At early Earth, 3.8 billion years ago, there were trillions of free-floating small strands of DNA comprising only a few dozen base pairs. This DNA evolved over the course of 200 million years from free-floating RNA that had coalesced within the primordial soup 4.0 billion years ago. Is a 48 base pair strand of DNA a living thing? When this DNA is split apart by static electricity it becomes two pieces where before there was one. Lightning strikes and the population doubles as each cleaved part restores itself to wholeness. The notion of free-floating DNA or RNA molecules coalescing in the primordial soup four billion years ago or tumbling around in hot vent pools two billion years ago deep within a ten mile thick ice crust for 500 million years until a reason to exist materializes makes as much sense as a quarterback with his 500 plays wandering around in a Mardi Gras parade. DNA is a part of a system, part of a team. The system begins as a simple colony of actors evolving into a more complex system. The DNA system comprises many different types of molecules and many types of organelles: the cell nucleus, the nuclear membrane, the cell membrane, golgi apparatus, mitochondria, endoplasmic reticulum, ribosomes, the nucleolus, chloroplasts, microtubules, vacuoles, promoters, enhancers, tRNA, RNA polymerase, mRNA, etc. All are part of the DNA system.
The cell itself and all of its components is part of the DNA system: plant or animal. Was there once an array of organettes, precursors of organelles? Did organettes combine forces one by one and two by two, over hundreds of millions of years of symbiotic mergers? It was not only the symbiotic merger of mitochondria with the cell but all organelles/organettes merging via symbiosis in the dense, crowded, high pressure world of snowball Earth’s dark hot pools, warm lakes, cool seas or surface pools exposed to sunlight 2.3 BYA. The organettes formed colonies in the primordial pockets. Colonial structures held together by porous webs of microtubules followed by total lipid membrane enclosure.
The first life on Earth emerged 3.5 billion years ago ( BYA) seen now as biogenic graphite. The second life on Earth evolved 3.48 BYA and is seen in fossilized microbial mats. All living things have DNA. DNA comprises four small molecules: adenine, thymine, cytosine and guanine. Three of these components of DNA: guanine, thymine and cytosine, have an oxygen molecule:. Oxygen did not occur in the Earth’s atmosphere until 2.8 BYA. Question: How did life, with its core genetic component of DNA evolve for 700 million years without oxygen in the Earth’s atmosphere? Was the oxygen derived from rocks or from water condensing from volcanic gas? Did earliest life evolve on the surface of rocks where it could suck the oxygen needed for nucleotides from within the stone? did early life send microtubules ( straws) into this rock to suck in oxygen?
The systemness of DNA replication- transcription-translation argues against a bunch of free-floating molecules colliding with one another in the primordial soup to positive evolutionary effect. Systems don’t work when the important parts are not present. Absence of oxygen is a theory crippler. Perhaps the DNA got its oxygen from the water thus an argument for first life being waterborne and eventually spongy-corally-clammy-fishy. Did all aerobic life emerge from the water not the land? The land had no significant oxygen in the air above, not enough to accelerate evolution, until 1.8 BYA.
During the Huronian global glaciation 2.4 to 2.1 BYA the entire Earth was an iceball with ice five to twenty miles thick all over the Earth’s surface. The Earth’s ice crust was pocked by thousands of volcanic vents creating warm pools-lakes-seas in the darkness deep within the ice sheet. The intensity of molecular activity in these pools, each with its own chemical signature, accelerated collisions of all molecules raising the chances of positive symbiotic effects.
Is the DNA system is the product of bioengineering by an advanced species on a distant planet - a designed system invented by creatures whose bodies do not use DNA in their life processes? Perhaps The DNA system didn’t evolve in nature anywhere in the universe or in an adjacent universe accessible via quantum string tunneling. The DNA system emerged from generations of experimentation and calculation - alien thought. Was Earth seeded with its DNA system? Perhaps a few million archaea released in the primordial soup 3.5 BYA from a spacecraft long dissolved or not. Check those streaks of color in the polished marble next time you’re standing near the restroom wall in a major airport. Due to its systemness,there is no such thing as a selfish chromosome or a selfish DNA molecule. A selfish cell? We know that cells work very well with others. If the DNA is not selfish, the gene is not selfish.
***
JB Questions-Observations:
- What proteins regulate intracell proliferation of mitochondria? Are these mitochondria-regulating proteins from the cell nucleus or from the mitochondria DNA?
- Imagine a wheatstalk as thick and tall as a redwood. One stalk the source of 10,000 loaves of bread.
- What part of the human brain carries epigenetically conserved ideas about myth, religion, cosmology, etc.?
- Experiment: Analyze past 90 years of Hollywood motion pictures noting the elapsed time between cuts and between scenes - note change in implied audience attention span over the decades. Note the elapsed time of either Joey Bishop or Sammy Davis,Jr standing or sitting doing absolutely nothing in Sinatra’s Rat-Pack movies.
