"Ok, Kevin, where was Fox when this was all presumably taking place on the
primitive earth?"
Oh, come now, Art! You know that's a strawman argument. Fox didn't have to
witness thermal copolymerization occurring billions of years ago to realize
that it might be able to explain a key step in the abiogenetic process. Nor
does he have to prove that the mechanism is an historical fact, only that it
could happen under the conditions known to have existed back then. I'll say
more about this later.
"Who obtained and purified the amino acids,..."
It's been awhile since you were last in the lab, hasn't it? Fox and his
colleagues who reproduced his results cannot recreate the primeval earth
except in miniature in the lab. A primeval earth doesn't need purified
amino acids, just alot of them, enough to dilute out any contaminants that
might otherwise interfere with the process. In a lab, however, you can't
work with tons of material, so you simulate primeval conditions -- in which
amino acids greatly outnumbered contaminants -- by using purified amino
acids. You know that. Besides, between variations on the Miller-Urey
experiment, seeding by commets and other possible mechanisms, there was
bound to be more than enough amino acids around to do the trick.
"...and measured and mixed the purified amino acids,..."
Same answer as above.
"...and maintained the conditions and temperature just right?
Who said everything had to be just right? The process can actually tolerate
some variation. However, even if the conditions did have to be very
precise, on the primeval earth there were almost certainly enough places
with the right conditions at any given point in time to insure an almost
constant production. Otherwise, same answer as above.
"As for catalytic, that certainly is not demonstrated to my satrisfaction."
Fortunately, it doesn't have to be to be considered a scientific fact. Fox
and his colleagues have demonstrated the catalytic activity of proteinoids
to the satisfaction of journal reviewers, scientific book editors and
hostile conference audiences, and that's all that really matters. At least
until someone can prove them all wrong. Can you do that?
"One of his grad students who was involved in the experiments urged Fox to
use sterile conditions for the experiments, but he didn't. The student
calculated that the presence of one bacterium in the mixture could have
accounted for all the catalytic activity observed by Fox."
Very good point. Of course, perfect sterility is technologically
impossible; there will always be at least one bacterium in the system (or
thousands), which is probably why Fox declined to follow the student's
advice. I would, however, be interested in seeing the paper written by that
student refuting Fox's claims. In the end, however, bacterial contamination
is of little concern in these kinds of biochemical experiments. (Which
neither the student in question nor you would have known because neither of
you were experienced enough yet to understand it.) Whenever I do an
enzymology experiment I don't use sterile technique. Compared to the amount
of enzyme I use, the bacteria present couldn't compete with it. Besides, I
also use a control, a sample that doesn't have enzyme in it. I measure the
activity present in the control, then subtract that activity from the
activity I obtain from the enzyme sample. Fox also used controls, samples
that had no proteinoids in them, but which were otherwise handled in exactly
the same way. Had bacterial contamination been the cause of the catalytic
activity that he saw, the activity in his proteinoid samples would have
disappeared when he subtracted the control activity from them.
Besides, I tend to doubt Fox was as sloppy as your anecdote suggests.
"Asa for relevance, most paleobiogeochemists reject Fox's work as irrelevant
to abiogenesis."
Sounds to me like the opinion of people who don't really understand his
results, but that may pass in time. Or they might be right. The study of
proteinoids is still too young to know whether it will die prematurely or
turn out to be one of the biggest discoveries of this century. However,
whoever these paleobiogeochemists (what a mouth full!) are, they ain't
publishing. I did a literature search using Entrez and several geological
databases, including GeoRef, but found no articles critical of thermal
copolymerization. Granted that electronic databases are often incomplete (I
would next check Citations Index for a complete search), if you have such
references I would like to see them. However, if there were alot I would
expect to find at least one; I found none. So while Fox's critics may
consider him irrelevant, they apparently are taking no great pains to refute
him.. Meanwhile, biochemists and polymer chemists are taking his ideas and
running with them, finding out all sorts of fascinating about proteinoids
that Fox himself may not have even dreamed of.
"You should join them."
Tell them to demonstrate how Fox is wrong first, then I will.
"Sounds to me...."
"Sounds"? I thought you were a student of his who did some of his
experiments. Don't you know for sure?
"...like Fox was doing exactly that: manipulating the physicochemical
mechanisms of nature...."
OK, now let me get this straight. Are you saying that Fox was like God,
able to manipulate the very laws of nature to achieve miraculous results
that nature could never achieve herself? No, I didn't think so. So what do
you mean? He manipulated the conditions of his experiment so that if the
laws of nature permitted amino acids to copolymerize under dry thermal
conditions into catalytically active molecules they would do so? Yes, I
would agree with that. Just let me rephrase. If it was naturalistically
impossible for the physiochemical mechanisms of nature to take a mixture of
amino acids and thermally copolymerize them into catalytically active
molecules abiotically, then none of Fox's experiments would have succeeded,
no matter how much he manipulated his experimental conditions. So, since
his experiments were successful, he demonstrated that catalytically active
proteinaceous molecules could be produced abiotically. Yes, I definately
agree with you there.
"...to produce a result that could not have occurred in an abiogenic setting
at all."
You seem awfully sure of that. Were you there to witness it? Oops, sorry,
broke my own rule. That's a strawman argument; my humblest apologies. OK
then, what evidence do you have that thermal copolymerization could not have
occurred under any abiotic setting?
Kevin L. O'Brien