Greetings, What a great off topic! Who doesn't love a Chicken-and-Egg problem for Easter Sunday?! 🐣 I've followed the abiogenesis literature for years. A few thoughts about this paper: * A compact RNA strand capable of self replication is definitely something relevant to the origin of the protein building machinery of the cell. But there's good reason to think that the genetic aspect of protein building (and many/most proteins themselves) came fairly late to the origin of life - which brings me to my next point: * Probably because of the fascinating, elegant complexity of genetic molecules like DNA & RNA - and all the informatic tools that can be used to gain knowledge from this system - biological research on the origin of life is, IMO, improperly biased toward genetic molecules. * Genetic molecules are delicate and fussy. Their creation and durability are made possible by an enormous, complex molecular machinery that is not, itself, made of genetic molecules. For DNA and RNA to have arisen and persisted long enough to evolve from random molecules to the cellular orchestrators they are now, they would have needed an environment so regulated that it was likely already alive. That is to say: RNA and DNA likely only became central to life after life had already gotten started. Here's the best analogy I've found to illustrate my point: Computers and the digital world are also amazing systems and at the core of computation is the microchip and, ultimately, the transistor. Chips and transistors are fascinating in their own right as well but if we wanted to understand the origin of computation we would not want to start with microchips or transistors. The abacus, looms/knitting machines, mechanical cash registers (1890s general store style) and the telegraph are where the true origin of computation began. At some point, fairly recently in the case of computation, transistors and microchips supplanted mechanical/analog computation devices in almost all areas where we compute. The earlier history is obscured and, in the case of life, may never be possible to truly recover. Just don't get fooled by all the "fancy new gadgets" (like iPhones and RNA ) into thinking computation or life always worked the way they do now. OK - so we went from abiogenesis to computers all in an Easter post on the bulb mailing list. Heat is Risen! -|<ipp PS - As a thank you for those who read this far, here are some shots of this year's Calochortus bloom getting started in my garden: https://photos.app.goo.gl/G5VcCx1tF8uZGwaZA/ ________________________________ From: pbs <pbs-bounces@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net> on behalf of Eric via pbs <pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net> Sent: Saturday, April 4, 2026 3:09 PM To: Bulb Society Pacific <pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net> Cc: Eric <ericcom@roadrunner.com> Subject: Re: [pbs] off topic Abiogenesis Interesting article. Thanks for making me aware of it. Not quite life, but definitely a step in the process from chemical reactions towards life. Eric Sent from my iPhone > On Apr 4, 2026, at 4:57 PM, Tim Eck via pbs <pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net> wrote: > > I get the impression that they demonstrated that it forms both > spontaneously and, more rapidly, with itself as a catalyst. Together, I > think that defines the origin of life, or at least *an* origin of life. > The rest is just evolution. > >> On Sat, Apr 4, 2026 at 1:11 PM Steve Marak via pbs < >> pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net> wrote: >> >> Tim, thank for posting that, off-topic or not, as I hadn't seen it. I'll >> be sharing that link with some friends (a couple of whom are biologists). >> >> I'm not a biologist or anything close, I just follow this stuff. For >> what little it's worth, my interpretation would be that this is not a >> breakthrough in understanding the origin of life, as it doesn't propose >> anything not previously theorized or show any discovery in existing life >> that would invalidate or refine current theories. But it is significant >> because it shows a simple working version of something needed in those >> theories. Not proving that's how it happened, which we may never know, >> but helping show it could have happened that way. >> >> Steve >> >>> On 4/4/2026 8:04 AM, Tim Eck via pbs wrote: >>> Sorry for the off-topic post but I don't know any biologists personally. >>> Is this article saying something groundbreaking about the origin of life? >>> Or is this state of the art knowledge? >>> https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com//…<https://science.org/doi/10.1126/…> >>> Thanks >>> Tim >>> _______________________________________________ >>> pbs mailing list >>> pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net >>> https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com//…<https://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/cgi-bin/…> >>> Unsubscribe: <mailto:pbs-unsubscribe@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net> >>> PBS Forum latest: >> https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com//…<https://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbsforum/index.php/…> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> pbs mailing list >> pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net >> https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com//…<https://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/cgi-bin/…> >> Unsubscribe: <mailto:pbs-unsubscribe@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net> >> PBS Forum latest: >> https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com//…<https://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbsforum/index.php/…> >> > _______________________________________________ > pbs mailing list > pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net > https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com//…<https://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/cgi-bin/…> > Unsubscribe: <mailto:pbs-unsubscribe@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net> > PBS Forum https://… _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com//…<https://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/cgi-bin/…> Unsubscribe: <mailto:pbs-unsubscribe@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net> PBS Forum https://… _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net https://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/cgi-bin/… Unsubscribe: <mailto:pbs-unsubscribe@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net> PBS Forum https://…