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News & ArtsMonday, February 6, 2012
Science The Kinetic Trap
Posted by Charles Mudede on Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 8:33 AM
From a paper, "Bioenergetics and Life's Origins," by David Deamer and Arthur L. Weber:
Chemical kinetics defines the rates at which a given reaction occurs, and allows thermodynamically unstable molecular structures to exist far from equilibrium. A protein or nucleic acid in water, for instance, will ultimately hydrolyze to its component amino acids. However, in the absence of a catalyst, this is a slow reaction, so that faster catalyzed reactions of biosynthesis can keep up with the slower degradative rate of hydrolysis. The difference in reaction rates is referred to as a kinetic trap. On the early Earth, if there was a relatively fast process that could produce chemical bonds between monomers, kinetic traps would allow the resulting polymers to have a transient existence even if they were thermodynamically unstable.This passage sent me to another passage in a new book, First Life: Discovering the Connections Between Stars, Cells, and How Life Began, by one of the authors, biochemist David Deamer, of the paper. My reason for sharing the passage is it offers a startlingly original (or startlingly stark) view of what life is:
The most important thing to understand is that some reactions can be driven energetically uphill very fast, but if the downhill reaction in the other direction is slow, it is possible to make complicated molecules and keep them in a metastable state for extended periods of time. We call this condition a kinetic trap. In one sense, that is what life is all about. Life is thermodynamically far from equilibrium, yet life can exist because the downhill reactions of degradation are slow. In other words, we don’t dissolve when we take a shower...
2
Entire mountain ranges disolve in the rain. And some grow faster than they dissolve. Does that make the Himilayas a kinetic trap?
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