Is It Possible For Proteins To Form On Their Own?

This is one of those questions that could cause a philosopher to suffocate under the sheer stress of pondering the incredible odds that would have to be overcome for such an event to happen. I will tell you how great those odds are later in this article.

Amino acids are the building blocks for proteins and must be in an exact order for a protein to operate. The scientific facts are that virtually all living things require all left-handed amino acids with all right-handed nucleotide sugars.

However, in a natural setting, the mix would be 50% right-handed and 50% left-handed amino acids and sugars. The probability of these coming together naturally is mathematically impossible.

For instance, proteins are the primary components of cells, and proteins are usually made from at least 22 different types of all left-handed amino acids. Just like letters of the alphabet that are used to make up a sentence, the proteins must also be in a specific order to have any meaning. This arrangement of letters, "To be or not to be, that is the question," conveys meaning. However, the same letters randomly arranged, bTo oi oeh eo cv seno e utrn t ta qsn, have no meaning at all.

The odds of coming up with this line from Shakespeare, using randomly dropped Scrabble letters, are 1 in 2,810 trillion octillion! That is 2,810 with 39 zeros following it, which is another mathematical impossibility.

The same goes for amino acids being able to form proteins on their own in nature. Even the smallest known protein is made up of hundreds of left-handed amino acids. Mathematicians have calculated the odds of just one protein developing on its own in nature to be 10 to the 119th power: that's 10 to the 119th power 22 times to arrive at the 22 proteins required to make one simple bacteria!

How big of a number is that? Well, double every molecule in the universe and you might get close.

Being generous, it has been estimated that to form the simplest protein from primordial oceans, even if we started with the 20 left-handed amino acids and were given 15 billion years to do so, we would wind up with a number of probability in the range of at least 10 to the 60th power.

And just how big would that number be? Well, that number would account for every molecule in the entire universe! And these are the odds of forming one protein when we start with all left-handed amino acids! Yet the simplest cell requires 600 specific proteins!

The probability of proteins coming together naturally is a mathematical impossibility.