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Author Topic:   Lunch time...
ohnhai
Member (Idle past 5162 days)
Posts: 649
From: Melbourne, Australia
Joined: 11-17-2004


Message 1 of 21 (257238)
11-06-2005 6:54 AM


Ok so somehow all the bits required for life come together and ”poof’ we have the first living thing . ..
That’s ok, but what did it eat? How did it sustain itself?
This message has been edited by ohnhai, 06-11-2005 10:49 PM

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AdminNWR
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Message 2 of 21 (257261)
11-06-2005 9:29 AM


Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

  
Modulous
Member
Posts: 7801
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


Message 3 of 21 (257265)
11-06-2005 9:51 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by ohnhai
11-06-2005 6:54 AM


Ok so somehow all the bits required for life come together and ”poof’ we have the first living thing . ..
Why do people insist on using the word 'poof' as if magic was somehow involved? Some arbitrary (to us) line was crossed where a bunch of chemicals started acted more like life than before and so we define it as life.
That’s ok, but what did it eat? How did it sustain itself?
I doubt it 'eat'. Like other simple life it probably drew its energy from its environment. Hot vents, sunlight etc, perhaps even chemical energy transfer from its environment.

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Replies to this message:
 Message 4 by ohnhai, posted 11-06-2005 10:03 AM Modulous has replied
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ohnhai
Member (Idle past 5162 days)
Posts: 649
From: Melbourne, Australia
Joined: 11-17-2004


Message 4 of 21 (257268)
11-06-2005 10:03 AM
Reply to: Message 3 by Modulous
11-06-2005 9:51 AM


Come on modulus. You should know me by now. You should know the ”poof’ description was a light hearted tongue in cheek oversimplification . and simply having fun.
I doubt ”eat’ is the right word either but, how would the energy gathering system work? How do these primitive organisms rejuvenate them selves? How do they gain the matter to build and re-new themselves?

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Replies to this message:
 Message 5 by Yaro, posted 11-06-2005 10:08 AM ohnhai has replied
 Message 12 by Modulous, posted 11-06-2005 11:06 AM ohnhai has replied
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Yaro
Member (Idle past 6496 days)
Posts: 1797
Joined: 07-12-2003


Message 5 of 21 (257269)
11-06-2005 10:08 AM
Reply to: Message 4 by ohnhai
11-06-2005 10:03 AM


Check out the archy-bacteria in the deep sea vents. They sustain themselves by processing pure chemicals that spew out of the earth.

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ohnhai
Member (Idle past 5162 days)
Posts: 649
From: Melbourne, Australia
Joined: 11-17-2004


Message 6 of 21 (257270)
11-06-2005 10:15 AM
Reply to: Message 5 by Yaro
11-06-2005 10:08 AM


but whouldnt the implication be that the mechanism had to be up and running before life crossed over the boundry from non-life? and if not how did life survive before it learned to cook? and if before the crossing over what purpos would that mechanism have served?

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 Message 7 by Yaro, posted 11-06-2005 10:23 AM ohnhai has replied
 Message 8 by Yaro, posted 11-06-2005 10:26 AM ohnhai has not replied
 Message 10 by Coragyps, posted 11-06-2005 10:30 AM ohnhai has not replied

  
Yaro
Member (Idle past 6496 days)
Posts: 1797
Joined: 07-12-2003


Message 7 of 21 (257272)
11-06-2005 10:23 AM
Reply to: Message 6 by ohnhai
11-06-2005 10:15 AM


Ah! I see what you are saying.
Well, from what I understand, there is no mechanism in a bacteria that "eats" the chemicals. Primative bacteria like that don't have any real organs or anything like that.
The "eating" function of vent bacteria is purely chemical reaction. That is, chemicals coming out of the vent, react with chemical receptors on the surface of the bacterium, which in tern reacts with chemicals in the bacterium and so the cycle continues.
Primative bacteria are more chemical than they are organism.

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Yaro
Member (Idle past 6496 days)
Posts: 1797
Joined: 07-12-2003


Message 8 of 21 (257274)
11-06-2005 10:26 AM
Reply to: Message 6 by ohnhai
11-06-2005 10:15 AM


Links:
Green sulfur bacteria - Wikipedia
Green sulfur bacteria are generally nonmotile (one species has a flagellum), and come in spheres, rods, and spirals. Their environment must be oxygen-free, and they need light to grow. They engage in photosynthesis, using bacteriochlorophylls c, d, and e in vesicles called chlorosomes attached to the membrane. They use sulfide ions as electron donor, and in the process the sulfide gets oxidized, producing globules of elemental sulfur outside the cell, which may then be further oxidized. (By contrast, the photosynthesis in plants uses water as electron donor and produces oxygen.)
See how it "eats"? Pure chemical reaction.

