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Paper at PNAS challenges universal common descent

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But that’s like challenging the Trinity at an orthodox Christian church. On the other hand, one of the people involved, Sara Imari Walker, is one of those free spirits at Arizona State University:

Known examples of life all share the same core biochemistry going back to the last universal common ancestor (LUCA), but whether this feature is universal to other examples, including at the origin of life or alien life, is unknown. We show how a physics-inspired statistical approach identifies universal scaling laws across biochemical reactions that are not defined by common chemical components but instead, as macroscale patterns in the reaction functions used by life. The identified scaling relations can be used to predict statistical features of LUCA, and network analyses reveal some of the functional principles that underlie them. They are, therefore, prime candidates for developing new theory on the “laws of life” that might apply to all possible biochemistries…

“A critical question is whether the universality classes identified herein are a product of the shared ancestry of life. A limitation of the traditional view of biochemical universality is that universality can only be explained in terms of evolutionary contingency and shared history, which challenges our ability to generalize beyond the singular ancestry of life as we know it. Indeed, a set of closely related genomes will, by definition, share a high degree of universality in component enzyme functions. Phylogenetic effects would be a concern here too if we were claiming universality in terms of a specific set of unique enzyme functions as these then could be attributed to oversampling highly related genomes. Instead, we showed here that universality classes are not directly correlated with component universality, which is indicative that it emerges as a macroscopic regularity in the large-scale statistics of catalytic functional diversity. Furthermore, EC [enzyme class] universality cannot simply be explained due to phylogenetic relatedness since the range of total enzyme functions spans two orders of magnitude, evidencing a wide coverage of genomic diversity.”

Gagler, D. C., Karas, B., Kempes, C. P., Malloy, J., Mierzejewski, V., Goldman, A. D., Kim, H., & Walker, S. I. (2022). Scaling laws in enzyme function reveal a new kind of biochemical universality. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 119(9), e2106655119.

The underlying issue may well be this: With the James Webb Space Telescope headed off to survey countless exoplanets, astrobiology (search for extraterrestrial life) is becoming cool. A strict neo-Darwinian approach, as in “All life unearth arose from a single cell” is, at best, inconvenient. At worst, a true bummer. The astrobiologist is going to be much happier with “prime candidates for developing new theory on the ‘laws of life’ that might apply to all possible biochemistries…” Life lesson: Researchers will sacrifice Darwinism pretty quickly when it is an actual impediment.

The paper is open access.

