https://doi.org/10.15255/KUI.2018.033
Published: Kem. Ind. 68 (3-4) (2019) 119–133
Paper reference number: KUI-33/2018
Paper type: Professional paper / Chemistry in Teaching
Download paper:  PDF

Origin of Life and Chemical Combinatorics

N. Raos

Abstract

The calculation of permutations and variations of biopolymers reveals an enormous number of possible structures of proteins and nucleic acids; there is about 10260 possible polypeptides of length 200 formed of 20 protein amino acids and 103246 genomes with the same number of base pairs as the phage φX174 genome (5386 bp). Besides being a nice introduction into chemical combinatorics and combinatorics in general, such calculations provide an insight into the phenomenon of biological selectivity, as a general property of all living, from biomolecules to cells and species. Instead of being an argument in favour of intelligent design (because a functional, “live”, protein molecule cannot be allegedly formed by “pure chance” among the myriads of non-functional ones), it is rather an argument against the origin of life by design. Namely, the enormous number of randomly synthesized molecules on early Earth had enabled selection processes that gradually led to more and more developed systems.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Keywords

proteins, nucleic acids, origin of life, creationism, intelligent design, evolution