Dna Replication Quotes

For more than three thousand million years, DNA has been the only replicator worth talking about in the world. But it does not necessarily hold these monopoly rights for all time. Whenever conditions arise in which a new kind of replicator can make copies of itself, the new replicators will tend to take over, and start a new kind of evolution of their own.

[...] Deep within, her female organs began to contract and release. She felt the path of his seed and now in her mind she could see a golden trail. How was this even possible? Dear God, how was any of this even possible? Now she could see the chrysalis of her genetic material, a bright burning light at the end of a tunnel. The imagery made her smile then laugh. She could see his sperm, like lightning [...] If his DNA wanted to make a child, why wouldn't it move at an accelerated rate? She felt the moment when her egg received his sperm and their child began all the fantastic portentous crazy cell replications. [...]

[...] there is no need to pay homage to the product of selfish genes - as though self-replicating DNA from the old Darwinian era were some sort of secular equivalent to Providence.

Different sorts of survival machine appear very varied on the outside and in their internal organs. An octopus is nothing like a mouse, and both are quite different from an oak tree. Yet in their fundamental chemistry they are rather uniform, and, in particular, the replicators that they bear, the genes, are basically the same kind of molecule in all of us—from bacteria to elephants. We are all survival machines for the same kind of replicator—molecules called DNA— but there are many different ways of making a living in the world, and the replicators have built a vast range of machines to exploit them. A monkey is a machine that preserves genes up trees, a fish is a machine that preserves genes in the water; there is even a small worm that preserves genes in German beer mats. DNA works in mysterious ways.

The fundamental biological variant is DNA. That is why Mendel's definition of the gene as the unvarying bearer of hereditary traits, its chemical identification by Avery (confirmed by Hershey), and the elucidation by Watson and Crick of the structural basis of its replicative invariance, are without any doubt the most important discoveries ever made in biology. To this must be added the theory of natural selection, whose certainty and full significance were established only by those later theories.

Twenty years of medical research has shown that childhood adversity literally gets under our skin, changing people in ways that can endure in their bodies for decades. It can tip a child’s developmental trajectory and affect physiology. It can trigger chronic inflammation and hormonal changes that can last a lifetime. It can alter the way DNA is read and how cells replicate, and it can dramatically increase the risk for heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes—even Alzheimer’s.

[W]e may now be on the threshold of a new kind of genetic takeover. DNA replicators built 'survival machines' for themselves — the bodies of living organisms including ourselves. As part of their equipment, bodies evolved onboard computers — brains. Brains evolved the capacity to communicate with other brains by means of language and cultural traditions. But the new milieu of cultural tradition opens up new possibilities for self-replicating entities. The new replicators are not DNA and they are not clay crystals. They are patterns of information that can thrive only in brains or the artificially manufactured products of brains — books, computers, and so on. But, given that brains, books and computers exist, these new replicators, which I called memes to distinguish them from genes, can propagate themselves from brain to brain, from brain to book, from book to brain, from brain to computer, from computer to computer.

What, after all, is so special about genes? The answer is that they are replicators. The laws of physics are supposed to be true all over the accessible universe. Are there any principles of biology which are likely to have similar universal validity? When astronauts voyage to distant planets and look for life, they can expect to find creatures too strange and unearthly for us to imagine. But is there anything which must be true of all life, wherever it is found, and whatever the basis of its chemistry? If forms of life exist whose chemistry is based on silicon rather than carbon, or ammonia rather than water, if creatures are discovered which boil to death at -100 degrees centigrade, if a form of life is found which is not based on chemistry at all, but on electronic reverberating circuits, will there still be any general principle which is true of all life? Obviously I do not know but, if I had to bet, I would put my money on one fundamental principle. This is the law that all life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities. The gene, the DNA molecule, happens to be the replicating entity which prevails on our own planet. There may be others. If there are, provided certain conditions are met, they will almost inevitably tend to become the basis for an evolutionary process.

By self-replicating, DNA finds respite from entropy, persisting not in matter but in information.

The word replicator is purposely defined in a general way, so that it does not even have to refer to DNA.

Most of the DNA molecules in our bodies are dead-end replicators. They may be the ancestors of a few dozen generations of mitotic replication, but they will definitely not be long-term ancestors.

DNA doesn’t do much work. It mainly stays at home in the nucleus of our cells, not venturing forth. Its primary activity is protecting the information it encodes and occasionally replicating itself.

[W]e may now be on the threshold of a new kind of genetic takeover. DNA replicators built 'survival machines' for themselves — the bodies of living organisms including ourselves. As part of their equipment, bodies evolved onboard computers — brains. Brains evolved the capacity to communicate with other brains by means of language and cultural traditions. But the new milieu of cultural tradition opens up new possibilities for self-replicating entities. The new replicators are not DNA and they are not 158 The Blind Watchmaker clay crystals. They are patterns of information that can thrive only in brains or the artificially manufactured products of brains — books, computers, and so on. But, given that brains, books and computers exist, these new replicators, which I called memes to distinguish them from genes, can propagate themselves from brain to brain, from brain to book, from book to brain, from brain to computer, from computer to computer.

Imagine if DNA never made mistakes, always replicating and inheriting with perfect fidelity. What would life on Earth become?” “In that case, life would no longer exist on Earth. The basis of the evolution of life is mutation, caused by mistakes in DNA.” “Society is the same way. Its evolution and vitality is rooted in the myriad urges and desires departing from the morality laid out by the majority. A fish can’t live in perfectly clear water. A society where no one ever makes mistakes in ethics is, in reality, dead.

