New Letters Added to the Genetic Alphabet

Quanta Magazine ^ | 7/10/15 | Emily Singer

[EEGator]

Are the going to have to change the name of the movie Gattaca?

[EEGator]

You are now outdated...

[Ray76]

> He wondered why these improvements haven’t occurred in living creatures.

Perhaps it has and the creatures died.

[Paladin2]

What could possibly go wrong when the Jihadis can make new proteins?

[EternalVigilance]

I always find it amusing how impossible it is for evolutionists, when talking about the way things work in nature, to avoid using the language of creation and design.

[LibWhacker]

Because the language of creation and design gives us zero understanding as to how things really work. For example, explain how a television works using only the language of creation and design.

[FredZarguna]

“If we find life elsewhere,” he said, “it would likely have the two-biopolymer system.”

Scientists don't really help to advance the cause when they make unscientific statements like this in the lay press.

We currently have no reason to believe a two-biopolymer system is even viable, let alone that is is superior, and no reason whatsoever to think it's more statistically likely.

You did something cool and challenging, which may help us to better understand biochemistry and microbiology. Let it go at that, without such wild speculation.

[FredZarguna]

I have a TV created by Panasonic. It works the way it works because it was designed to work that way by some engineers.

See how enlightening that was?

[dfwgator]

[LibWhacker]

Agreed. Way too much speculation for my taste, too.

[LibWhacker]

LOL!

Hey, check out some of the comments at the source url. I took few courses in the biological sciences, but some of the comments are fascinating and enlightening even for someone like me who knows little about it.

[LibWhacker]

Heh, DNA doesn’t like captchas!

[jimmyray]

QUOTE: Because the language of creation and design gives us zero understanding as to how things really work. For example, explain how a television works using only the language of creation and design.

During the process of creating the wiring diagram for the Enigma machine, the engineers only prescribed components required for their design to work. The mathematicians at Bletchley Park were able to decode...

[The Antiyuppie]

This is a VERY interesting article. My best guess is that our present system is at the “sweet spot” - between information density, ease of replication, and error detection and correction. It is entirely possible that alternative systems existed before, during, or even AFTER life based on the present system began on Earth, but died out quickly especially in geological terms, which is why we have never found any evidence of them.

[jimmyray]

QUOTE: "Because the language of creation and design gives us zero understanding as to how things really work."

You should tell the author of the article! Quoted from the article:

Nature has written the entire language of life...
... evolution took 4 billion years to create...
Why nature stuck with four letters...
So why didn’t nature expand its alphabet...
Nature was also effectively locked into the system at hand when life began...

Aweful lot of creating and designing in those statements, methinks.

[The Antiyuppie]

I believe that Larry Niven described a creature (Bandersnatchi) in his science fiction stories with artificial DNA that was so large that the creature could not mutate/”evolve” due to random events (and become dangerous to it’s creator) and this also left it basically impervious to radiation/cancer.

[gattaca]

HA! I see that.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks LibWhacker.

[fishtank]

Yep.

Like this quote from the article:

“The primary job of DNA is to store information.”

Information is created by an intelligence, as explained by Werner Gitt:

http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Was-Information-Werner-Gitt/dp/3893972552