Missives

If you have ever attempted to loosen a bolt, you encountered chirality (ky-RAHL-ittee).  Perhaps you muttered the phrase “lefty loosey, righty tighty”. That’s because nearly all bolts are threaded in one direction. It turns out the same is true for 19 out of 20 amino acids in all living things. Only left-handed amino acids form peptide chains which become useful proteins (see diagram, right).  While nature with its law of entropy produces a racemic mix (50% left, 50% right-handed) of most elements, living things require homochiral (one direction) amino acids, peptides, proteins, and so on. This extraordinary requirement for one-directional building blocks screams of an intelligent Designer.

Miller-Urey experiment which produced a racemic mix of 10 unusable amino acids in a tightly controlled lab environment.

Evolutionary scientists conveniently ignore this fact when attempting to prove a spark of life in a warm little pond could create amino acids. For instance, in 1953 Miller and Urey placed four, pure lab-produced chemicals (assumed present at earth’s beginning) under sparking electrodes to create amino acids, but then filtered it (see diagram, right).  Why was it filtered?  The initial result produced other tar-like substances which would steadily destroy the amino acids unless the experimenters mechanically separated them from the goo.  Also, evolutionists claim earth’s “primitive atmosphere” could not have had any oxygen present since it destroys amino acids through oxidation – but cells need oxygen. Worse yet, Miller-Urey only made 3 racemic amino acids, utterly useless to become a living thing which requires 19 homochiral amino acids.  What kind of proof is this?

Sadly, the importance of chirality went ignored in 1957 when the drug thalidomide was created to treat severe nausea in pregnant women. The drug produced ‘flipper babies’ with deformed and shortened appendages as a direct result of racemic ingredients (see figure, below). (One such fellow was my good friend in kindergarten.) University of Missouri Professor of Biological Sciences Dr. C.L. Tan wrote “Chirality may seem like a minor issue, but it can have a profound impact on molecular function, and life is exquisitely sensitive to chirality.” If you take inexpensive vitamin C, your body will eliminate half of it, because it’s in a racemic mix; your body can only use the left-handed form of ascorbic acid.  Thankfully, God designed us with filters to select the right parts!

Thalidomide and the effects of racemic mixes. The R-type acts as a sedative, whereas the S-type deforms infant limbs.

Dr. Tan further explains: “In all living systems, homochirality is produced and maintained by enzymes, which are themselves composed of homochiral amino acids that were specified through homochiral DNA and produced via homochiral messenger RNA, homochiral ribosomal RNA, and homochiral transfer RNA. No one has ever found a plausible abiotic explanation for how life could have become exclusively homochiral. The probability of randomly forming any homochiral protein with 1,100 amino acids approximates the chance of finding one specific atom in the known universe.  This is a great challenge for all who support abiogenesis.”

Our God is into the details, both in life and in the gospel; as it is written, See, saith He, that thou make all things according to the pattern shewed to thee in the mount. Minor infractions can lead to major issues.

Miller-Urey experiment photo: Wikipedia commons. Source of quotes and photo: Change Laura Tan and Rob Stadler, The Stairway To Life: An Origin-of-Life Reality Check, 2020, at Institute for Creation Research, pgs. 73, 87-88, 90, 92.