An active replicator is any replicator whose nature has some influence over its probability of being copied. For example a DNA molecule, via protein synthesis, exerts phenotypic effects which influence whether it is copied: this is what natural selection is all about.

viruses to ‘infect’ any DNA-based cells with which they come into contact. The virus inserts its message into the genetic material of the host organism’s germ cells (that’s what so-called endogenous retroviruses do), and the cell obligingly replicates it and passes the message on to all future generations

Scientists were able to replicate this process—successfully replacing a viral sequence with other types of DNA and inserting that DNA in the target cell—making “genomic surgery” possible. CRISPR rapidly replaced older methods of genetic engineering, making gene editing cleaner, more accurate, and much faster.

Returning, for clarification, to DNA as our archetypal replicator, its consequences on the world are of two important types. Firstly, it makes copies of itself, making use of the cellular apparatus of replicases, etc. Secondly, it has effects on the outside world, which influence the chances of its copies’ surviving.

A DNA molecule in the germ-line of an individual who happens to die young, or who otherwise fails to reproduce, should not be called a dead-end replicator. Such germ-lines are, as it turns out, terminal. They fail in what may metaphorically be called their aspiration to immortality. Differential failure of this kind is what we mean by natural selection.

Another way is via genetic engineering. Here the germ is inserted into plasmid that has been manipulated by scientists. This type of plasmid is circular segments of DNA extracted from bacteria to serve as a vector. Scientists can add multiple genes and whatever genes they want into this plasmid. In case of vaccines, this includes a genetic piece of the vaccine germ and normally a gene for antibiotic resistance. This means that when the toxic gene is cultured inside the yeast, it has been designed with a new genetic code that makes it resistant to the antibiotic it’s coded for. The gene-plasmid combo is inserted into a yeast cell to be replicated. When the yeast replicates, the DNA from the plasmid is reproduced as a part of the yeast DNA. Once enough cells have been replicated, the genetic material in the new and improved yeast cell is extracted and put into the vaccine. Examples of this vaccine are the acellular pertussis and hepatitis B vaccines. One thing that doesn’t seem to concern scientists is the fact that the manmade genetic combination becomes the vaccine component. This mixture of intended and unintended genetic information may cause our immune system to overreact. This can be especially complicated for a child with compromised immune system. Another concern is that this new genetic code can become integrated with our own genetic material. Yeast, for instance, is very much like human DNA. It shares about one third of our proteins.

Normal cells could acquire these cancer-causing mutations through four mechanisms. The mutations could be caused by environmental insults, such as tobacco smoke, ultraviolet light, or X-rays—agents that attack DNA and change its chemical structure. Mutations could arise from spontaneous errors during cell division (every time DNA is replicated in a cell, there’s a minor chance that the copying process generates an error—an A switched to a T, G, or C, say). Mutant cancer genes could be inherited from parents, thereby causing hereditary cancer syndromes such as retinoblastoma and breast cancer that coursed through families. Or the genes could be carried into the cells via viruses, the professional gene carriers and gene swappers of the microbial world. In all four cases, the result converged on the same pathological process: the inappropriate activation or inactivation of genetic pathways that controlled growth, causing the malignant, dysregulated cellular division that was characteristic of cancer.

The other side of this coin is that viruses may be genes who have broken loose from ‘colonies’ such as ourselves. Viruses consist of pure DNA (or a related self-replicating molecule) surrounded by a protein jacket. They are all parasitic. The suggestion is that they have evolved from ‘rebel’ genes who escaped, and now travel from body to body directly through the air, rather than via the more conventional vehicles—sperms and eggs. If this is true, we might just as well regard ourselves as colonies of viruses!

Viruses are just single strands of RNA or DNA lying around. They can’t replicate until and unless they find a cell to hijack. So they aren’t alive, but they also aren’t not alive. Once a virus invades a cell, it does what life does—it uses energy to make more of itself. Viruses remind me that life is more of a continuum than a duality. Sure, viruses aren’t living, because they need host cells to replicate. But then again, many bacteria also can’t survive without hosts, and stranger still, many hosts can’t survive without bacteria.

Why has DNA had a monopoly on molecular symbolism over the past few hundreds of millions of years? In its physical manifestation, DNA is extremely structurally stable, unlike RNA. This has helped DNA remain the symbolic structure of choice throughout evolution. However, while the DNA in our cells and the cells of other living organisms is now very stable, the structure of DNA did not start out that way at the very origins of life. Random shuffling and re-sorting of molecules, through the irreversible and probabilistic process of natural selection, generated molecules resembling nucleotide bases. Through subsequent shuffling, successful DNA components and sequences survived and replicated.

The fundamental units of natural selection, the basic things that survive or fail to survive, that form lineages of identical copies with occasional random mutations, are called replicators. DNA molecules are replicators. They generally, for reasons that we shall come to, gang together into large communal survival machines or ‘vehicles’. The vehicles that we know best are individual bodies like our own. A body, then, is not a replicator; it is a vehicle. I must emphasize this, since the point has been misunderstood. Vehicles don’t replicate themselves; they work to propagate their replicators. Replicators don’t behave, don’t perceive the world, don’t catch prey or run away from predators; they make vehicles that do all those things.

During replication, those nucleotides are read and translated into linear strings of amino acids (which make up enzymes and proteins) by a rule-governed process. The set of rules is called the genetic code. The DNA contains the sequence, but the code is implemented by RNA molecules. Certain DNA sequences, called codons, which are made up of three nucleotides, symbolize certain amino acid sequences. There is no ambiguity, but there is also not just one codon for each amino acid. For example, six different codons symbolize arginine, but only one codon symbolizes tryptophan. But the components of the DNA sequence (the symbol) do not resemble the components of the amino acid sequence (its meaning), just as the words that symbolize the components of a recipe do not resemble the components themselves.

