RNA World Suffers a Backhand Blow

NASA hoped to find a chiral bias that
favors left-handed amino acids. They lost.

Harold S. Bernhardt once called the popular RNA World Hypothesis the “worst theory of the evolution of life (except for all the others).” It was a stinging indictment in 2012, but the RNA World remains the leading contender among OoLers (origin-of-lifers) desperate to keep creation out of their worldview, especially with Dr James Tour calling their bluff.

Now, another hopeful prop has been kicked out from under the OoLers trusting on the bruised reed of an imaginary RNA World. NASA tells about RNA’s connection to another profound mystery: the origin of homochirality (single-handed amino acids used in proteins; see our online book ch. 3).

NASA: Mystery of Life’s Handedness Deepens (21 Nov 2024, NASA). Among believers in the RNA World, some hoped it would explain homochirality. The press release explains why.

DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is the molecule that holds the instructions for building and running a living organism. However, DNA is complex and specialized; it “subcontracts” the work of reading the instructions to RNA (ribonucleic acid) molecules and building proteins to ribosome molecules. DNA’s specialization and complexity lead scientists to think that something simpler should have preceded it billions of years ago during the early evolution of life. A leading candidate for this is RNA, which can both store genetic information and build proteins. The hypothesis that RNA may have preceded DNA is called the “RNA world” hypothesis.

If the RNA world proposition is correct, then perhaps something about RNA caused it to favor building left-handed proteins over right-handed ones.

Sadly (for OoLers), the new work by NASA scientists “did not support this idea, deepening the mystery of why life went with left-handed proteins.” Without any preference or bias for one hand over the other, RNA should have selected right-handed or left-handed amino acids with equal ease. Nothing physical, in other words, forced DNA and RNA to favor one hand over the other.

Prebiotic chiral transfer from self-aminoacylating ribozymes may favor either handedness (Kenchel et al., 12 Sept 2024, Nature Communications). This is the formal paper. Here is the ending sentence of the concluding discussion:

A different chemical origin of life may be governed by different principles. Nevertheless, in the context of chiral transfer in an RNA World, the results suggest that when replaying the Gouldian “tape of life” from a homochiral D-RNA world, a homochiral L-protein world would not be guaranteed by a general chemical bias of RNA. Given the likely importance of chance in ribozyme discovery, the ultimate emergence of an L- vs. D-protein world may have been as random as a coin flip.

The Stuff Happens Law rears its ugly head, giving a backhanded slap to OoLers. They have nothing but chance—the antithesis of scientific explanation—for explaining homochirality.

Chirality showing the right- and left-handed isomers of amino acids, the building blocks of proteins.

Hiding the Truth

Despite this new backhanded slap against the RNA World, evolutionists are reluctant to give it up. It’s the Best-in-Field Fallacy at work. What else do they have? Better a hobbling blind horse that gets out of the gate than a row of dead and dying ones. The press release tries to keep the RNA World alive, imagining other ways that life got a left-handed start.

“The findings suggest that life’s eventual homochirality might not be a result of chemical determinism but could have emerged through later evolutionary pressures,” said co-author Alberto Vázquez-Salazar, a UCLA postdoctoral scholar and member of Chen’s research group.

Or maybe meteorites delivered amino acids with a slight excess of left-handed ones over right-handed ones. At what point, though, does this hope become ridiculous? Consider that there are numerous other problems:

• A polypeptide with even one amino acid of the wrong hand becomes useless.
• Amino acids tend to link up at the wrong places instead of forming peptide bonds.
• Peptide bonds fall apart in water faster than they form.
• The probability of getting a useful sequence is nil (online book, ch. 4).
• There’s no natural selection before accurate replication (online book, ch. 5). It’s all chance.

This list is not exhaustive. See our earlier articles on the RNA World hypothesis (13 Aug 2011, where Dr Robert Shapiro called it “staggeringly improbable”), and watch the Discovery Institute video Long Story Short about biopolymers. The Illustra film Origin shares many more reasons why the emergence of a living cell without design is impossible.

Nice RNA, Nasty RNA

By contrast, RNA molecules under the control of living organisms can do wonderful things. Georgia Tech recently reported that RNA has a surprising role in DNA repair (21 Nov 2024). That is all tightly regulated by the genetic code and enzymes. Some evolutionists at Georgia Tech are guilty of disinformation for speculating that their findings “open up a new understanding of RNA’s potential role in maintaining genome integrity and driving evolutionary changes.” Bosh! Yes for maintaining genome integrity; no for “driving evolutionary changes.” Evolution has nothing to do with genomic integrity or the origin of genomes in the first place, and you wouldn’t want a blind driver running your body.

This is why Dr James Tour challenges the OoLers to give real-world evidence for their beliefs using plausible early earth conditions and not wishful thinking in their experiments. The whole idea of “molecular evolution” is a nonsensical term, he emphasized in a recent video on his YouTube channel. “Molecules don’t care about life… molecules have no brain. They don’t know to go toward life. You could scream at them all day: ‘Go toward life. Do it!’ They won’t do anything… They don’t know that you want to move toward life. They don’t know that.”

By implication, OoLers are imposing their own wishes onto molecules that are incapable of caring—molecules that will only blindly follow the laws of chemistry. The Second Law of Thermodynamics, one of the most fundamental and demonstrable laws of physics, favors disruption and dissolution over what a living cell requires: functional information.

Any questions on why we call this hopeless quest the Origin of Lie? (see ‘Paid Liars: Origin of Life Researchers’, 6 June 2020).