water comes out differently than HCl and ammonia or butane. The entire acid affect is different. The same will happen to animo acids since they are tuned to water to generate their proper pH affects.