Until now. You and I are a mis-Match, Ellie, because I hacked into your servers to manipulate our results.” “Rubbish,” Ellie said, secretly balking at the notion. She folded her arms indignantly. “Our servers are more secure than almost every major international company across the world. We receive so many hacking attempts, yet no one gets in. We have the best software and team money can buy to protect us against people like you.” “You’re right about some of that. But what your system didn’t take into account was your own vanity. Do you remember receiving an email some time ago with the subject ‘Businesswoman of the Year Award’? You couldn’t help but open it.” Ellie vaguely remembered reading the email as it had been sent to her private account, which only a few people had knowledge of. “Attached to it was a link you clicked on and that opened to nothing, didn’t it?” Matthew continued. “Well, it wasn’t nothing to me, because your click released a tiny, undetectable piece of tailor-made malware that allowed me to remotely access your network and work my way around your files. Everything you had access to, I had access to. Then I simply replicated my strand of DNA to mirror image yours, sat back and waited for you to get in touch. That’s why I came for a job interview, to learn a little more about the programming and systems you use. Please thank your head of personnel for leaving me alone in the room for a few moments with her laptop while she searched for a working camera to take my head shot. That was a huge help in accessing your network. Oh, and tell her to frisk interviewees for lens deflectors next time—they’re pocket-sized gadgets that render digital cameras useless.

If the information coded in DNA were written down, it would make a giant library consisting of an estimated 900 volumes of encyclopedias consisting of 500 pages each. A very interesting dilemma emerges at this point: DNA can replicate itself only with the help of some specialized proteins (enzymes). However, the synthesis of these enzymes can be realized only by the information coded in DNA. As they both depend on each other, they have to exist at the same time for replication. This brings the scenario that life originated by itself to a deadlock. Prof. Leslie Orgel, an evolutionist of repute from the University of San Diego, California, confesses this fact in the September 1994 issue of the Scientific American magazine: It is extremely improbable that proteins and nucleic acids, both of which are structurally complex, arose spontaneously in the same place at the same time. Yet it also seems impossible to have one without the other. And so, at first glance, one might have to conclude that life could never, in fact, have originated by chemical means.6 No doubt, if it is impossible for life to have originated from natural causes, then it has to be accepted that life was "created" in a supernatural way. This fact explicitly invalidates the theory of evolution, whose main purpose is to deny creation.

I described living cells as being crammed full of protein molecules. Acting individually or in small assemblies, they perform reiterated molecular processes that can be regarded, I argued, as a form of computation. Moreover, large numbers of proteins linked into huge interacting networks operate, in effect, like circuits of electrical or electronic devices. Networks of this kind are the basis for the animate wanderings of single cells and their ability to choose what to do next. Here I have broadened the view to encompass multiple cells - 'societies' of cells. Through a variety of strategies - including diffusive hormones, electrical signals, and mechanical interactions - the computational networks of individual cells are linked. During evolution, cells acquired the capacity to work together in social groups; it became advantageous for most cells to become highly specialised. Liver cells, muscle cells, skin cells, and so on abandoned their opportunities for unlimited replication. They began the communal expansion of interlinked abilities that led to the plants and animals we see around us today. But the basis of this diversification of cell chemistry was yet another form of computation - one that operates on DNA. Control mechanisms, again based on protein switches, created extensive but subtle modifications of the core genetic information.

Suppose you entered a boat race. One hundred rowers, each in a separate rowboat, set out on a ten-mile race along a wide and slow-moving river. The first to cross the finish line will win $10,000. Halfway into the race, you’re in the lead. But then, from out of nowhere, you’re passed by a boat with two rowers, each pulling just one oar. No fair! Two rowers joined together into one boat! And then, stranger still, you watch as that rowboat is overtaken by a train of three such rowboats, all tied together to form a single long boat. The rowers are identical septuplets. Six of them row in perfect synchrony while the seventh is the coxswain, steering the boat and calling out the beat for the rowers. But those cheaters are deprived of victory just before they cross the finish line, for they in turn are passed by an enterprising group of twenty-four sisters who rented a motorboat. It turns out that there are no rules in this race about what kinds of vehicles are allowed. That was a metaphorical history of life on Earth. For the first billion years or so of life, the only organisms were prokaryotic cells (such as bacteria). Each was a solo operation, competing with others and reproducing copies of itself. But then, around 2 billion years ago, two bacteria somehow joined together inside a single membrane, which explains why mitochondria have their own DNA, unrelated to the DNA in the nucleus.35 These are the two-person rowboats in my example. Cells that had internal organelles could reap the benefits of cooperation and the division of labor (see Adam Smith). There was no longer any competition between these organelles, for they could reproduce only when the entire cell reproduced, so it was “one for all, all for one.” Life on Earth underwent what biologists call a “major transition.”36 Natural selection went on as it always had, but now there was a radically new kind of creature to be selected. There was a new kind of vehicle by which selfish genes could replicate themselves. Single-celled eukaryotes were wildly successful and spread throughout the oceans.

Flagyl was clearly effective in the treatment of Lyme disease. But how did it work? As early as 1967 The British Journal of Venereal Diseases had published a study showing Flagyl to be effective in certain cases of syphilis, and that it had an effect on bacterial DNA and RNA irrespective of bacterial replication. Could this be the mechanism of Flagyl’s action against Burrelia burgdorferi? The key to Flagyl’s effectiveness on Lyme, however, was not reported until several months after my study was presented. Dr. O. Brorson, a Norwegian researcher, published a paper on Flagyl and its effect on the cystic forms of Lyme disease six months after I presented my research. The cystic form of Lyme disease, it turns out, is one mechanism that Borrelia burgdorferi utilizes to persist in the body. Dr. Brorson reported that Flagyl would cause Borrelia cysts to rupture, and he went on to publish that he could see under the microscope the cell wall forms of Borrelia burgdorferi (helical/spiral–shaped organisms) transform into cystic forms, and under proper conditions convert back into mobile spirochetes. A review of the medical literature revealed that these cystic forms had, in fact, been reported in syphilis. No one had clearly made the link between Borrelia and a cystic form of the organism that could persist for long periods of time in a dormant state. It was a highly evolved survival mechanism that would allow the organism to reemerge when conditions were optimal. My patient, Mary, had been treated initially with Plaquenil, which according to Dr. Brorson’s research also affects the cystic forms, yet it appeared that it was not powerful enough to destroy the dormant forms and prevent a relapse, or to prevent her from passing it on to her fetus. She had also been treated with drugs that addressed the cell wall and intracellular forms of Lyme. Although Plaquenil has some effect on cystic forms, it is often primarily used in antibiotic regimens with Lyme disease to alkalize the intracellular compartment, modulate autoimmune reactions, and affect essential enzymes necessary for bacterial replication. Clearly, however, it is not powerful enough to destroy enough of the

