bill@utastro.UUCP (William H. Jefferys) (04/27/84)
Issue #13 of *Creation/Evolution* has just arrived, and it
contains a very interesting article by William M. Thwaites
(actually a response to an article by creationist Norman L.
Geisler in the same issue). I thought the following quotes would
be of great interest:
"RNA ... has all sorts of properties that we are just
beginning to discover. A very recent finding showed
that not only can RNA carry coded genetic information,
but also can carry out specific chemical reactions that
were previously thought to be the exclusive domain of
proteins (Lewin, 1982). Prior to this finding, origin-
of-life theoreticians were faced with a chicken and egg
type of problem. Present-day life uses nucleic acids,
both RNA and its close relative DNA, to direct the
synthesis of proteins. Some of these proteins are needed
for both DNA and protein synthesis. While a lot of work
remains to be done in this new area, we now know that the
question was naive. The claim that life couldn't have
started with nucleic acids since they would have had no
help from proteins seemed reasonable only until someone
discovered that RNA can function as if it were a protein."
He also cites some experiments done by Barry Hall (1982):
"His work has centered on the evolution of a new gene
complex in the common bacterium *E. coli*. He has
taken a strain that has completely lost a gene and the
associated genetic mechanism that regulates its
activity. Starting with this defective strain he has
utilized an environment that confers an extreme selective
advantage to any bacterium able to reinvent, so to speak,
the missing gene and its regulatory mechanism. Finally he
has studied at the molecular level the "solutions" found
by the bacterium. The newly evolved genes naturally have
many features in common with each other, but they also show
a considerable amount of creativity. Some solutions are
elegant and some appear to be rather awkwardly complex.
They all work, however. If complexity were a measure of
design, we would have to say they were all designed. Yet
we know the genes *evolved* in the laboratory. Barry Hall
did not design the new genes no matter how much the
creationists may wish to think that he did.
"I can think of two creationist comebacks to Hall's work.
One would say that *E. coli* must have been designed by a
very clever creator to be able to evolve so well. Such a
response really isn't too helpful to the creationist
cause. The other reply would simply claim that the
evolution of a single gene and some regulatory apparatus to
go with it is trivial evolution "within" created kinds, and
thus is of no real significance to the creation-evolution
debate. They would say that *E. coli* with the newly
evolved genes is still *E. coli* and not a horse or a tiger.
But if the evolution of new genes is trivial and expected
by creationists, then all creationist arguments about
entropy and probability are also trivial, since these
supposedly prevent the evolution of new genes."
Thwaites remarks that Hall's articles are not easy reading, even for
many biologists.
REFERENCES
Hall, B. B., 1982. "Evolution of a Regulated Operon in the Laboratory."
*Genetics* 101:335-344
Lewin, R., 1982. "RNA Can Be a Catalyst." *Science* 218:872-874.
(News Report).
____________________________________________________________________________
There is a lot more in this article, and I recommend it. Creation/Evolution
can be obtained by subscription for $9.00 per annum. Write
Creation/Evolution
PO Box 146, Amherst Station
Buffalo NY 14226-0146
--
Bill Jefferys 8-%
Astronomy Dept, University of Texas, Austin TX 78712 (USnail)
{ihnp4,kpno,ctvax}!ut-sally!utastro!bill (uucp)
utastro!bill@ut-ngp (ARPANET)bill@utastro.UUCP (William H. Jefferys) (04/28/84)
Sorry, I left out a key sentence in my quotation from William
Thwaite's article in *Creation/Evolution* #13. The full
quotation is as follows, with the missing sentence included
between *backwards* square brackets: ]...[.
--------------------------------------------
"RNA ... has all sorts of properties that we are just
beginning to discover. A very recent finding showed
that not only can RNA carry coded genetic information,
but also can carry out specific chemical reactions that
were previously thought to be the exclusive domain of
proteins (Lewin, 1982). Prior to this finding, origin-
of-life theoreticians were faced with a chicken and egg
type of problem. Present-day life uses nucleic acids,
both RNA and its close relative DNA, to direct the
synthesis of proteins. Some of these proteins are needed
for both DNA and protein synthesis. ]The old puzzle was
where the first proteins came from to help DNA and RNA
direct protein synthesis.[ While a lot of work
remains to be done in this new area, we now know that the
question was naive. The claim that life couldn't have
started with nucleic acids since they would have had no
help from proteins seemed reasonable only until someone
discovered that RNA can function as if it were a protein."
--
Bill Jefferys 8-%
Astronomy Dept, University of Texas, Austin TX 78712 (USnail)
{ihnp4,kpno,ctvax}!ut-sally!utastro!bill (uucp)
utastro!bill@ut-ngp (ARPANET)