Though I would never bring up molecules as complex as DNA and RNA in thinking about a theorized "first organism" which is the original parent of all life on Earth - I think they probably both evolved within living organisms but that's as much of a guess as anything - those are the two which catch the imaginations of both the duped lay public and those within science, itself. I would guess in the popular imagination such molecules would just, somehow, spontaneously come together and accumulate and VOILA! they'd come together and you've got yourself an organism! Much of the popular understanding of such "science" and I'd guess most of the understanding of those who give money to it is based on an actual ignorance of what such a molecule does, how it does it and the fact that they only do what we know them to do through being contained within some very complex cellular chemistry and physics contained in a very complex cellular wall within even the most "simple" of bacteria. Outside of that, or under some artificial, non-biological conditions intelligently designed for that purpose in some laboratory devoted to disproving intelligent design - such scientists are generally philosophical idiots - those molecules do little but deteriorate.
As the argument has developed, the less unsophisticated of those in the discussion had, last time I looked in depth, abandoned talk of DNA as the problems with it were brought up for some theorized RNA rich creation event. But the problem of some scenario that relies on accumulating RNA in that manner, has to ignore that it deteriorates quite regularly a quite easily - just how often it would form by random chance events is the other end of that problem but not one I looked into because I doubt anyone could come up with an honest measure of the enormous improbability of that happening often enough for such randomly constructed molecules to meet on the young Earth even once.
That deterioration was the point considered in my post, yesterday. I was pressed for time but I did manage to find this description from a paper on methods of preserving RNA for laboratory use, intelligently designed methods of not a little ingenuity, not random chance occurrences in nature. Speaking of which, it's from that Watchtower of popular and more elite atheism Nature.
For most of these uses, integrity of RNA is required and must be maintained during storage. However, this molecule can be affected by multiple degradation reactions. First, it is very sensitive to oxidation by reactive oxygen species. In vivo, they are produced by respiration.6 Outside the cell, they can be generated by mechanisms generally involving metallic ions.7, 8 Oxidation could also result from attacks by ozone, an atmospheric pollutant that rapidly reacts with RNA either in solution or in the solid state.9 Degradation can also occur through the activity of some metallic complexes catalyzing the hydrolytic cleavage of the phosphodiester bond or by contaminating nucleases.
However, the main degradative event is the spontaneous cleavage of the phosphodiester linkage through transesterification resulting from a nucleophilic attack of the phosphorus atom by the neighboring 2′OH. A large variety of agents such as specific acids and bases as well as Brønsted acids and base acting as catalysts can be involved. For reviews, see Emilsson et al10 and Oivanen et al.11 RNase A and some ribozymes share this mechanism.12 Water is involved, for instance, by providing hydroxyl or hydronium ions or by allowing proton transfer. As expected, dehydration of RNA strongly inhibits its degradation.13 However, partial rehydration by atmospheric water restores the initial instability while still in the solid state.13
Another characteristic of the reaction is that it is highly dependent on the geometry of the molecule. Indeed, in the transition state, the 2′ oxygen, the phosphorus and a negatively charged oxygen of the phosphate group must be ‘in line’. This structural requirement leads up to 10 000-fold rate variations depending on the local secondary and tertiary structures of the molecule.
I'll break in here to point out that protein folding in the right way to produce biological action is of enormous importance and not just some detail that you can ignore. What proteins other than this one happening to be folded in the right way to do what they are proposed to have done in the original organism in our line by mere chance is, itself an enormous complication for the atheists preferred creator god - Random-Chance - to have gotten it done in time. But that's just another side issue for this piece.
In order to prevent degradation, RNA samples are generally stored frozen at −20 °C or −80 °C or under liquid nitrogen. However, even at a low temperature, RNA retains some reactivity. It has been shown, for instance, that ribonucleases are still active at −20 °C on frozen RNA.16 In addition, the activity of some ribozymes is still significant at −70 °C13 and can even be enhanced by freezing.13, 17 More importantly, the increase in the number of samples that need to be stored by up to hundreds of thousands in biorepositories, biobanks and biological resource centers leads to problems of space, costs, maintenance and security.18 Shipping of RNA samples, usually done in dry ice, is costly and can be challenging for air transportation (regulations, limited weight, long distance travel, and so on). Obviously, an effective room temperature storage and shipping procedure is needed.
I gave this paragraph because it should help shatter the imagined scenario of huge numbers of RNA molecules accumulating in some warm pond of water rich in the molecules needed for an organism to come together by the action of Random-Chance, or, in some of the fantasies, in frozen water faces problems of the relatively easy and rapid deterioration of any such molecules that come together in the imaginary way.
The atheists creation of a god, Random-Chance, leads me to believe it is impossible to think of this problem, of the problem of the origin of the universe without needing to make recourse to a Creator. The virtue of the old definition of the Creator has the virtue of being a believable being who could get the job done in the known conditions, in the time it would have had to happen in. I can't believe in their god, for a start it has a name that sounds like something kids too young to have children would name their unfortunate, unplanned infant son, they'd have gotten it from that most degraded of all sources of nourishment for the human imagination, TV and the movies. That's where they get most of what they understand about science, too.
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