Neo-Darwinism and Mutations In order to find a solution, Darwinists advanced the "Modern Synthetic Theory," or as it is more commonly known, Neo-Darwinism, at the end of the 1930s. Neo- Darwinism added mutations, which are distortions formed in the genes of living beings due to such external factors as radiation or replication errors, as the "cause of favorable variations" in addition to natural mutation. Today, the model that stands for evolution in the world is Neo-Darwinism. The theory maintains that millions of living beings formed as a result of a process whereby numerous complex organs of these organisms (e.g., ears, eyes, lungs, and wings) underwent "mutations," that is, genetic disorders. Yet, there is an outright scientific fact that totally undermines this theory: Mutations do not cause living beings to develop; on the contrary, they are always harmful. The reason for this is very simple: DNA has a very complex structure, and random effects can only harm it. The American geneticist B. G. Ranganathan explains this as follows: First, genuine mutations are very rare in nature. Secondly, most mutations are harmful since they are random, rather than orderly changes in the structure of genes; any random change in a highly ordered system will be for the worse, not for the better. For example, if an earthquake were to shake a highly ordered structure such as a building, there would be a random change in the framework of the building which, in all probability, would not be an improvement. Not surprisingly, no mutation example, which is useful, that is, which is observed to develop the genetic code, has been observed so far. All mutations have proved to be harmful. It was understood that mutation, which is presented as an "evolutionary mechanism," is actually a genetic occurrence that harms living things, and leaves them disabled. (The most common effect of mutation on human beings is cancer.) Of course, a destructive mechanism cannot be an "evolutionary mechanism." Natural selection, on the other hand, "can do nothing by itself," as Darwin also accepted. This fact shows us that there is no "evolutionary mechanism" in nature. Since no evolutionary mechanism exists, no such any imaginary process called "evolution" could have taken place.

Sumerian culture -- the society based on me -- was another manifestation of the metavirus. Except that in this case, it was in a linguistic form rather than DNA." "Excuse me," Mr. Lee says. "You are saying that civilization started out as an infection?" "Civilization in its primitive form, yes. Each me was a sort of virus, kicked out by the metavirus principle. Take the example of the bread-baking me. Once that me got into society, it was a self-sustaining piece of information. It's a simple question of natural selection: people who know how to bake bread will live better and be more apt to reproduce than people who don't know how. Naturally, they will spread the me, acting as hosts for this self-replicating piece of information. That makes it a virus. Sumerian culture -- with its temples full of me -- was just a collection of successful viruses that had accumulated over the millennia. It was a franchise operation, except it had ziggurats instead of golden arches, and clay tablets instead of three-ring binders. "The Sumerian word for 'mind,' or 'wisdom,' is identical to the word for 'ear.' That's all those people were: ears with bodies attached. Passive receivers of information. But Enki was different. Enki was an en who just happened to be especially good at his job. He had the unusual ability to write new me -- he was a hacker. He was, actually, the first modern man, a fully conscious human being, just like us. "At some point, Enki realized that Sumer was stuck in a rut. People were carrying out the same old me all the time, not coming up with new ones, not thinking for themselves. I suspect that he was lonely, being one of the few -- perhaps the only -- conscious human being in the world. He realized that in order for the human race to advance, they had to be delivered from the grip of this viral civilization. "So he created the nam-shub of Enki, a countervirus that spread along the same routes as the me and the metavirus. It went into the deep structures of the brain and reprogrammed them. Henceforth, no one could understand the Sumerian language, or any other deep structure-based language. Cut off from our common deep structures, we began to develop new languages that had nothing in common with each other. The me no longer worked and it was not possible to write new me. Further transmission of the metavirus was blocked." "Why didn't everyone starve from lack of bread, having lost the bread-making me?" Uncle Enzo says. "Some probably did. Everyone else had to use their higher brains and figure it out. So you might say that the nam-shub of Enki was the beginnings of human consciousness -- when we first had to think for ourselves. It was the beginning of rational religion, too, the first time that people began to think about abstract issues like God and Good and Evil. That's where the name Babel comes from. Literally it means 'Gate of God.' It was the gate that allowed God to reach the human race. Babel is a gateway in our minds, a gateway that was opened by the nam-shub of Enki that broke us free from the metavirus and gave us the ability to think -- moved us from a materialistic world to a dualistic world -- a binary world -- with both a physical and a spiritual component.