- Do Christians harvest ( destroy ) their tall poppies ( prominent people) as some sort of sacrifice to their God? See: Durkheim “Elementary Forms of Religious Life”
- Was the 3-in-One oil marketing machine trying to capitalize on Christian dogma to sell lubricant for squeaky doors?
- RE: distinctions between the sacred and the profane. If mankind has access to it, has power over it -is comfortable with it or enjoys it then it is profane - all else is sacred. The Woody Allen Club Membership Test is at the root of all religions.
- Profile all people who see themselves as leaders of a cult with at least 50 members - New Age, Self-Improvement, Witchcraft, etc. A breed of self-assessed “higher” consciousness folks - the plant intelligence-shamanic-tantric crew holing up along the Santa Cruz-Monterey coast. Are these cultists on to any incipient religion? Yes, but which will endure?
- Emile Durkheim was splitting hairs in 1912 when describing the difference between magic and religion. the difference is as follows: Since one hundred percent of humans create/crave/lean-in to the notion of the sacred and profane, magic is any and all of those practices not officially sanctioned by the dominant party-approved religious order. Those not in line with the governing religion are witches, magicians, outliers, Others and probably mentally ill and in need of medication or institutionalization ( see: Foucault “Madness and Civilization”. Magic and religion have nothing to do with a practitioner’s tendency to socialize. Durkheim is naive and narrow regarding his distinction between magic and religion.
- The sacred is Yin, the profane is Yang, they define one another. Each is necessary in order to define the other, to supply le differAnce. See: Jacques Derrida “Grammatology”.
- “Green Beard” effects as epigenetic behavior transmitted via neocortical spiny neurons. Green Beard behavior is that in which people favor their own sort. You gotta green beard like me? Yes - you’re in like Flynn.
- What did young Le Corbusier learn from Frank Lloyd Wright’s Wasmuth Portfolio projects by 1914? What seeds were planted by Wright’s Prairie-Style buildings?
- RE: origins of first spoken language: afferent sensory neural network reaches critical mass i.e. overloads from intense stimulation of hand on a burning coal and a word spontaneously pops out of the neocortex-voicebox-mouth such as AWE or OWW ! which transforms into Hot. YAWEH ! into God. BRRR - shivver into hiver ( fr)- winter- cold. Infant’s first sounds: goo goo, dada.
- Investigate multi-sense stimuli from sense apparatus to basal ganglia to signals @ neocortex. What is the neural network synaptical critical mass required to stimulate word formation?
- Each of the sciences, social sciences, arts, politics and law has created its own dense rhizomic mat comprising myriad symposia, documents and experiments, thousands of theories, some credible dogma and plain BS to protect students and practitioners from the void. There are over one million scientific research papers published in the past thirty years whose contents have not been verified due to the busyness of all scientists with their own work.
- Review the structure of the slime mold vertical pod-net structure as a small bag for proto-organs 600 million years ago, organs jostling for position within this useful prefab structure that eventually evolved a backbone and symmetry-body morphology stored in HOX genes. It grew fins and swam into deep water in search of a meal.
- Were there ever free-floating precursors to the kidney, liver, heart, brain or pancreas and or sex organs that discovered advantages by sharing skills. “I’ll pump your blood if you’ll filter mine.” “If you help digest my meals I’ll increase your oxygen supply.” “I’ll be your operations center if you’ll fight off the big bad guys.”
- Why would two nucleotides ever want to link up to form a base pair? Was this a forced marriage? A marriage of convenience? Just because they could? A happy accident? An unhappy accident? Crazy kids? Did they break apart soon after for a million years alone then reunite?
- Has there ever been a living cell without a bilayer lipid membrane? with just a hairnet sort of enclosure surrounding its organelles?
- A key reason for mitochondrial symbiosis was to provide a source of cell energy when DNA is locked up busy preparing to divide at mitosis-meiosis and not able to engage in protein transcription-translation. All protein synthesis must taper off while cell is dividing and re-starting its scheduled protein production. Mitochondria provide interim energy due to its separate genome not tied up in the cell’s general chromosome duplication.
- Is there a unique RNA transcriptase for each different protein produced by a cell or does a single RNA transcriptase molecule start all protein production with intron-exon editing or protein tagging via methylation/ phosphorylation providing the proteinic variation? How unique must a protein be in order to warrant its own unique RNA transcriptase that is present prior to start of transcription?
- What cell type has the most mRNA types? JB guess: auditory hair cells.
- Do auditory hair cells require many hundreds of alternate splicing pathways diverging from a small number of tRNA and or RNA polymerases directing the synthesis of the range of proteins needed to detect 500 different pitches?
- Religion or magic” The cult of genetics central dogma; what’s not to believe? Dig the dogma -it’s life and lab-tested.
January 13, 2016 5:49PM