Mathematics – Probability
Scientific paper
Dec 1983
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1983orli...13..113m&link_type=abstract
Origins of Life, Volume 13, Issue 2, pp.113-118
Mathematics
Probability
4
Scientific paper
We point out an intrinsic weakness in the reasoning that adduces a statistical fluctuation as the origin of a left-handed, prebiotic stereoisomeric asymmetry which might have been the initial asymmetry that led to the left-handed asymmetry of proteins observed now on Earth. The argument in favor of a statistical fluctuation as the source of the asymmetry depends implicitly on the assumption of a very small number of terrestrial sites at which polymerization leading to protein formation took place. On the other hand, the probability that a left-handed prebiotic asymmetry produced by a specific mechanism was efficacious would have increased linearly with the number of terrestrial sites. Thus, on the basis of the greater likelihood of a large number of possible polymerization sites in the prebiotic era, a random fluctuation is deemed to be a much less probable source of a stereoisomeric asymmetry than a specific mechanism, particularly the mechanism that follows from the parity violating weak interaction.
Mann Alfred K.
Primakoff H.
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