cell, for example, has about 2 m of DNA—a length about 250,000 times greater than the cell’s diameter. Yet before the cell can divide to form genetically identical daughter cells, all of this DNA must be copied, or replicated, and then the two copies must be separated so that each daughter cell ends up with a complete genome. The replication and distribution of so much DNA is manageable because the DNA molecules are packaged into structures called chromosomes, so named because they take up certain dyes used in microscopy (from the Greek chroma, color, and soma, body) (Figure 12.3). Each eukaryotic chromosome consists of one very long, linear DNA molecule associated with many proteins (see Figure 6.9). The DNA molecule carries several hundred to a few thousand genes, the units of information that specify an organism’s inherited traits. The associated proteins maintain the structure of the chromosome and help control the activity of the genes. Together, the entire complex of DNA and proteins that is the building material of chromosomes is referred to as chromatin. As you will soon see, the chromatin of a chromosome varies in its degree of condensation during the process of cell division. Every eukaryotic species has a characteristic number of chromosomes in each cell nucleus. For example, the nuclei of human somatic cells (all body cells except the reproductive cells) each contain 46 chromosomes, made up of two sets of 23, one set inherited from each parent. Reproductive cells, or gametes—sperm and eggs—have half as many chromosomes as somatic cells, or one set of 23 chromosomes in humans. The Figure 12.4 A highly condensed, duplicated human chromosome (SEM). Circle one sister chromatid of the chromosome in this micrograph. DRAW IT Sister chromatids Centromere 0.5μm number of chromosomes in somatic cells varies widely among species: 18 in cabbage plants, 48 in chimpanzees, 56 in elephants, 90 in hedgehogs, and 148 in one species of alga. We’ll now consider how these chromosomes behave during cell division. Distribution of Chromosomes During Eukaryotic Cell Division When a cell is not dividing, and even as it replicates its DNA in preparation for cell division, each chromosome is in the form of a long, thin chromatin fiber. After DNA replication, however, the chromosomes condense as a part of cell division: Each chromatin fiber becomes densely coiled and folded, making the chromosomes much shorter and so thick that we can see them with a light microscope. Each duplicated chromosome has two sister chromatids, which are joined copies of the original chromosome (Figure 12.4). The two chromatids, each containing an identical DNA molecule, are initially attached all along their lengths by protein complexes called cohesins; this attachment is known as sister chromatid cohesion. Each sister chromatid has a centromere, a region containing

Listen to this incredible explanation by one of atheism’s champions, Richard Dawkins, of Oxford: In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at the bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no other good. Nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is. And we dance to its music.5

chromosomes. Normal aging happens because the chromosomes don’t regenerate all the way to their ends during the DNA replication cycle. Telomeres protect the information in those chromosomes; telomerase is the enzyme that activates the telomeres to replicate and replace themselves as they fall off. You have extra-long telomeres protecting your chromosomes, which might have already been genetic, or it might have come with the porphyria mutation when you were infected. We think that infection locked onto your DNA and has super-promoted your telomerase. So even if your telomeres were inclined to fall off as they normally would – a process that would allow the chromosomes to alter and change – your rocket-fuel telomerase makes new telomeres so fast there’s no time for apoptosis.

One possible explanation would be that quite randomly the twin with schizophrenia had spontaneously developed mutations in genes in certain cells, for example in the brain. This could happen if the DNA replication machinery had malfunctioned at some point during brain development. These changes might increase his or her susceptibility to a disorder. This is theoretically possible, but scientists have failed to find much data to support this theory.

There is no such limit with DNA replication. The DNA reproduction system is indifferent to the content or function of what is copied

Life, as we know it on earth, appears as a synthesis of two macromolecular systems. The proteins, because of their versatility and chemical reactivity, do all the work but are unable to replicate themselves in any simple way. The nucleic acids seem tailor-made for replication but can achieve rather little else compared with the more elaborate and better equipped proteins. RNA and DNA are the dumb blondes of the biomolecular world, fit mainly for reproduction (with a little help from proteins) but of little use for much of the really demanding work. The problem of the origin of life would be a great deal easier to approach if there were only one family of macromolecules, capable of doing both jobs, replication and catalysis, but life as we know it employs two families. This may well be due to the fact that no macromolecule exists which could conveniently carry out both functions, because of the limitations of organic chemistry; because, that is, of the nature of things.

One other thing to note is that genetically, we are not entirely human – around 8 per cent of our genome has not been inherited from an ancestor at all. Instead, it’s been forcibly implanted into our DNA by other entities trying to enact their own replication. Think of a virus as a kind of hijacker, who breaks into a factory and replaces the normal plans with their own, so that the factory starts producing according to the hijacker’s wishes rather than the factory owner’s.

Initially, von Neumann was referring to physical machines. The idea that he first presented in a lecture in Pasadena, California, in the 1940s was very complicated. Stephen Levy, in his book, Artificial Life, describes the basic components that made up von Neumann’s theoretical self-replicating machines, which he called kinematics (but which are mostly called von Neumann machines today). The system consisted of raw materials in a lake, along with four components required for this self-replicating machine labelled: A, B, C, and D. Component A was like a factory, which scooped up raw materials from the lake and used them in ways that were dictated by some data, which we might call a computer program today. Component B was a duplicator that read and copied information from the first machine to its duplicates, in the same way that DNA is passed down from parents to children. Component C was like a computer and controlled who did what, like a central processing unit. Component D was the actual data, or instructions, which in those days von Neumann envisioned as a very long tape.

Reintroducing history into evolutionary thinking has already begun at other biological scales. The cell, once an emblem of replicable units, turns out to be the historical product of symbiosis among free- living bacteria. Even DNA turns out to have more history in its amino- acid sequences than once thought. Human DNA is part virus; viral encoun- ters mark historical moments in making us human. Genome research has taken up the challenge of identifying encounter in the making of DNA. Population science cannot avoid history for much longer. Fungi are ideal guides. Fungi have always been recalcitrant to the iron cage of self- replication. Like bacteria, some are given to exchanging genes in nonreproductive encounters (“horizontal gene transfer”); many also seem averse to keeping their genetic material sorted out as “individ- uals” and “species,” not to speak of “populations.” When researchers studied the fruiting bodies of what they thought of as a species, the ex- pensive Tibetan “caterpillar fungus,” they found many species entan- gled together. When they looked into the filaments of Armillaria root rot, they found genetic mosaics that confused the identification of an individual. Meanwhile, fungi are famous for their symbiotic attach- ments. Lichen are fungi living together with algae and cyanobacteria. I have been discussing fungal collaborations with plants, but fungi live with animals as well. For example, Macrotermes termites digest their food only through the help of fungi. The termites chew up wood, but they cannot digest it. Instead, they build “fungus gardens” in which the chewed- up wood is digested by Termitomyces fungi, producing edible nutrients. Researcher Scott Turner points out that, while you might say that the termites farm the fungus, you could equally say that the fungus farms the termites. Termitomyces uses the environment of the termite mound to outcompete other fungi; meanwhile, the fungus regulates the mound, keeping it open, by throwing up mushrooms annually, cre- ating a colony- saving disturbance in termite mound- building.

