Dear Authors,

At one time I was greatly impressed by the article by I. Klotz "WATER" (in the book HORIZONS OF BIOCHEMISTRY - in Russian 1964, original in English 1962). Therefore, I want to ask: is it possible to imagine that the crystalline matrix was formed not by gas hydrates, but by ice-like water (when cooling solutions of molecules)? In addition, when cooling, the chemical activity of water decreases and the hydrolysis-synthesis equilibrium shifts towards synthesis.

Dear Prof. Lev Verkhovsky,

Thank you for your principal question.

No, this is impossible. When water freezes, an empty hydrate lattice cannot form. However, at any fixed temperature, the equilibrium water-vapor pressure over a hydrate structure containing filler particles is lower than the equilibrium water-vapor pressure over cooled pure water. These facts have been established experimentally and are beyond doubt. The formation of a solid hydrate phase is thermodynamically favorable and occurs at temperatures at which the equilibrium water-vapor pressure over hydrate is equal to or less than the equilibrium water-vapor pressure over ice and liquid water, at least, R.M. Barrer and W.J. Stuart, the authors of the theory of hydrate formation, had considered these knowledges to be well known when formulating their theory of hydrate formation in 1957.

"simplest living matter" - did not see this established but may have missed it in the article's extended pedantry.

In any case, conclusion is mere speculation and total BS in re. "unambiguously proved".

"Living matter origination underground within methane-hydrate localizations is now unambiguously proved:

Dear Dr. Phil Geis,

Thank you for your remark relative to our work.

I hope that this remark will be the basis for the subsequent discussion.

Owing to your remark and in the connection with it, I became acquainted with the list of your scientific works in your RG page to know the field of your scientific achievements. Remarkable list.

And you can also do similar work to become familiar with the topics of my publications.

The future will show who is right in the opinion about the origin of life. The future will clarify obligatory this dilemma.

With wishes of health and all the best,

Dr. Victor Ostrovskii

Victor Ostrovskii

The topic is origin of life - not our credentials.

Please recall, the article offered an affirmative conclusion - not a possibility future learning may or may not support. Given that creation of "life" was not demonstrated, much less by the phenomena claimed, "unambiguously proved" is hyperbole.

Victor Ostrovskii

I think the most important part of your concept is that the basic chemical compounds that led to the emergence of life were formed in water matrices. Yes, water molecules are ideally suited to form lacy structures of various shapes.

Here we can recall the words of Albert Szent-Györgyi (from his book "Bioenergetics" (1957): "Water is not only the mater (mother), but also the matrix of life".

Dr. Phil Geis,

I hoped that you will understand my previous answer correctly and that this answer will be the end of our discussion.

However, after your last post, I consider it necessary to answer you in more detail.

First, when reading the list of your scientific works, I did not see even a hint of your knowledge of the problems that require solutions before formulating a theory of the simplest-living-matter origination. Moreover, I am not sure that you actually had read our paper and adequately understood its content.

Second, if you have familiarized yourself to some extent with the contents of the article, have you paid attention to its following features?

(1) The fundamental article we are discussing (67 pages of journal text) represents a generalization of fifteen our original scientific articles, each having been discussed by the reviewers skilled in the relevant fields of science, and a generalization of about thirty our reports and invited lectures given at international scientific conferences of relevant topics.

(2) In the paper under consideration, we widely used the modern original method of three-dimensional computer simulation of the arrangement of complex chemical substances inside a crystalline matrix. This method was preliminary highly appreciated when solving pharmaceutical problems.

(3) Our theory is based on the preliminary long-term detailed original physicochemical laboratory experimental studies performed by using modern adsorbtion-calorimetric methods developed and used previously by us to solve other problems of chemistry and physics and on the thorough analysis of scientific literature relating directly or indirectly to the problem of the origin of life.

(4) We were the first to establish the thermodynamic conditionality of the life origination process. The corresponding papers are published repeatedly in the scientific journal of the thermodynamic orientation. This result is of general scientific significance, because it shows that Nature, when solving this important problem, supports its own scientific laws established previously for all physical and chemical processes.

