From Amino Acids to Living Cells (Part 9)

For something to be alive it must be able to reproduce itself, have the capacity for growth and function. When I think about viroids and prions becoming viruses then single celled organisms it seems like a logical progression to me, but it is not. The reason it seems logical is because it goes from simple to complex. It is order arising out of chaos in a systematic fashion with definite steps. It is not possible though because viruses, viroids and prions are not capable of reproducing themselves, they are parasites which require a host organism for the production of future generations. They are able to die though. So what happens to a population group that has no way to reproduce but does have a way to die?

So life, in it's simplest and earliest stages, needed RNA or DNA, proteins, a cell membrane (probably rigid), and a means for metabolism. How do we go from amino acids to that? It is easy to see how amino acids would naturally join together with chemical bonds then fold up by chance and develop three dimensional shapes, but in humans there is a special protein that gives proteins their conformation and ensures they take the shape that they are supposed to. They do not take shape without the intervention of this protein. How did that protein ever come about? It is like a factory. Can you imagine a factory accidentally appearing in the desert somewhere? Again, I do not have that much faith. The more biology reveals to us, the less likely evolution becomes.