Autofolding Molecules

Evolutionists are desperately searching for an answer to how life began. They know, while they would never admit this publically,  that they must come up with a comprehensive explanation for life’s origin. It is an intrical part of their dogma, whether they admit it or not. Because of this, evolutionary researchers are busily studying the formation of proteins and other, smaller molecules in an attempt to find a wholly naturalistic answer to the origins of life. A recent study has demonstrated that a nucleobase and aspartic acid can combine together to form a crystalline ring structure, very dissimilar from proteins.  This article will discuss this research.

Folding is a key component of protein production. If a protein folds incorrectly, there is an almost guaranteed chance it will be non-functional.  Thus molecules that can fold themselves are very intriguing to biochemists attempting to explain the origin of life in a naturalistic sense.  However, this structure is radically different than proteins in a lot of key ways.

Proteins fold in long chains of amino acids, often numbering thousands of amino acids in length. This structure formed by the researchers was a mere fifteen bases in length.  When proteins fold, they fold in two structures, alpha helices, and beta sheets.  This new polymer folded, but it folded in five separate structures. These structures were very stable, appearing to be favored naturally, without any manipulation by the researchers.  However, the foundation of the structures was created in the lab.  The reason these folds were formed differently was due to a different type of bonding between the parts of the nucleobase fold.  Normal proteins bond using peptide bonds.  These folding structures bonded together using disulfide bonds which are significantly different than peptide bonds. These differences are incredibly significant and significantly hinder any attempt to form a complex molecule.

These researchers are not blind to the realities of the issues this new structure faces.  It does not help that they still do not completely understand how normal proteins.  One researcher said “Despite decades of research, we still have no reliable design rules that can fully predict the folding of proteins…” Obviously, to study the origin of proteins, it would help to know how proteins fold in the first place.  However, this does not stop these researchers from immediately claiming that this was potentially a precursor to an evolutionary origin of life story. “This is interesting for origin-of-life research: apparently, you can get these complex molecules before biological evolution has started.” In other words, these researchers are thrilled that complex molecules can appear before evolution even takes place.

Unfortunately for these researchers, there are significant problems with this theory.  The first major one is the length of the molecules. Proteins are thousands of amino acids in length.  These structures are fifteen molecules in length.  The difference is exponential.  Trying to fold thousands of amino acids into a protein is vastly different than folding fifteen.  Further, the researchers have no idea whether this folding ability is active or not. In other words, they have no idea whether the folded structures would interact with enzymes or anything else for that matter.  While they might find out later that this is possible, for the moment, this structure appears completely inert. This is a problem because the whole point of proteins is to interact with other molecules. An inert structure is useless biologically.  That problem is intensified by the sulfur in the bonds in this smaller structure. Sulpher is largely toxic to life, even in this form.  Thus it does little to help evolution explain the origin of life.  In fact, the title of the article is “Complex molecules emerge without evolution or design.

These are just some of the problems with these newly discovered structures. There are likely a myriad of other ones to which these researchers have not admitted.  This discovery does nothing to help explain a completely naturalistic origin of life.  In fact, it raises many more questions than it answers. This tends to be the way evolutionary papers work. They are presented to the public as evidence for the evolutionary dogma when often they do more to undermine the dogma than they do to confirm it.  This paper, while interesting, does not support evolutionary dogma in any way, regardless of the claims of evolutionary researchers.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/01/190117110824.htm

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jacs.8b11698