Month: September 2022

COMMON BUNKUM. “We often hear in the scientific and even popular press that the ‘genetic code’ of some organism has been ‘cracked’ by genomics, which is of course total nonsense. The genetic code is not the nucleotide sequence of the genome, but rather the set of rules by which those nucleotides are translated into amino acids and by extension genes into proteins.“ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982216309174 View in LinkedIn

CIPHER NOT A CODE. “The code is actually closer to a cipher than a code, and individual species do not have a unique genetic code to be cracked; indeed one of the interesting characteristics of the code is that nearly all life shares exactly the same one, once called the ‘universal genetic code’.” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982216309174 View in LinkedIn

HIGHLY UNIFORM. “Understanding how this code originated and how it affects the molecular biology and evolution of life today are challenging problems, in part because it is so highly conserved — without variation to observe it is difficult to dissect the functional implications of different aspects of a character.” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982216309174 View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this first weekend contemplating the (almost) universal genetic code. While this is the configuration of inheritance on this planet, it is unlikely that it should be the same signature of life on other planets, or form a basis for the search for other life forms. On Earth, it has been a lucky accident, driven by the local physical conditions and material constraints of the planet. More than likely, there are thousands of other solutions to the same basic challenge of encoding inheritance. View in LinkedIn

AN EXTRAORDINARY INITIATIVE to re-green the world by wealthy philanthropists. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/meet-the-knepp-group-the-billionaires-dedicated-to-rewilding-the-environment-dgqrmxl9w View in LinkedIn

MOLECULAR EVOLUTION is a topic on its own. But how evolving molecules crossed the line to give rise to complex organizations that were self-reproducing, capable of evolving, and accrued intelligence is another issue. Both topics are at the heart of biology, but our understanding of them is slight to non-existent. View in LinkedIn

PREBIOTIC CALCULATIONS. "We have therefore argued in the past that prebiotic scenarios may be adequately described in terms of planet-scale random chemistry reactions. Based on a count of about 1 million molecule types for alkanes with up to 20 carbon atoms, it may be estimated that for compounds containing all CHNOPS atoms (Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Phosphorus and Sulfur) the number would be much larger than one billion." http://www.weizmann.ac.il/molgen/Lancet/sites/molgen.Lancet/files/uploads/shenhav_lancet_core.pdf View in LinkedIn

CRUDE GOOP. "The prebiotic molecules were relatively small and simple compared to the macromolecules that govern contemporary life. Moreover, as prebiotic molecules did not undergo the refinement and filtering of evolutionary processes, they lacked specificity and tuning towards a defined biochemical process." http://www.weizmann.ac.il/molgen/Lancet/sites/molgen.Lancet/files/uploads/shenhav_lancet_core.pdf View in LinkedIn

PRECURSOR. "In modern organisms, DNA is the major genetic material and protein is the major functional material, both seeming indispensible. Thus, there is a dilemma for the evolution of life: “Which came first, DNA or proteins?” The RNA world hypothesis provided a possible solution to this problem: in some early stage of life, there is neither DNA nor protein but only RNA, acting as both genetic material and functional material." https://lnkd.in/dev3536 View in LinkedIn

RNA FIRST WORLD. " The emergence of DNA in the RNA world: an in silico simulation study of genetic takeover. It is now popularly accepted that there was an “RNA world” in early evolution of life. This idea has a direct consequence that later on there should have been a takeover of genetic material – RNA by DNA." http://bmcevolbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12862-015-0548-1 View in LinkedIn