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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

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

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

SHEER LUCK. “It is tempting to think that a system so central to life should be elegant, but of course that’s not how evolution works; the genetic code was not designed by clever scientists, but rather built through a series of contingencies.” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982216309174 View in LinkedIn

THE FOUR INTO TWENTY. “The genetic code is a concept that captured the imaginations and drove much of the research of the first molecular biologists; almost immediately after the description of the double helix some very elegant models for how 4 ‘letters’ of DNA could encode 20 letters of protein were proposed.” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982216309174 View in LinkedIn

ARTIFICIAL LIFE is a topic that resembles the place of viruses and mobile genetic elements in biology: living in some twilight zone between definitions, with a quirky unexpectedness that comes from freaky variety. The real lesson is that human imagination is significantly limited in contrast to undirected variation. Enjoy this ride into the often funny side of evolution. View in LinkedIn

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE, the definition of life, and the separation between biomolecules and a living organism have confounded the most brilliant minds. Concepts of continuums are a compromise. Thus, no surprises, the artificial life scientists, with their evolving code, have poked fun at our inability to decide by being deliberately provocative. And why not? View in LinkedIn

MOLECULAR FITNESS. "It seems that the instability of the transition stems from the “counterattack” of the four-gene RNA-based individuals, which though lacking a better genetic material, did not have to endure a shortage of building blocks for ribozymes." http://bmcevolbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12862-015-0548-1 View in LinkedIn

DISRUPTIVE JUMP. "However, since genetic material carries genetic information, the “source code” of all living activities, it is actually reasonable to question the plausibility of such a “revolutionary” transition." http://bmcevolbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12862-015-0548-1 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