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ohnhai
Member (Idle past 5162 days)
Posts: 649
From: Melbourne, Australia
Joined: 11-17-2004


Message 9 of 21 (257275)
11-06-2005 10:27 AM
Reply to: Message 7 by Yaro
11-06-2005 10:23 AM


sort of like human synthesising vitamin d via sun light (I hope that's ok, after all there is a limit to the amount of ignorance one wants to exhibit in one night

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Coragyps
Member (Idle past 734 days)
Posts: 5553
From: Snyder, Texas, USA
Joined: 11-12-2002


Message 10 of 21 (257276)
11-06-2005 10:30 AM
Reply to: Message 6 by ohnhai
11-06-2005 10:15 AM


The reactions between, say, hydrogen sulfide from a hydrothermal vent and, say, nitrate in the seawater don't care a bit whether the little catalytic bit that promotes them can reproduce or not. They don't care in the least whether some proto-life critter siphons off some of the energy released by the reaction. It's just chemistry, and that proto-life thing just was lucky enough to have a molecule that catalyzed some such reaction right next door to another molecule that could harvest some of the resultant energy. There could have been a couple of hundred million years' wait before replication got figured out.

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crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 11 of 21 (257280)
11-06-2005 10:47 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by ohnhai
11-06-2005 6:54 AM


Too simple to need to eat
That’s ok, but what did it eat? How did it sustain itself?
The environment of the Earth at the time was a lot different than it was today. The first living thing would have arisen from chemical precursors that literally littered its environment. The reason that organisms today have to go to such complex lengths to derive energy from their environment is a result of the fact that living things literally occupy every inch of the Earth's surface, and have done so for billions of years.
But before that was the case, "eating" wasn't really necessary; probably an organism would have gained all the energy it needed for its entire short life from the energy released by the chemical process that created it, or the energy released by the process of combining those chemicals to make more of itself, or both.
It's only when organisms have consumed all the readily-avaliable macrochemical components that energy input becomes an issue; only then do you need a lot of energy avaliable in order to manufacture those macrochemical pieces from scratch.

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Modulous
Member
Posts: 7801
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


Message 12 of 21 (257285)
11-06-2005 11:06 AM
Reply to: Message 4 by ohnhai
11-06-2005 10:03 AM


I doubt ”eat’ is the right word either but, how would the energy gathering system work
How does the energy gathering system work to transform ice into clouds? Its just chemistry.
How do these primitive organisms rejuvenate them selves?
What does 'rejuvinate' mean?
How do they gain the matter to build and re-new themselves?
Probably in a similar way that simple life does today.

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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ohnhai
Member (Idle past 5162 days)
Posts: 649
From: Melbourne, Australia
Joined: 11-17-2004


Message 13 of 21 (257360)
11-06-2005 8:38 PM
Reply to: Message 12 by Modulous
11-06-2005 11:06 AM


rejuvinate. we humans swap out our bodies once every seven years or so. is there a simmilar occurance in bacteria and other primitive life?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 12 by Modulous, posted 11-06-2005 11:06 AM Modulous has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 14 by Modulous, posted 11-06-2005 8:55 PM ohnhai has replied

  
Modulous
Member
Posts: 7801
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


Message 14 of 21 (257366)
11-06-2005 8:55 PM
Reply to: Message 13 by ohnhai
11-06-2005 8:38 PM


rejuvinate. we humans swap out our bodies once every seven years or so. is there a simmilar occurance in bacteria and other primitive life?
Are you referring to the fact that our cells die and regrow so that every seven years we have a new body? I would be surprised if single celled life had a comparable process...when their cell dies, so do they, but I guess asexual reproduction is a close analogy.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 13 by ohnhai, posted 11-06-2005 8:38 PM ohnhai has replied

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ohnhai
Member (Idle past 5162 days)
Posts: 649
From: Melbourne, Australia
Joined: 11-17-2004


Message 15 of 21 (257379)
11-06-2005 10:12 PM
Reply to: Message 14 by Modulous
11-06-2005 8:55 PM


I guess that's what I mean (really quite ignorant on this kind of thing) so with primitive life it would be a case of use what you came into existance with till you died...

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Replies to this message:
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