Comments
What is so devastating to the materialistic presuppositions of Darwinian evolution, (with the empirical finding of pervasive quantum coherence, and/or quantum information, within molecular biology), is that quantum coherence and/or quantum information is a non-local, beyond space and time, effect that requires a beyond space and time cause in order to explain its existence. As the following paper entitled “Looking beyond space and time to cope with quantum theory” succinctly stated, “Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,”
Looking beyond space and time to cope with quantum theory – 29 October 2012 Excerpt: “Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,” http://www.quantumlah.org/highlight/121029_hidden_influences.php
On top of that, and as the following study found, "the greater the number of particles in a quantum hypergraph state, (which is exactly the type of quantum coherence that we have with biological organisms), the more strongly it violates local realism, with the strength increasing exponentially with the number of particles",,,
Physicists find extreme violation of local realism in quantum hypergraph states - Lisa Zyga - March 4, 2016 Excerpt: The physicists also showed that the greater the number of particles in a quantum hypergraph state, the more strongly it violates local realism, with the strength increasing exponentially with the number of particles. In addition, even if a quantum hypergraph state loses one of its particles, it continues to violate local realism. This robustness to particle loss is in stark contrast to other types of quantum states, which no longer violate local realism if they lose a particle. This property is particularly appealing for applications, since it might allow for more noise in experiments. http://phys.org/news/2016-03-physicists-extreme-violation-local-realism.html
Darwinists, with their reductive materialistic framework, and especially with the falsification of 'hidden variables', simply have no beyond space and time cause that they can appeal so as to be able to explain the non-local quantum coherence and/or entanglement that is now found to be ubiquitous within biology.
“hidden variables don’t exist. If you have proved them come back with PROOF and a Nobel Prize. John Bell theorized that maybe the particles can signal faster than the speed of light. This is what he advocated in his interview in “The Ghost in the Atom.” But the violation of Leggett’s inequality in 2007 takes away that possibility and rules out all non-local hidden variables. Observation instantly defines what properties a particle has and if you assume they had properties before we measured them, then you need evidence, because right now there is none which is why realism is dead, and materialism dies with it. How does the particle know what we are going to pick so it can conform to that?” - per Jimfit - UD blogger
Whereas on the other hand, Christians readily do have a beyond space and time cause that they can appeal to so as to explain quantum entanglement. As Colossians 1:17 stated 2000 years ago, “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”
Colossians 1:17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
It is also important to realize that quantum information, unlike classical information, is 'physically' conserved. As the following article states, "In the classical world, information can be copied and deleted at will. In the quantum world, however, the conservation of quantum information means that information cannot be created nor destroyed."
Quantum no-hiding theorem experimentally confirmed for first time - 2011 Excerpt: In the classical world, information can be copied and deleted at will. In the quantum world, however, the conservation of quantum information means that information cannot be created nor destroyed. This concept stems from two fundamental theorems of quantum mechanics: the no-cloning theorem and the no-deleting theorem. A third and related theorem, called the no-hiding theorem, addresses information loss in the quantum world. According to the no-hiding theorem, if information is missing from one system (which may happen when the system interacts with the environment), then the information is simply residing somewhere else in the Universe; in other words, the missing information cannot be hidden in the correlations between a system and its environment. http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-03-quantum-no-hiding-theorem-experimentally.html
The implication of finding 'non-local', (beyond space and time), and ‘conserved’, (cannot be created nor destroyed), quantum information in molecular biology on such a massive scale, in every important biomolecule in our bodies, is fairly, and pleasantly, obvious. That pleasant implication, of course, being the fact that we now have very strong empirical evidence proving that we do indeed have a transcendent, metaphysical, component to our being, i.e. a “soul”, that is capable of living beyond the death of our material bodies. As Stuart Hameroff succinctly stated in the following article, “the quantum information,,, isn’t destroyed. It can’t be destroyed.,,, it's possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul.”
Leading Scientists Say Consciousness Cannot Die It Goes Back To The Universe - Oct. 19, 2017 - Spiritual Excerpt: “Let’s say the heart stops beating. The blood stops flowing. The microtubules lose their quantum state. But the quantum information, which is in the microtubules, isn’t destroyed. It can’t be destroyed. It just distributes and dissipates to the universe at large. If a patient is resuscitated, revived, this quantum information can go back into the microtubules and the patient says, “I had a near death experience. I saw a white light. I saw a tunnel. I saw my dead relatives.,,” Now if they’re not revived and the patient dies, then it's possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul.” - Stuart Hameroff - Quantum Entangled Consciousness - Life After Death - video (5:00 minute mark) (of note, this video is no longer available for public viewing) https://radaronline.com/exclusives/2012/10/life-after-death-soul-science-morgan-freeman/
Personally, I consider these recent findings from quantum biology to rival all other scientific discoveries over the past century. Surpassing even the discovery of a beginning of the universe, via Big Bang cosmology, in terms of scientific, theological, and even personal, significance. As Jesus once asked his disciples, along with a crowd of followers, “Is anything worth more than your soul?” Verse:
Mark 8:37 Is anything worth more than your soul?
Of supplemental not to 'higher dimensional' quarter power scaling:
Scaling of Brain Metabolism and Blood Flow in Relation to Capillary and Neural Scaling - 2011 Excerpt: Brain is one of the most energy demanding organs in mammals, and its total metabolic rate scales with brain volume raised to a power of around 5/6. This value is significantly higher than the more common exponent 3/4 (4- dimensional Quarter Power Scaling) relating whole body resting metabolism with body mass and several other physiological variables in animals and plants.,,, Moreover, cerebral metabolic, hemodynamic, and microvascular variables scale with allometric exponents that are simple multiples of 1/6, rather than 1/4, which suggests that brain metabolism is more similar to the metabolism of aerobic than resting body. Relation of these findings to brain functional imaging studies involving the link between cerebral metabolism and blood flow is also discussed.,, General Discussion Excerpt: ,,It should be underlined that both CBF and CMR scale with brain volume with the exponent about 1/6 which is significantly different from the exponent 1/4 relating whole body resting specific metabolism with body volume [1], [2], [3]. Instead, the cerebral exponent 1/6 is closer to an exponent,, characterizing maximal body specific metabolic rate and specific cardiac output in strenuous exercise [43], [44]. In this sense, the brain metabolism and its hemodynamics resemble more the metabolism and circulation of exercised muscles than other resting organs, which is in line with the empirical evidence that brain is an energy expensive organ [10], [17], [18]. This may also suggest that there exists a common plan for the design of microcirculatory system in different parts of the mammalian body that uses the same optimization principles [45].,, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3203885/
