From the first living organism OOL to to the last universal common ancestor (LUCA)

Guess the Evidence for Early Evolution1

Mineral evolution
It is believed that biological processes started to affect Earth’s surface mineralogy by 3.85–3.6 Ga





First of all there was the origin of life (OOL) events that produced the first living organism. Then there was a tremendous amount of evolutionary progress leading to the last universal common ancestor (LUCA) of today’s extant species. LUCA probably had DNA, an impermeable phospholipid membrane with much the same small army of proteins that attend to today’s cell membranes, the famed ATPase turbine-driven enzyme for ATP construction, protein synthesis machinery like today’s cells, the universal DNA code and DNA repair mechanisms. In short, LUCA was, as Goldman explains, a “sophisticated cellular organism that, if alive today, would probably be difficult to distinguish from other extant bacteria or archaea.”

Strangely enough DNA replication that we see in today’s cells was not present in LUCA. Instead RNA polymerases performed that job. Later in evolutionary history, today’s complex and circuitous DNA replication incredibly evolved independently several times. Also the aminoacyl tRNA synthetases underwent considerable horizontal gene transfer (HGT).

This is but a small sampling of the complicated evolutionary narrative of early life. And what exactly is the evidence for this Darwinian choreography leading from OOL to LUCA and finally to the three cell domains? Well actually there is, err, none.

In fact, not only is there no evidence for this narrative, evolutionists have repeatedly been stymied in their attempts to demonstrate how it would work in the laboratory. In fact, they can’t even demonstrate how it would work outside of the laboratory. Even when evolutionists are free to speculate and hypothesize with computer models or cartoon renditions, the problem still resists solution because it is too unlikely.

And so why do evolutionists believe all these things about early evolution? Because this circuitous narrative is required if evolution is true. In other words, the evidence for all these things is the fact of evolution. If the species spontaneously arose, as evolutionists insist is a fact, then this early life narrative, in one form or another must have occurred.

They are forced to believe that the OOL somehow occurred, in spite of the science. They are forced to believe that incredible complexity evolved early in evolutionary history because today’s extant species have too much in common. From an evolutionary perspective, those similarities must have been present in LUCA. Likewise DNA replication must not have been present in LUCA because the DNA replication machinery in today’s species reveals too many differences.

Furthermore the aminoacyl tRNA synthetases fail to form an evolutionary tree. So evolutionists must believe HGT caused the confusion. There is no independent evidence that HGT changed around the aminoacyl tRNA synthetases. The evidence simply is the failure to find an adequate evolutionary tree to explain these enzymes.

Similarly there is no evidence that today’s complex and circuitous DNA replication evolved independently several times. Again it is a result of believing in evolution. If the species spontaneously arose then, yes, DNA replication must have evolved independently several times.

Early evolution is an example of how evolution violates Occam’s Razor. Science seeks parsimonious solutions, but evolution leads to circuitous narratives. Religion drives science, and it matters.

1) http://darwins-god.blogspot.com.br/2014/03/guess-evidence-for-early-evolution.html

The Last Universal Common Ancestor: emergence, constitution and genetic legacy of an elusive forerunner

Since the reclassification of all life forms in three Domains (Archaea, Bacteria, Eukarya), the identity of their alleged forerunner (Last Universal Common Ancestor or LUCA) has been the subject of extensive controversies: progenote or already complex organism, prokaryote or protoeukaryote, thermophile or mesophile, product of a protracted progression from simple replicators to complex cells or born in the cradle of "catalytically closed" entities? We present a critical survey of the topic and suggest a scenario.



LUCA may be understood as a diverse community of already metabolically and genetically sophisticated organisms. Its predecessor the progenote, more primitive and modular, was also a heterogeneous and diverse community of cells engaged in the emergence of a genetic code

The emergence of self-replicating entities of increasing complexity requires both the formation of compartments (without which no distinction can be made between genotype and phenotype, and parasitic molecules can not be removed) and an ambient metabolism from which to draw renewable building blocks; such a metabolism therefore should be self-sustaining to a certain extent; de Duve and Wachtershauser  have presented different versions of dynamic, evolving and self-sustaining metabolic networks.


https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2478661/

Directionality in the history of life: diffusion from the left wall or repeated scaling of the right?

Issues of directionality in the history of life can be framed in terms of six major evolutionary steps, or megatrajectories (cf. Maynard Smith and Szathmary 1995):

(1) evolution from the origin of life to the last common ancestor of extant organisms,
(2) the metabolic diversification of bacteria and archaea,
(3) evolution of eukaryotic cells,
(4) multicellularity,
(5) the invasion of the land and
(6)technological intelligence.