A virus is a small capsule made of membranes and proteins. The capsule contains one or more strands of DNA or RNA, which are long molecules that contain the software program for making a copy of the virus. Some biologists classify viruses as “life forms,” because they are not strictly known to be alive. Viruses are ambiguously alive, neither alive nor dead. They carry on their existence in the borderlands between life and nonlife. Viruses that are outside cells merely sit there; nothing happens. They are dead. They can even form crystals. Virus particles that lie around in blood or mucus may seem dead, but the particles are waiting for something to come along. They have a sticky surface. If a cell comes along and touches the virus and the stickiness of the virus matches the stickiness of the cell, then the virus clings to the cell. The cell feels the virus sticking to it and enfolds the virus and drags it inside. Once the virus enters the cell, it becomes a Trojan horse. It switches on and begins to replicate.

The combination of amino acids into proteins and of nucleic acids into strings of RNA established the basic paradigm of biology. Strings of RNA (and later DNA) that self-replicated (Epoch Two) provided a digital method to record the results of evolutionary experiments. Later on, the evolution of a species that combined rational thought (Epoch Three) with an opposable appendage (the thumb) caused a fundamental paradigm shift from biology to technology (Epoch Four). The upcoming primary paradigm shift will be from biological thinking to a hybrid combining biological and nonbiological thinking (Epoch Five), which will include “biologically inspired” processes resulting from the reverse engineering of biological brains.

By the 1960s, Howard Temin had determined that retrovirus genomes were composed of RNA, and observed that replication was inhibited by actinomycin D, which inhibits DNA synthesis, and led to the proposal of the concept of reverse transcription. In 1969, Huebner and Todaro proposed the viral oncogene hypothesis – namely, the transmission of viral and oncogenic information as genetic elements, rather than as a pathogenic response to a virus. David Baltimore at MIT independently replicated Temin’s work, and the pair published a joint article in Nature on June 27, 1970 that described their discoveries. And in 1981, the

Nearly half of human DNA is made of autonomously replicating, highly repetitive, dangerously jumping, pure genetic nonsense that the body dutifully copies and maintains in each one of its billions of cells.

When a bacterium makes a copy of its DNA, no new atoms are created, but a new set of atoms are arranged in the same pattern as the original, thereby copying the information. In other words, we can think of life as a self-replicating information-processing system whose information (software) determines both its behavior and the blueprints for its hardware.

Research in resonance and sound shows that if living beings operate or resonate on similar vibrations, one can affect the other. Yet another set of studies hints that there is sharing of energy and intention through the upper range of the electromagnetic spectrum. Replicated studies indicate a significant decrease in gamma rays from patients during alternative healing practices. This suggests that the body’s gamma emitter, a form of potassium, regulates the surrounding electromagnetic field.93 Gamma rays materialize when matter (such as an electron) and its antimatter counterpart (a positron) annihilate on impact. As we have seen, antimatter has the opposite charge and spin of matter. When electrons and positrons collide, they release specific types of gamma rays. Years ago, Nikola Tesla suggested that the gamma rays found on earth emanate from the zero-point field.94 Though it appears as a vacuum, this field is actually quite full, serving as a crossroads for virtual and subatomic particles and fields. When we perform healing, it is possible that we are actually tapping into this zero-point or universal field, shifting its power through intention. Still another theory is that we are accessing torsion fields, fields that travel at 109 times the speed of light. These fields are hypothesized as conveying information without transmitting energy and with no time lapse.95 Part of this suggested effect is based on the definition of time as a vector of the magnetic field. When torsion and gravitational fields function in opposing directions, the torsion field can conceivably alter the magnetic functions, and therefore the vector of time. When superimposed on a specific area in a gravitational field, it might also reduce the effect of gravity in that spot.96 These torsion fields have been researched by Peter Gariaev and Vladimir Poponin, Russian scientists who discovered that photons travel along the DNA molecule in spirals rather than along a linear pathway, which shows that DNA has the ability to bend light around itself. Some physicists believe that this twisting or “torsion-shaped” energy is an intelligent light, emanating from higher dimensions and different from electromagnetic radiation, giving rise to DNA. Many researchers now believe that these torsion waves are consciousness, composing the soul and serving as the precursor to DNA.97

be able to repair.  But they’re doing it more smoothly.  As if by design.  That’s what was so astonishing when we saw it before.  But the bacterium is different.  These are replicating even faster.  It’s as if once the DNA was infused into the genes of the bacteria, something happened.” “I don’t know if the Chinese changed something during their extraction process, even inadvertently.  But if they did, it could explain the difference in cellular function.  In fact, even if it wasn’t something during extraction, just the transfer from one life form to another could be enough to trigger a modification.  Or a mutation.  Even a single base pair

Researchers have e-mailed text files across the Internet, uploaded them to DNA replicators, and then dropped the DNA copy into “blank” cells, which have then started up and become identical versions of the original organism. It still blows my mind that you can e-mail life like you can cat pictures. Any day now we’ll read about some researchers actually e-mailing the cat across the Internet.

problems.” “There might be more than a small group of people, Nancy. If the technology can now be applied commercially, it means it’s been around for longer.” “What’s your point, Jasper?” “We’ve had our own government genome projects investigating DNA sequencing, composition, replication, repair and gene therapy for decades.

