The genesis and development of life LUCA The   earliest   evidence   of   living   organisms   on   Earth,   which   was   discovered   in Greenland,   goes   back   3.7   billion   years   which   means   that   life   probably   started about   4   billion   years   ago,   almost   immediately   after   the   Earth’s   temperature was     low     enough     to     sustain     life.     According     to     the     present     scientific understanding   the   earliest   precursor   to   life   is   called   LUCA   -   Last   Universal Common   Ancestor.   There   are   several   hypothesis   about      the   LUCA   structure and some evolutionists proclaim that it was a very simple organism. I   feel   that   a   realistic   and   safe   approach   is   to   assume   that   LUCA   was   very   similar   to   the   structure   of   today’s   simplest   bacteria   which   has   hardly   changed for   the   last   3   billion   years.   Therefore   we   can   assume   that   it   stayed   unchanged right from the beginning of life on Earth. The   first   living   organisms   were   not   just   bags   of   DNA   with   randomly   diffused proteins    and    enzymes,    but    included    sophisticated    and    complex    molecular machinery.   There   must   be   a   lower   limit   of   the   organism’s   complexity   below which   biological   life   is   not   possible.   Genetically   modified   organisms   are   now   a reality   and   completely   new   sets   of   genes   have   been   implanted   in   cells.   Such work   was   performed   in   the   J.   Craig   Venter   Institute   where   a   synthetic   genome in   Mycoplasma   mycoides ,   a   parasitic   bacterium,   was   reduced   to   473   genes.   After the   modifications   these   bacteria   reproduced   in   perfect   laboratory   conditions   at a   reduced   rate   of   3   hours   Hutchinson,   C.A.,   et   al.   2016.   Design   and   synthesis of a minimal bacterial genome. Science.  351: 25 March. However   the   synthetic   genome   was   introduced   to   living   bacteria,   therefore the   whole   supporting   cell   structure   already   existed.   During   this   experiment many   genes   may   have   been   removed   which   would   have   affected   the   long term    survival    of    the    bacteria    therefore    473    genes    might    not    represent    the minimum   genome.   Since   the   functions   of   many   genes   have   not   been   identified it is difficult to estimate what genome is needed for life.

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Advanced Panspermia Abiogenesis is the dominating theory which explains the origin of life on Earth. It evolved from the primordial soup theory to the present-day RNA World hypothesis. It is possible that it could be shown that some components of life could have originated from inorganic matter but proving their transition to the living cell would be much more difficult. There are two problems facing abiogenesis. The first problem is that the cell architecture is not coded by DNA. This means that genes provide information on how to build basic blocks of life such as proteins, enzymes, molecular complexes, etc., but that genomes contain no genes that specify cellular forms such as membranes or cytoskeletons [1]. So genes specify molecular parts, but not their arrangement into a higher order. This means that every cell originates from a mother cell. The second problem is that even the simplest cell has a sophisticated control system which drives the cell’s life cycle [2]. The cell cycle system is comprised of multiple modular subsystems that implement cellular growth and reproduction. An integral control system, constructed using biochemical and genetic logic circuitry, organizes the timing of initiation of each of these modular functions, similar to electronic control systems designed by man. This control system is not coded by the cell DNA but is inherited from the mother cell. Since genes are not involved with the cell structure and its control system, it is difficult to envisage how abiogenesis could be responsible for the origins of life.

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