Time factor in self assembly calculations?

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Apart from their startling naivety of theoretical calculations about the probability of for instance the correct sequence of amino acids coming together to form a protein these calculations seem to lack any consideration of time scales involved.
Sure the chances of a single successful event seem astronomical, but how do the odds look when you factor in that there may be billions of molecules reacting over billions of years?

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Do any mathematicians fancy looking over the figures? A more realistic model might be an imaginary self replicating length of RNA- say eight base pairs (four "unnatural" ones) and a unique 200 residue sequence.

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Lets just start off with a small protein (100 amino acids). Probability in the right order is 1/20^100. Probability right chirality is 1/2^100. Probability = 1/1^160. Given 10^81 atoms in the universe, and 15 billion years for the age of the universe, and say that each atom undergoes a trillion reactions each producing a different molecule each second, probability becomes 1/1^160 * 1^81 * 1^12 * 365 * 24 * 60 * 60. It still becomes 1/10^59.As you can probably notice, this gives very generous assumptions as well. Most probability arguments for one of 100 amino acids is 1^500, using all the time and atoms in the universe.

And RNA requires 6 bases to specify an amino acid... so for a 100 amino acid protein produced requires 600 bases? Suggesting 4^600? = 10^360...And you should know how complicated RNA replicates... and suggesting only 8 amino acids used severely limits how the resultant protein can behave... Then there's the probability requirement for the density of the amino acids in a given region for them to react... then there's the amount of matter in planets compared to suns/dark matter... then the amount of them that can actually form amino acids (how many of them are carbon atoms as compared to hydrogen?) And there are 23 currently known amino acids, not 20, then there's the limiting amount of time on earth for it to happen (a hundred million years instead of the billions). And of course, most of the molecules produced by reactions are not unique... H20, CO2, etc (99.99% or more of all reactions at that time?). Then there's the number of atoms that would need to participate to produce a 100-amino acid sized protein, reducing the number that can be made in the universe at the same time.[This message has been edited by blitz77, 08-07-2002]

Time since surface water became available and the first supposed bacteria. Unless you are supposing it didn't happen in water?

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Thirdly, your probability calculations assume complete randomness and chemistry isn't completely random. It follows rules.

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So what rules are you talking about-thermodynamics, increase in entropy, etc?

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Fourthly, are you calculating the chance of that one series of reactions will produce a protein (I believe you were talking about proteins) or do you realize that there would have been hundreds of millions or billion of simultaneous reactions going on?

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I did cover that-look at my numbers-I assumed that 10^93 different reactions were going on at the same time every second, each one producing an protein of 100 amino acids even without counting how many 100 amino acids could be produced at the same time (divide the 10^81 by
the number of atoms in a 100 amino acid chain.)

At 40 000 tons per year, that calculates out to over a ton of dust per square meter on the earth (assuming that the rate was the same in the past) using 4.5 billion years as the age of the earth.