(5) In the paper under consideration, we described the original solution of the problems of the physicochemical mechanisms of the appearance of the chirality and racemization-delay phenomena accompanying the process of synthesis by Nature of biologically active substances. The corresponding solution in its preliminary form was earlier described in the journal “Chirality” and is supplemented with the additional details in this paper.

(6) In our study under consideration, we were the first to prove the possibility of multiple collisions of all necessary source substances within one localization and the possibility and conditionality of the recurrence of such a process in different periods of the Earth’s history and in different periods of the Sun/Earth system’s history.

(7) The paper under consideration contains the description of the principal construction of the equipment necessary and sufficient for the experimental verification of the Life Origination Hydrate Theory.

(8) The Life Origination Hydrate Theory, discussed in our article, was the source of the following publications:

(i) Mitosis and Replication Hydrate Theory, published as a charter 4, “Ostrovskii V.E., Kadyshevich E.A., Mitosis and DNA replication and life origination hydrate hypotheses: common physical and chemical grounds” in the book “DNA Replication – Current advances, Prof. Hervé Seligmann (ed.), Tech, Rijeka, Croatia, 2011, pp. 75–114 (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235409468_) and rated highly in the editor's Preface to the book;

(ii) Ostrovskii V.E., Kadyshevich E.A., Optimal nutrition and cellular life prolongation in the LOH[1]theory context. In: Safe Food. ALBUM, Novi Sad, Serbia, 2014, pp. 293–301 (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266393167_); and so on, etc.

Here above, I listed only the most important solutions from those made by us when describing in our paper the fundamental problems of the multi-stage natural synthesis of simplest living entities from minerals. The details are described in the paper.

As for your comment “creation of life has not been demonstrated” by us, let me remind you the following.

The formulation of the Life Origination Hydrate Theory in its present form had required our work for more than 20 years, and the preliminary experimental studies carried out with the help of our colleagues had required additionally more than 10 years.

My first scientific and engineering works performed for the creation of the calorimetric equipment, adsorption apparatuses, and methodology used for these preliminary experimental studies were started in 1964, and the first paper on these subjects were published in 1968 (Ostrovskii V.E., Dobrovol’skii N.N., Karpovich I.R., Frolov F.Ya., Zh. Fiz. Khim. (Russ. J. Phys. Chem.), 42 (1968) 550-555; (in Eng., see: Ostrovskii V.E. Differential microcalorimeter for isothermal measurements of heat effects in two-phase systems and examples of its application, Rev. Sci. Instruments, 73(3) (2002) 1304-1312). The first work about the study of water adsorption at polyacrylamide, which is the system modeling the DNA interaction with water, was published in 1998 (Ostrovskii V.E., Tsurkova B.V. The system polyacrylamide-water. Differential heat effects, rates and molecular mechanisms of wetting and drying V E. Ostrovskii and B. V. Tsurkova J. Therm. Analysis. 5l (1998) 169-l8l). The first work with E.A. Kadyshevich dedicated to the problem of living matter origination was published in 2001 (Ostrovskii V.E., Tsurkova B.V., Kadyshevich E.A., Gostev B.V., Comparison study of the acrylamide– water and polyacrylamide–water systems: Diferential heat efects, kinetics, and mechanisms of drying and vapor-phase wetting. J. Phys. Chem. B, 1105 (2001)12680–12687). After that, more than 15 our publications relating to the subject of living matter origination were published together with Kadyshevich E.A. (3 of them, also with Dzyabchenko A.V.) in different journals.

Meanwhile, I know no such examples in the history of science, when the theories of so large scale and the results of their practical realization were presented by the same scientific teams.

In our opinion, after our work there are sufficient reasons to hope that the humanity, over several next decades, will be able to synthesize from minerals protein mass suitable, at least, for feeding animals.

