Amino acid probability
Posted: Sat Feb 24, 2007 8:26 am
As we all know there are only two possibilities for the existence of life:
1. Chance assembly of life from chemicals
2. There is a Creator who designed biological systems
http://www.godandscience.org/evolution/chemlife.html
Therefore, a question is, what is the likelihood that the proteins needed to carry out essential life functions could form through random assembly of amino acids? The building blocks of life...
Quote from Origins of Life: "Chemists Charles Thaxton, Walter Bradley, and Roger Olsen have rigorously addressed this problem. They argue that in the absence of any chemical competition with non-amino acids and nonbiologically relevant amino acids (the best-case scenario), the probability of getting the right amino acid in a specific position in a protein molecule is 1.25 percent. (There is a 50 percent chance of natural processes randomly selecting a left-handed amino acid, a 50 percent chance of joining the two amino acids in the appropriate chemical bond, and roughly a 5 percent chance of selecting the right amino acid.) The probability of undirected processes assembling a protein one hundred amino acids long, therefore, becomes roughly one chance in 10-191.
This probability still falls short of the real objective. Proteins in the cell typically consist of several hundred amino acids. This means that the likelihood of random chemical processes generating most proteins is far more remote.
In effect, there is no chance that even a relatively small protein made up of a specified sequence could ever form by undirected processes. In the words of Bradley and Thaxton,
If we assume that all carbon on earth exists in the form of amino acids and that the amino acids are allowed to chemically react at the maximum possible rate of 10-12/s for one billion years (the greatest possible time between the cooling of the earth and the appearance of life), we must still conclude that it is incredibly improbable (~10-65) that even one functional protein would be made." (p. 138)
1. Chance assembly of life from chemicals
2. There is a Creator who designed biological systems
http://www.godandscience.org/evolution/chemlife.html
Therefore, a question is, what is the likelihood that the proteins needed to carry out essential life functions could form through random assembly of amino acids? The building blocks of life...
Quote from Origins of Life: "Chemists Charles Thaxton, Walter Bradley, and Roger Olsen have rigorously addressed this problem. They argue that in the absence of any chemical competition with non-amino acids and nonbiologically relevant amino acids (the best-case scenario), the probability of getting the right amino acid in a specific position in a protein molecule is 1.25 percent. (There is a 50 percent chance of natural processes randomly selecting a left-handed amino acid, a 50 percent chance of joining the two amino acids in the appropriate chemical bond, and roughly a 5 percent chance of selecting the right amino acid.) The probability of undirected processes assembling a protein one hundred amino acids long, therefore, becomes roughly one chance in 10-191.
This probability still falls short of the real objective. Proteins in the cell typically consist of several hundred amino acids. This means that the likelihood of random chemical processes generating most proteins is far more remote.
In effect, there is no chance that even a relatively small protein made up of a specified sequence could ever form by undirected processes. In the words of Bradley and Thaxton,
If we assume that all carbon on earth exists in the form of amino acids and that the amino acids are allowed to chemically react at the maximum possible rate of 10-12/s for one billion years (the greatest possible time between the cooling of the earth and the appearance of life), we must still conclude that it is incredibly improbable (~10-65) that even one functional protein would be made." (p. 138)