Within each megatrajectory, overall diversification conforms to a pattern of increasing variance bounded by a right wall as well as one on the left. However, the expanding envelope of forms and physiologies also reflects-at least in part-directional evolution within clades. Each megatrajectory has introduced fundamentally new evolutionary entities that garner resources in new ways, resulting in an unambiguously directional pattern of increasing ecological complexity marked by expanding ecospace utilization. The sequential addition of megatrajectories adheres to logical rules of ecosystem function, providing a blueprint for evolution that may have been followed to varying degrees wherever life has arisen.

1) http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic231281.files/Reading01_Lec24_OEB-113.pdf

The transition of a system from the inanimate state to the animate is envisioned as an increase in ‘aliveness’ over time. We (and others29) prefer to consider this transition as a series of steps, rather than a single step, following the prelude of prebiotic chemistry1. Equilibrium is death, which means some sort of coupling of energy dissipation to maintain the system continuously out of equilibrium throughout the transition is envisaged, but when we first started contemplating this, we could not see a way in which this might be achieved, hence the somewhat nebulous picture. Also shown is the necessity–contingency boundary beyond which material limitations prevent full exploration of the sequence space of macromolecules assembled from different monomeric building blocks; therefore, chemical determinism can no longer be relied on as a source of innovation, and further improvements have to be chanced upon instead.
Opinion: Studies on the origin of life — the end of the beginning

they write:

The transition of a system from the inanimate state to the animate is envisioned as an increase in ‘aliveness’ over time.

Haha !! Thats the same as to ask a woman : are you pregnant ?
She: I am in a phase of increase of non-pregnancy to pregnancy.....

We (and others) prefer to consider this transition as a series of steps, rather than a single step, following the prelude of prebiotic chemistry1. Equilibrium is death, which means some sort of coupling of energy dissipation to maintain the system continuously out of equilibrium throughout the transition is envisaged, but when we first started contemplating this, we could not see a way in which this might be achieved, hence the somewhat nebulous picture. Also shown is the necessity–contingency boundary beyond which material limitations prevent full exploration of the sequence space of macromolecules assembled from different monomeric building blocks; therefore, chemical determinism can no longer be relied on as a source of innovation, and further improvements have to be chanced upon instead.

http://www.nature.com/articles/s41570-016-0012?WT.feed_name=subjects_biosynthesis

The article is interesting so far as it illustrates the difficulties that OOL ( origin of life ) researchers face, and the status quo after a century of research is as follows:
Clearly, we are not yet even at the beginning of the end of our quest to understand it, but the end of the beginning is offering up some very tantalizing clues about the origin of life.

chemist Wilhelm Huck, professor at Radboud University Nijmegen :

A working cell is more than the sum of its parts. "A functioning cell must be entirely correct at once, in all its complexity,"

Evidence for early life in Earth’s oldest hydrothermal vent precipitates

Although it is not known when or where life on Earth began, some of the earliest habitable environments may have been submarine-hydrothermal vents. Here we describe putative fossilized microorganisms that are at least 3,770 million and possibly 4,280 million years old in ferruginous sedimentary rocks, interpreted as seafloor-hydrothermal vent-related precipitates, from the Nuvvuagittuq belt in Quebec, Canada. These structures occur as micrometre-scale haematite tubes and filaments with morphologies and mineral assemblages similar to those of filamentous microorganisms from modern hydrothermal vent precipitates and analogous microfossils in younger rocks. The Nuvvuagittuq rocks contain isotopically light carbon in carbonate and carbonaceous material, which occurs as graphitic inclusions in diagenetic carbonate rosettes, apatite blades intergrown among carbonate rosettes and magnetite–haematite granules, and is associated with carbonate in direct contact with the putative microfossils. Collectively, these observations are consistent with an oxidized biomass and provide evidence for biological activity in submarine-hydrothermal environments more than 3,770 million years ago.

Earliest signs of life on land preserved in ca. 3.5 Ga hot spring deposits
The ca. 3.48 Ga Dresser Formation, Pilbara Craton, Western Australia, is well known for hosting some of Earth’s earliest convincing evidence of life (stromatolites, fractionated sulfur/carbon isotopes, microfossils) within a dynamic, low-eruptive volcanic caldera affected by voluminous hydrothermal fluid circulation. However, missing from the caldera model were surface manifestations of the volcanic-hydrothermal system (hot springs, geysers) and their unequivocal link with life. Here we present new discoveries of hot spring deposits including geyserite, sinter terracettes and mineralized remnants of hot spring pools/vents, all of which preserve a suite of microbial biosignatures indicative of the earliest life on land. These include stromatolites, newly observed microbial palisade fabric and gas bubbles preserved in inferred mineralized, exopolymeric substance. These findings extend the known geological record of inhabited terrestrial hot springs on Earth by ∼3 billion years and offer an analogue in the search for potential fossil life in ancient Martian hot springs.
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15263