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attention all chemists!

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imachavel

Rising Star
I'm looking for a stimulant that has the chemical formula of c4h14n2o, I might be off on a few numbers, it could be c12h14n2o. Anyway I guess that kind of screws it up a little.

I'm looking for something I found a long time ago on the internet, and haven't been able to find it since then. It's one of the few molecules in nature that has diethylamide in it. If I'm not mistaken it's almost the top part of the lsd molecule, meaning it's a single indole ring connected to diethylamide, I believe it's also an anti-infection agent. And I believe it comes from a tree.

if an indole ring only has 6 carbon atoms, it might be c9h14n2o. Anyway, damn, I'm REALLY bad at this.


on a side note, does anyone know what was considered the first organic molecule made by a life form? or was it a protein acid, and then a cellular structure? meaning it transitioned automatically into a multimolecular structure, and by that point couldn't be said to have been traced to one molecule. thanks
 
Ilya Prigogine, chemist-physicist, recipient of two Nobel Prizes in chemistry, wrote: "The statistical probability that organic structures and the most precisely harmonized reactions that typify living organisms would be generated by accident, is zero."(1) That's right - zero!

an honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going.
he trouble is that there are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in (1020)2,000=1040,000, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup
In terms of complexity, an individual cell is nothing when compared with a system like the mammalian brain. The human brain consists of about ten thousand million nerve cells. Each nerve cell puts out between ten thousand and one hundred thousand connecting fibers by which it makes contact with other nerve cells in the brain. Altogether the total number of connections in the human brain approaches 1015 or a thousand million million. Numbers in the order of 1015 are of course completely beyond comprehension. Imagine an area about half the size of the USA (one million square miles) covered in a forest of trees containing ten thousand trees per square mile. If each tree contained one hundred thousand leaves the total number of leaves in the forest would be 1015, equivalent to the number of connections in the human brain! Despite the enormity of the number of connections, the ramifying forest of fibers is not a chaotic random tangle but a highly organized network in which a high proportion of the fibers are unique adaptive communication channels following their own specially ordained pathway through the brain. Even if only one hundredth of the connections in the brain were specifically organized, this would still represent a system containing a much greater number of specific connections than in the entire communications network on Earth.

George Wald, leading evolutionist, wrote:

Organic molecules, therefore form a large and formidable array, endless in variety and of the most bewildering complexity. One cannot think of having organisms without them. This is precisely the trouble, for to understand how organisms originated we must first of all explain how such complicated molecules could come into being. And that is only the beginning. To make an organism requires not only a tremendous variety of these substances, in adequate amounts and proper proportions, but also just the right arrangement of them. Structure here is as important as composition - and what a complication of structural. The most complex machine man has devised - say an electronic brain - is child's play compared with the simplest of living organisms. The especially trying thing is that complexity here involves such small dimensions. It is on the molecular level; it consists of a detailed fitting of molecule to molecule such as no chemist can attempt

here's some stuff iv'e found , regarding that stimulat of yours i couldn't find anything related , but will post if found
hope it helps :)
 
definately, I've found quite a few molecules with an amine on the end of a indole ring, but no diethylamide, I think I got confused with a few things.

ridillin, khat, ibogaine, and such a few of these things seem to have a not too highly complex indole ring with an attached amine and not too much more, but I haven't been able to find that diethylamide indole ring molecule yet, I don't know.

oh well
 
imachavel said:
on a side note, does anyone know what was considered the first organic molecule made by a life form? or was it a protein acid, and then a cellular structure? meaning it transitioned automatically into a multimolecular structure, and by that point couldn't be said to have been traced to one molecule. thanks
Click to expand...

The short answer is: No, nobody knows that.

One popular hypothesis is that the first organic compounds synthesized by life was RNA from component nucleotides. This is the 'RNA world' model and it has certain advantages. RNA can both store information and do chemistry. Importantly, RNAs can have self replicating ability.

Another popular model is the 'lipid first' hypothesis. In this model micelles formed by polar lipids and created a special compartment for reaction chemistry. This chemistry would tend to expand the micelle until it splits due to physical forces. Note that this can combine easily with the RNA world hypothesis.

Eventually these things may be created in the laboratory. There would be Science and Nature papers about it and it would put a whole new slant on the abiogenesis debate. (data usually helps with these kinds of debates:) For now, I think we must accept that we do not know what went down. We weren't there after all. I am optimistic that our cleverness will ultimately prevail on this issue though. Studying another planet in the early stages of the development of live would be helpful here.
 
yeah, it would, if only we could prove there's life in one of the oceans on one of the moons of mars, we could study cellular life, some people assume there's prokryotic or is it eukoryotic organisms living there. I don't see why if there's all that there couldn't be sea life as well. but who knows anyway, it'd be difficult I suppose without sunlight, then again there's sea life in our trenches.
 
I'm sorry, I meant to say Jupiter, I believe it's Europa that they were mainly looking at. That's interesting though, but a matter of time means they have to start digging over there before they can find anything anyway, I'm sure they'll find something in a matter of time, but a matter of time could be centuries or millenia over here.
 
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