Weaknesses of Evolution - Part 2 - Hydrolysis of Proteins • Smilodon's Retreat

In our second part of the “Scientific Weaknesses of Evolution” discussion, we’re going to talk about this one

The high probability of breakdown by hydrolysis of amino acid chains if they were to form in the first place.

Hydrolysis is the process of breaking chemical bonds by water. This does occur to proteins, but generally only in the presence of an enzyme (which is another protein).

This claim suggests that proteins on the early Earth would be broken down by merely being in water before they could do anything useful.

So, let’s take a comment from a chemistry text on the subject

However, few organic compounds react readily with water…

However, under normal conditions, only a few reactions between water and organic compounds occur. Generally, strong acids or bases must be added in order to achieve hydrolysis where water has no effect. The acid or base is considered a catalyst . They are meant to speed up the reaction, but are recovered at the end of it.

Read more: http://www.chemistryexplained.com/Hy-Kr/Hydrolysis.html#ixzz2LMjVhi00

…most organic compounds do not react with water under normal conditions…

http://www.ark.chem.ufl.edu/Published_Papers/PDF/220.pdf

So what does happen is that water at high temperatures and high pressures can act as a catalyst for hydrolysis. What is required under normal conditions, is something in addition to water. Acids will do it. Enzymes will also do it, but enzymes are proteins and the existence of active enzymes in the early Earth pretty much defeats the entire argument made anyway.

So the claim is pretty much refuted. Are there conditions that means that a protein would break down in water? Yes, of course. But that doesn’t mean that all, or even most, proteins breakdown under normal conditions in water.

Now, I’d like to take a brief aside into the realm of actual research. The majority of abiogenesis researchers today do not hold with a protein/enzyme first model of life. The reason is that RNA molecules, called ribozymes, can act as enzymes as well. So proteins and enzymes aren’t even needed in models of how how life developed on the early Earth.

Here’s some more research on the topic that is very interesting.

Ribozyme-catalyzed transcription of an active ribozyme in which we see that the formation of ribozyme that can be used to create another ribozyme. In fact, using evolutionary principles, the authors created a general ribozyme. In fact, the end result of evolution was an RNA polymerase, an enzyme that could take any template strand and copy it.

Generation of Long RNA Chains in Water in which we see long chain (100 nucleotides) RNAs forming in nothing more than warm water.

So basically, even if the claim in the creationist website is true (it’s not), it doesn’t matter because it’s not a big deal.

Weaknesses of Evolution – Part 2 – Hydrolysis of Proteins

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