And it occurred to me that it had been, all along, about copies, nothing else. All of it, this entire flaming universe was about copying itself before it died, that’s all it was. And we were there in the middle of it, as blind to the machinery inside of us as we were deaf to the machinery of galaxies swirling in circles above us.

Although the nucleus might have been recognized by Antonie van Leeuwenhoek in the late 17th century, it was not until 1831 that it was reported as a specific structure in orchid epidermal cells by a Scottish botanist, Robert Brown (better known for recognizing ‘Brownian movement’ of pollen grains in water). In 1879, Walther Flemming observed that the nucleus broke down into small fragments at cell division, followed by re-formation of the fragments called chromosomes to make new nuclei in the daughter cells. It was not until 1902 that Walter Sutton and Theodor Boveri independently linked chromosomes directly to mammalian inheritance. Thomas Morgan’s work with fruit flies (Drosophila) at the start of the 20th century showed specific characters positioned along the length of the chromosomes, followed by the realization by Oswald Avery in 1944 that the genetic material was DNA. Some nine years later, James Watson and Francis Crick showed the structure of DNA to be a double helix, for which they shared the Nobel Prize in 1962 with Maurice Wilkins, whose laboratory had provided the evidence that led to the discovery. Rosalind Franklin, whose X-ray diffraction images of DNA from the Wilkins lab had been the key to DNA structure, died of cancer aged 37 in 1958, and Nobel Prizes are not awarded posthumously. Watson and Crick published the classic double helix model in 1953. The final piece in the jigsaw of DNA structure was produced by Watson with the realization that the pairing of the nucleotide bases, adenine with thymine and guanine with cytosine, not only provided the rungs holding the twisting ladder of DNA together, but also provided a code for accurate replication and a template for protein assembly. Crick continued to study and elucidate the base pairing required for coding proteins, and this led to the fundamental ‘dogma’ that ‘DNA makes RNA and RNA makes protein’. The discovery of DNA structure marked an enormous advance in biology, probably the most significant since Darwin’s publication of On the Origin of Species .

The actual mechanics of cell division, according to Dick McIntosh at the University of Denver, require significantly more instructions than it takes to build a moon rocket or supercomputer. First of all, the cell needs to duplicate all of its molecules, that is DNA, RNA, proteins, lipids, etc. At the organelle level, several hundred mitochondria, large areas of ER, new Golgi bodies, cytoskeletal structures, and ribosomes by the million all need to be duplicated so that the daughter cells have enough resources to grow and, in turn, divide themselves. All these processes make up the ‘cell cycle’. Some cells will divide on a daily basis, others live for decades without dividing. The cell cycle is divided into phases, starting with interphase, the period between cell divisions (about 23 hours), and mitosis (M phase), the actual process of separating the original into two daughter cells (about 1 hour). Interphase is further split into three distinct periods: gap 1 (G1, 4–6 hours), a synthesis phase (S, 12 hours), and gap 2 (G2, 4–6 hours). Generally, cells continue to grow throughout interphase, but DNA replication is restricted to the S phase. At the end of G1 there is a checkpoint. If nutrient and energy levels are insufficient for DNA synthesis, the cell is diverted into a phase called G0. In 2001 Tim Hunt, Paul Nurse, and Leeland Hartwell received the Nobel Prize for their work in discovering how the cell cycle is controlled. Tim Hunt found a set of proteins called cyclins, which accumulate during specific stages of the cell cycle. Once the right level is reached, the cell is ‘allowed’ to progress to the next stage and the cyclins are destroyed. Cyclins then start to build up again, keeping a score of the progress at each point of the cycle, and only allowing progression to the next stage if the correct cyclin level has been reached.

DNA subtly changes over time via the genetic equivalents of typos—spelling mistakes which slip through due to inaccurate copyediting by the proteins that check the code after it has been replicated.

The genetic engineering paradigm invades life itself, redefining people and living organisms as machines to be manipulated and engineered. Defining a construct, the ‘gene’, as the building block of life, is scientifically flawed. As Richard Lewontin has said in The Doctrine of DNA, DNA is a dead molecule, among the most non-reactive, chemically inert molecules in the world. It has no power to reproduce itself. Rather, it is produced out of elementary materials by a complex cellular machinery of proteins. While it is often said that DNA produces proteins, in fact proteins (enzymes) produce DNA. When we refer to genes as self-replicating, we endow them with a mysterious autonomous power that seems to place them above the more ordinary materials of the body. Yet,

let’s instead define life very broadly, simply as a process that can retain its complexity and replicate. What’s replicated isn’t matter (made of atoms) but information (made of bits) specifying how the atoms are arranged. When a bacterium makes a copy of its DNA, no new atoms are created, but a new set of atoms are arranged in the same pattern as the original, thereby copying the information. In other words, we can think of life as a self-replicating information-processing system whose information (software) determines both its behavior and the blueprints for its hardware.

The protomolecule can alter the host organism at the molecular level; it can create genetic change on the fly. Not just DNA, but any stable replicator. But it is only a machine. It doesn’t think. It follows instructions. If we learn how to alter that programming, then we become the architects of that change.” Holden

Since we don’t want to limit our thinking about the future of life to the species we’ve encountered so far, let’s instead define life very broadly, simply as a process that can retain its complexity and replicate. What’s replicated isn’t matter (made of atoms) but information (made of bits) specifying how the atoms are arranged. When a bacterium makes a copy of its DNA, no new atoms are created, but a new set of atoms are arranged in the same pattern as the original, thereby copying the information. In other words, we can think of life as a self-replicating information-processing system whose information (software) determines both its behavior and the blueprints for its hardware.

