• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Non-Living Replicators: Let's just list as many as we can!

This may not qualify, but how about certain types of mechanical wear and/or damage? For example, a gear in a mechanism wears down or breaks off a tooth, which damages other gear(s), which damage others, etc. etc.
 
Dave1001 said:
I'm not sure they qualify either :p

but to advocate for their inclusion, one could say that all self-replicators are "generated" by something else, generally an external energy source, and some environmental structures or forces that facilitate their self-replication. By that logic, waves may qualify too.
Click to expand...
Dawkin mentioned the analogy between an organism and a wave in a videoed talk, (the link was in this forum somewhere) but I think he was citing someone else.
I agreed with his point, you could treat a wave as a replicator.
 
Wowbagger said:
Alright, everyone,
Let's see how many different examples of non-living self-replication systems we can list!! By "non-living", I mean things that are clearly not life forms (obviously, this excludes plants, animals, fungi, etc. And, more specifically, excludes their genes).
Click to expand...

http://www.santafe.edu/sfi/People/kauffman/sak-peptides.html

Long peptide chains that catalyse their own construction.

Stuart A. Kauffman said:
Nature 382 August 8, 1996

The authors show that a 32-amino-acid peptide, folded into an alpha-helix and having a structure based on a region of the yeast transcription factor GCN4, can autocatalyse its own synthesis by accelerating the amino-bond condensation of 15- and 17-amino-acid fragments in solution (see Fig. 1 on page 525).
Click to expand...
 
What's that self-catalyzing, cyclic chemical reaction everyone talks about? Damn, I can't remember enough to Google it.

~~ Paul
 
Dr Adequate said:
Mortar rot.

I can't find any references at the moment.
Click to expand...
Yeah, weird. Google turns up nothing significant. But, you could be on to something!

negativ said:
This may not qualify, but how about certain types of mechanical wear and/or damage? For example, a gear in a mechanism wears down or breaks off a tooth, which damages other gear(s), which damage others, etc. etc.
Click to expand...
I like that example, for some reason! It almost sounds like it should not qualify, and yet, strangely, I think it does.

John Hewitt said:
Dawkin mentioned the analogy between an organism and a wave in a videoed talk, (the link was in this forum somewhere) but I think he was citing someone else.
I agreed with his point, you could treat a wave as a replicator.
Click to expand...
I guess I will have to conduct further research on this, before I can offer my opinion on whether waves count or not.

GodMark2 said:
http://www.santafe.edu/sfi/People/kauffman/sak-peptides.html

Long peptide chains that catalyse their own construction.
Click to expand...
I mentioned peptides in the OP, but that is a very good link!

Dr Adequate said:
The BZ reaction.
Click to expand...

Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
That's it! The Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction. Thanks, Dr. A.

http://people.musc.edu/~alievr/BZ/BZexplain.html

~~ Paul
Click to expand...
Oof. That sound fascinating, but I am going to have to read it when I have more time (of which it seems I will have a lot of this month).


So, after looking at the examples given thus far, I guess it would be fair to say that replication seems to come rather much easier in nature, than anyone might intuitively assume. And, therefore, it seems less and less likely that an "intelligent designer" is required to induce replication in the form we happen to call life.
(Of course, I knew that last part, already, I'm just belaboring the point, in case a creationist shows up on this thread.)
 
Or perhaps "terran bio-life" is not as special, separate, and/or rare as some seem to believe? :)
 
Last edited:
Merko said:
Well, sometimes they do, in the form of snowflakes for example. The structure will start in a certain way due to random chance, and then replicate according to a fractal pattern.
Click to expand...

Wait a second--snowflakes replicate? I thought they crystalised out of water vapor in the air. The presence of one snowflake doesn't in anyway cause the formation of another, right?

Ditto mineral crystals. I know once you get a a layer on the substrate growing, they'll grow faster, but that's not really self-replication, is it?

I think what Merko said--has to be a really loose understanding of "self replication".

What about prions? I haven't kept up, but last I heard there was a theory that the "host" cells has genes to make the same string of amino acids, and the presence of the prion somehow causes that protein to fold up (or change its folding or whatever) to become another prion. Anyone know?
 
Last edited:
OH--nevermind. You weren't talking about entire snowflakes replicating, but rather the repeated formation of the pattern.
 
Don't forget:

Thunderstorm cells. Under certain weather conditions, the evaporation of the water left behind from the rainfall seeds the formation of new storms a few hours or a day later.

Stars. Supernovas create the pressure waves that initiate star formation in interstellar gas clouds.

Quanta of emitted elecromagnetic energy in the optical cavity of a stimulated-emission-of-radiation device (laser, maser, graser, etc.)

Fire has already been mentioned, but it's a particularly good example. A fire with the right kind of fuel generates burning debris as well as updrafts that can carry the debris to new sites.

(BTW, pipelineaudio is correct, in a sense. Many different fungi that infect plants are called "rusts." Google "rust fungi" for examples.)

Respectfully,
Myriad
 
Last edited:
chain letters
email worms
yawns

potentially anionic polymerizations. although this is just a reaction that will maintain an active center until impurities are introduced.
 
John Hewitt said:
Dawkin mentioned the analogy between an organism and a wave in a videoed talk, (the link was in this forum somewhere) but I think he was citing someone else.
I agreed with his point, you could treat a wave as a replicator.
Click to expand...

He also mentions memes--

Aren't those self replicators? religion? Computer viruses. They need a host, like viruses...and these all seem to need human intervention along the way--but they can count as non-living replicators can't they. By non-living replicator I'm going with the notion of things that are not alive but they can ad do propagate themselves when the conditions are right.
 
negativ said:
This may not qualify, but how about certain types of mechanical wear and/or damage? For example, a gear in a mechanism wears down or breaks off a tooth, which damages other gear(s), which damage others, etc. etc.
Click to expand...

a run in pantyhose...
 
3point14 said:
Just pulled my recently read copy of 'The Blind Watchmaker'

Dawkins talks of a supersaturated solution of 'hypo' fixer (no, I don't know what it is either, but it's something to do with photography) into which you drop 'hypo' crystal, which grows more crystal, breaks up and continues until the solution is too weak to sustain the process. (I seem to recall doing something similar as a kid with a chemistry set or maybe a shop bought kit, but memory is clouded)

Dawkins quotes from Cairs-Smith's 'Seven Clues to the Origin of life'

It's all on page 150/151 of my copy (2006)


I don't have time to type it all up now, but hope this helps.
Click to expand...

Pretty much any fully saturated or supersaturated solution will at some point begin to grow crystals of the material that is dissolved in it if a crystal of the material is dropped in - and sometimes simply if it is just disturbed. For the just saturated solutions, the new crystal(s) dissolve but have the dissolved portion constantly replaced (if you remove the crystal after awhile, the crystal you have removed has ions/atoms in it that are not the specific ones it originally had. This can be verified if you make up - grow - a crystal using a concentration of a less common isotope of the atoms - one or more - that is a bit greater than naturally found .)
And, yes, crystals are self-replicating non-living things.
 
me again - sodium hyposulphite (hypo) is a misnaming of sodium thiosulphite which among other things is used as fixer for photographic images (plate and film) which makes the image much more stable and permanent. (and running it through another compound makes it even more stable by removing more of the sodium thiosulphite than water washing does - many older photos were lost because of incomplete removal of processing materials). Nothing to do with the topic - but it answers an implied question so there!!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom