Darwin- would he have changed his theory?

How exactly do you think the complexity of microrganisms hurts Darwin's theory? I believe the nature of complexity found in them strongly supports his theory.

Why? There's no reason to think the complexity of the first life, and the complexity of modern microscopic organisms are related.

I don't consider half a billion years a short period of time at all. We don't know. Current estimates suggest that somewhere between 60 and a 100 are required, IIRC (which I may not). Note however that this isn't 'in just the right way' - there is not only one answer that evolution need hit, but several. Note also that amino acids do not just randomly connect, but preferentially connect in a manner that may (or may not, to be fair) have aided the process. Finally, note that some organic compounds (such as lipids) have properties that lead them to spontaneously form cell-like structures.And, once more, the origin of life is irrelevant to Darwin's theory - he does not deal with the origin of life.

Please use the reply button on the post you are actually replying to.

Crap. Half a billion years is a decent length of time in any timescale. DNA? Current hypothesises do not suggest there be any DNA in the first replicators. And it's not like a book writing itself at all. Maybe, maybe not. We don't know. Perhaps 1 in 10¹¹ - which is well within the bounds of possible random assembly. It would speak of no such thing, at all. Lipids will form spontaneously in the conditions believed to have been present on the early earth, and in some numbers. This is simply false.

We don't know what the chance is, but across the earth and with half a billion years even unlikely things can be very likely to happen (see below). Who said anything about RNA? The simplest replicator is likely to be much simpler. What are you talking about, for one protein? I'm talking about the arrangements of amino acids that produce a replicator.Yes, I did the math. Suppose our something has a 1 in 10¹¹ chance of happening in a given trial. Now, suppose that there are one hundred sites on the earth at which it can occur and that a trial occurs once every 3.65 days (which are extremely conservative guesses. In half a billion years that's 10²10²(5*10⁸) = 5*10¹² trials. That makes the chance of our 'unlikely' event happening at least once during the course of the journey very close to 1. A lipid is a fat or oil, essentially. They can be significantly simpler molecules than an amino acid.(edit: see here http://biology.clc.uc.edu/courses/bio104/lipids.htm )This message has been edited by Mr Jack, 10-22-2004 08:53 AM

Just a pedant's note, but the genetic code to amino acid conversion is not exactly the same for all life on earth.

It's not just mitochondria, there are about sixteen known varients. Not only that but the coding pattern itself seems to have been shaped by natural selection - in that of the possible codings the ones which are used have a high 'fault tolerance' in that errors will tend to produce either the same amino acid or a similar one.

Chill, man, I meant no offence.