Consider how the principles of the law of accelerating returns apply to the epochs we discussed in the first chapter. The combination of amino acids into proteins and of nucleic acids into strings of RNA established the basic paradigm of biology. Strings of RNA (and later DNA) that self-replicated (Epoch Two) provided a digital method to record the results of evolutionary experiments. Later on, the evolution of a species that combined rational thought (Epoch Three) with an opposable appendage (the thumb) caused a fundamental paradigm shift from biology to technology (Epoch Four). The upcoming primary paradigm shift will be from biological thinking to a hybrid combining biological and nonbiological thinking (Epoch Five), which will include “biologically inspired” processes resulting from the reverse engineering of biological brains.

way stress impedes healing.49 Kiecolt-Glaser and colleagues have also examined how stress affects aging—at the cellular level. At the ends of each of our forty-six chromosomes, which house our DNA, are structures called telomeres. As we age, the telomeres become shorter and shorter. Once they become too short, mistakes start creeping into the way our DNA replicates, which is the leading edge of the aging process. Kiecolt-Glaser points out that there is “ample epidemiological data that stressed caregivers die sooner than people not in that role.” So she and her team compared various elements of the immune response as seen in the blood, as well as telomere lengths in circulating blood cells, in forty-one caregivers and forty-one matched controls.50 As you might suspect, not only was immune function off in the caregivers, but their telomeres were shorter. This shows that stress can age people at the very level of their cells, thereby potentially shaving years off their lives.

a single manuscript, across a related family of manuscripts, and across members of different manuscript families. It also had to be transferable to interactions between canonical texts and chronicle manuscripts. At the same time, the model had to be specific enough to provide a solid basis of comparison in all these areas. A long search through literary theory, narratology, and cybertheory provided some valuable insights but no completely adequate models. Cybertheory, working as it does with multivocal, nonlinear, and collaborative texts, has much to offer manuscript study, but it has not yet formed a coherent vocabulary for its own sphere. Recombinant genetics, on the other hand, has long had a model to discuss the lateral production of related but unique genomes. Just as the dispersive replication of DNA strands creates a set of replicants, each bearing

Here’s an example: DNA stores information very nicely, in a durable format that allows for exact duplication. A ribosome turns that stored information into a sequence of amino acids, a protein, which folds up into a variety of chemically active shapes. The combined system, DNA and ribosome, can build all sorts of protein machinery. But what good is DNA, without a ribosome that turns DNA information into proteins? What good is a ribosome, without DNA to tell it which proteins to make? Organisms don’t always leave fossils, and evolutionary biology can’t always figure out the incremental pathway. But in this case we do know how it happened. RNA shares with DNA the property of being able to carry information and replicate itself, although RNA is less durable and copies less accurately. And RNA also shares the ability of proteins to fold up into chemically active shapes, though it’s not as versatile as the amino acid chains of proteins. Almost certainly, RNA is the single A which predates the mutually dependent A* and B. It’s just as important to note that RNA does the combined job of DNA and proteins poorly, as that it does the combined job at all. It’s amazing enough that a single molecule can both store information and manipulate chemistry. For it to do the job well would be a wholly unnecessary miracle. What was the very first replicator ever to exist? It may well have been an RNA strand, because by some strange coincidence, the chemical ingredients of RNA are chemicals that would have arisen naturally on the prebiotic Earth of 4 billion years ago. Please note: evolution does not explain the origin of life; evolutionary biology is not supposed to explain the first replicator, because the first replicator does not come from another replicator. Evolution describes statistical trends in replication. The first replicator wasn’t a statistical trend, it was a pure accident. The notion that evolution should explain the origin of life is a pure strawman—more creationist misrepresentation.

Initially compartmentalization might have been accomplished by a nonbiological transitional entity, a protocell, perhaps formed within pores in rocks. (We’ll consider this in more detail below.) But a protocell in a rock pore, even one containing DNA, would not be capable of sustaining complex life. The evolution of true cells depended on some form of compartmentalization outside of such confined spaces. The eventual solution was a lipid casing (membrane) that sequestered RNA, DNA, and the proteins they make, allowing these entities to exist free-floating in the oceans, where they could self-replicate, diversify (that is, evolve), and give rise to all of the organisms that have ever lived.

The other theory argues that replication based on nucleic acids (RNA and/or DNA) came after biological entities could support metabolism. Günter Wächtershäuser proposed a version of this metabolism-first theory in which hot water from volcanoes flowed over mineral-rich rocks to ignite (catalyze) chemical reactions that fused simple carbon-based compounds into larger ones. While catalytic enzymes, which are proteins, did not yet exist, minerals, such as those in rocks, can and do function as prebiotic catalysts for chemical reactions. According to this theory, a key step occurred when, through a series of these prebiotic reactions, the circle was closed by the regeneration of the original compound. Through such a process, complex biological molecules (proteins, nucleotides, lipids, and carbohydrates) could be made, forming the basis of simple protocells that made energy and replicated.

Genomic Instability: DNA doesn’t always replicate according to plan. Typically, these errors in gene expression get caught and corrected, but not always.

AI is enabling us to replicate speech and language, vision and reasoning. Foundational breakthroughs in synthetic biology have enabled us to sequence, modify, and now print DNA.

An unusually clear statement of the secular view of evil and suffering is made by Richard Dawkins in his book "River out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life"- He writes: “The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation....In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.” This is a complete departure from every other cultural view of suffering. Each one sees evil as having some purpose as a punishment, or a test, or an opportunity. But in Dawkin's view, the reason people struggle so mightily in the face of suffering is because they will not accept that it never has any purpose. It is senseless, neither bad nor good- because categories such as good and evil are meaningless in the universe we live in. "We humans have purpose on the brain," he argues. "Show us almost any object or process and it is hard for us to resist the 'Why' question...It is an almost universal delusion...The old temptation comes back with a vengeance when tragedy strikes..."Why oh why, did the cancer/earthquake/hurricane have to strike my child?" But he argues that this agony happens because "we cannot admit that things might be neither good nor evil, neither cruel nor kind, but simply callous-indifferent to all suffering, lacking purpose....DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is. And we dance to its music.