Primordial Broth
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Wojciech Kossak painting the “Racławice Panorama,” palette in hand while preparing food, 1893/1894. Source: National Museum in Wrocław (public domain)
Nature

Primordial Broth

The Origins of Cellular Life
Tomasz Sitarz
Reading
time 14 minutes

Believe it or not, I recently found a book containing a recipe for primordial broth—the same that supposedly started life on Earth.

It was a lazy Sunday. The sun was pouring in through the curtains and streams of light dispersed across dust particles resembling milky lint. Cigarette smoke hung in the air, sharing my leisurely mood. I left the stock on low heat, marinated the tofu, and went out for a walk.

I was pondering over the meaning of it all. Just as I was about to grasp the solution to this mystery, reaching out with the finger of my imagination to the intersection where all vectors of causality meet, atoms of truth supposedly crystallizing into the ultimate fractal of being, I tripped and fell. Annoyed, I got up, brushed the dust off my knees and noticed out of the corner of my eye a strange shape protruding from below the offending tree root—the real perpetrator of this attempt on my life. It turned out to be a book, its spine inscribed with symbols I could not understand.

A bird started from the tree and as I placed my eyes again on the tome, the symbols arranged themselves into legible words: “Tohu va-Vohu presents ways of organizing matter into life.”

Leafing through the volume, I discovered it was full of chemical formulas, mathematical equations, and biological schemata interlaced with text. I threw the book into my backpack and headed to the friend whom I usually consult on occult and scientific matters. He did not fail me. What follows is a summary of what I learned from the book, so that you too, can try to create life at home.

In the Lipid House

The introduction read: 

“Are you a primordial deity, but your existence feels incomplete? Are you tired of thought experiments and clay figurines? Do you dream of organic toys that do not have to be wound up? Do you feel like you could use some form of cult worship? This book is for you! Just remember that the process is difficult to stop; once out of the bottle, life is hard to eradicate.

In order to create life,

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Also read:

A Recipe for Death
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Photo by Gerrie van der Walt/Unsplash
Nature

A Recipe for Death

How the Body Ages
Tomasz Sitarz

How can we explain ageing? Some theories trace the source of the process back to the very essence of the living cell.

According to these theories, the essence of a cell features mechanisms programmed to bring about the death of that very same cell. This approach has a sense of purpose about it. Other concepts point to wear and tear as the reason for ageing. All biomolecules whose activity comprises the phenomenon known as life have to be produced as and when needed, because, having carried out their function several times, these molecules begin to go into decline and need to be replaced. This approach emphasizes the accumulation of damage. Today, there are more than 300 theories grappling with the mystery of ageing. The important thing, however, is to try not to perceive the hypotheses put forward as mutually exclusive; nor should we see the symptoms of ageing as discrete, given that each of them has its roots in all the others and influences them in turn. A living cell is an immensely complicated system of various interactions – dysfunction in but one of them will have an impact on all the others. Rather than a specific ailment, ageing is the sum of various symptoms.

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