Let me notice that Prof. Vitaly L. Ginzburg, Full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, wrote in the text of his 2003 Nobel lecture that “the problem of reduction of the animate to the inanimate” is one of three greatest physical problems facing the 21st century” and expressed hope that “the problem of synthesizing living entities from minerals will be solved in the near future” (Ginzburg V.L. Usp. Fiz. Nauk 174(2004)1240 [Phys. Usp. 47(2004)1155]).

Just Ginzburg, being the editor-in-chief of the journal “Physics-Uspekhi (Advances in Physical Sciences)”, approved in 2007 publication of our paper “Ostrovskii V.E., Kadyshevich E.A., Generalized hypothesis of the origin of the living-matter simplest elements, transformation of the Archean atmosphere, and the formation of methane-hydrate deposits. Physics-Uspekhi, 2007 (50) 175–196” (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235351966_). This paper contained the principal features of the life origination problem and the general principles of our theory.

We both, Victor Ostrovskii and Elena Kadyshevich, believe that the Life Origination Hydrate Theory in its form published in the paper titled Kadyshevich E.A., Ostrovskii V.E., “From minerals to simplest living matter: Life Origination Hydrate Theory”, Acta Biotheoretica, 71 (2023) article 13 (pp. 1-67); https://doi.org/10.1007/s10441-023-09463-9 is quite ready for its experimental verification. The problem formulated in the paper is highly topical. Each section of the Theory as such and the Theory in whole are supported by experienced reviewers of the corresponding scientific journals. The Theory doesn’t contradict the thermodynamic laws, the source substances and ambient conditions are specified, and the principal construction of the experimental equipment is described. The experimental verification of the Theory is waiting for enthusiasts.

Victor Ostrovskii

Please don't obfuscate with ad hominem, pompous self d promotion and extended irrelevant pedantry. I read the article ands was impressed with its painfully excessive wordiness and self-absorbed and pedantry that your offer above in more abbreviated form that transitions from the articles confident assertion to "theory".

Let me help you with a few salient points.

1) I am a biologist - you are not . Confident assertions of biological insight here and likely of covid are sophomoric expressions of ego.

2) There is no accepted scientific theory for the creation of life.

3) Your assertion is clearly unsupported by anything but your convoluted profoundly wordy discussion.

4) It's your theory and proof is yours - not imaginary "enthusiasts". You should be aware science operates with the null hypothesis - theories are considered false until data compels.

5) Some friendly advice - brevity and focus would serve readership to potential generation of "enthusiasts".

Suggest you move from pedantry to practice - if life is so simply formed - show us the living form.

Phil Geis,

Read, for example, the paper by the address: Ostrovskii V.E., Kadyshevich E.A., "Mitosis and DNA replication and life origination hydrate hypotheses: common physical and chemical grounds", in the book "DNA Replication – Current advances”, Ch. 4, Prof. Hervé Seligmann (ed.), Tech, Rijeka, Croatia, 2011, pp. 75–114 (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235409468_).

Maybe, you will understand who is a biologist and who is not.

You can also read dozens of my other papers, abstracts, and presentations of lectures given at various conferences on biological topics.

As for your works, I didn’t notice in them much biology.

As for the epithets that belong to you, I am sending them to a valid address.

As for the rest, stay and live with your opinion.

With wishes of health.

Victor Ostrovskii

1st - I appreciate your brevity.

I see you carefully avoid the subject - claim that your now theory was in fact "simple" reality - "real way of synthesis of simplest living matter from minerals under natural and laboratory conditions".

Suggest you do it - as in the vernacular - put up of shut up. Lets see the lving matter.

I understand who and what a biologist is - and it is clearly not you.

You might consider the pedantic egotism of referring folks to your own sophomoric writings on "creation" as proof of your credentials.

In this matter, I've dealt with science - not opinions. Your "theory" is just another concept offered in great pedantic detail in a poorly written paper. Like others, it's consider fictional until data compels. Suggest you execute this "simple" synthesis of life and show us.