First Cell

[paua]

How did the first cell come into being?

[GreenDog]

Is it a chicken & egg question?
A “new” cell is created by dividing from an existing cell. How the first cell was created is a bit more academic…

[paua]

I’ve found something: http://library.thinkquest.org/C004535/o … cells.html ;

Current research has suggested that the first cell was formed when phospholipid molecules spontaneously assembled into a membrane structure under the primitive conditions. The oligonucleotides were then able to evolve and natural selection was able to select the cells with the most efficient system of replication machineries.

Maybe you have other views on it?

[chicoguardian]

Are cells also made by protiens of existing cells…

[Fried Zygote Sandwich]

The FIRST cell? You might as well ask how life originated….. I prefer not to think about it.

A few interesting things I’ve learned in regards to this though is that high ammounts of electricity (think lightning) and the basic elements found in our atmosphere will cause the formation of organic molecules.

A theory I remember hearing goes as follows. Before oxygen was present in our atomosphere these organic molecules were formed by lightning and rained down on earth. Eventually they built up because there were no organisms to digest them or oxygen to destroy them (oxygen is highly corrosive). Since no ozone (O3 I believe) protected the earth from UV rays there was a high incidense of mutations (splitting, rearanging) of these organic molecules. From here it gets hazy as to what happened. But basically a bunch of chemicals must have got arranged in such a way that they could become a cell.

This is an oversimplified explanation of something that I don’t understand really well. There must be many other theories out there. But this one makes sense to me.

[rambo]

i believe questions are far more complex for our time. the beautiful thing is in science is one day we might find out. as a young scientist i believe in god.

[zhengwj005]

i believe many cells were formed gradually in a similar conditions,and then most of them dispeared . only a few which were very suitable to environments kept alive

[MrMistery]

Protobionts? A big debate is of course carried on this subject. While creationists say that the whole world was created by god just as it is now.
The current accepted scientific opinion, although there are many, is that the first cell originated gradually, from those protobionts. They were formed gradually by autoasembly of lipids etc. For more info on this search the forum or google

[benny]

creationism. oh dear.

[benny]

http://www.geocities.com/acgyles/origin.html

this guy seems to have similar theories about the prebiotic world. he seems to have put up a fair bit of stuff on the net.

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