The preceding is very unexpected to materialists since materialists hold that 'mind' is merely a 'emergent property' of the physical processes of a material brain. But why should 'mind' which is presupposed to be result of, and subservient to, the material processes of the brain constrain the material brain to operate at such a constant, and optimal, metabolic rate whereas the rest of body fluctuates in its metabolic activity? The most parsimonious explanation for such a optimal, 6 Dimensional, constraint on the brain's metabolic activity is that the material brain was designed, first and foremost, to house the immaterial mind and give the immaterial mind the most favorable metabolic environment at all times.
Matthew 22:37 Jesus replied: “’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’
bornagain77
March 16, 2022
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as to:
"We show how a physics-inspired statistical approach identifies universal scaling laws across biochemical reactions that are not defined by common chemical components but instead, as macroscale patterns in the reaction functions used by life."
Although their finding that universal common descent does not explain, and/or 'define', the universal (power) scaling laws of life is certainly nothing to sneeze at, it is easy to get lost in the weeds and overlook just how devastating universal (power) scaling laws actually are to the materialistic presuppositions of Darwinian evolution in the first place. As Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini stated in "What Darwin Got Wrong", “Although living things occupy a three-dimensional space, their internal physiology and anatomy operate as if they were four-dimensional. Quarter-power scaling laws are perhaps as universal and as uniquely biological as the biochemical pathways of metabolism, the structure and function of the genetic code and the process of natural selection.",,, "The conclusion here is inescapable, that the driving force for these invariant scaling laws cannot have been natural selection. It's inconceivable that so many different organisms, spanning different kingdoms and phyla, may have blindly 'tried' all sorts of power laws and that only those that have by chance 'discovered' the one-quarter power law reproduced and thrived.",,,,
Post-Darwinist - Denyse O'Leary - Dec. 2010 Excerpt: They quote West et al. (1999), What Darwin Got Wrong – pg 79 “Although living things occupy a three-dimensional space, their internal physiology and anatomy operate as if they were four-dimensional. Quarter-power scaling laws are perhaps as universal and as uniquely biological as the biochemical pathways of metabolism, the structure and function of the genetic code and the process of natural selection." They comment, "In the words of these authors, natural selection has exploited variations on this fractal theme to produce the incredible variety of biological form and function', but there were severe geometric and physical constraints on metabolic processes." "The conclusion here is inescapable, that the driving force for these invariant scaling laws cannot have been natural selection. It's inconceivable that so many different organisms, spanning different kingdoms and phyla, may have blindly 'tried' all sorts of power laws and that only those that have by chance 'discovered' the one-quarter power law reproduced and thrived." Quotations from Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini, What Darwin Got Wrong (London: Profile Books, 2010), p. 78-79. http://post-darwinist.blogspot.com/2010/12/how-much-of-body-plans-of-organisms-can.html#links
To repeat, “Although living things occupy a three-dimensional space, their internal physiology and anatomy operate as if they were four-dimensional." This is simply devastating to the materialistic presuppositions of Darwinian evolution. Specifically, Darwinists hold that life in general, and humans in particular, are, (contrary to all appearances), purely physical/material beings, (and therefore Darwinists further claim that we die when our material bodies die), Yet, as Adam Sedgwick scolded Charles Darwin, "There is a moral or metaphysical part of nature as well as a physical A man who denies this is deep in the mire of folly",,
Adam Sedgwick to Charles Darwin - 24 November 1859 Excerpt: There is a moral or metaphysical part of nature as well as a physical A man who denies this is deep in the mire of folly Tis the crown & glory of organic science that it does thro’ final cause , link material to moral; & yet does not allow us to mingle them in our first conception of laws, & our classification of such laws whether we consider one side of nature or the other— You have ignored this link; &, if I do not mistake your meaning, you have done your best in one or two pregnant cases to break it. Were it possible (which thank God it is not) to break it, humanity in my mind, would suffer a damage that might brutalize it—& sink the human race into a lower grade of degradation than any into which it has fallen since its written records tell us of its history. - per Darwin project
So finding "living things (to) occupy a three-dimensional space, (and yet) their internal physiology and anatomy operate as if they were four-dimensional" is something that we should rightly expect to find if life in general, and man in particular, really do have a "moral or metaphysical' to their nature that is not reducible to purely material/physical explanations. In short, these quarter-power scaling laws are inexorably pointing us to a higher metaphysical, 'spiritual', realm that forever lies beyond the scope of the materialistic explanations of Darwinian evolution. Besides these quarter-power scaling laws "inexorably pointing us to a higher metaphysical, 'spiritual', realm'", recent findings in quantum biology go one step further and actually empirically prove, (directly contrary to Darwinian presuppositions), that man does indeed have a transcendent, i.e. 'metaphysical', component to his being that is not reducible to any possible materialistic explanation. Specifically, in the following 2015 paper entitled, “Quantum criticality in a wide range of important biomolecules” it was found that “Most of the molecules taking part actively in biochemical processes are tuned exactly to the transition point and are critical conductors,” and the researchers further commented that “finding even one (biomolecule) that is in the quantum critical state by accident is mind-bogglingly small and, to all intents and purposes, impossible.,, of the order of 10^-50 of possible small biomolecules and even less for proteins,”,,,
Quantum criticality in a wide range of important biomolecules – Mar. 6, 2015 Excerpt: “Most of the molecules taking part actively in biochemical processes are tuned exactly to the transition point and are critical conductors,” they say. That’s a discovery that is as important as it is unexpected. “These findings suggest an entirely new and universal mechanism of conductance in biology very different from the one used in electrical circuits.” The permutations of possible energy levels of biomolecules is huge so the possibility of finding even one (biomolecule) that is in the quantum critical state by accident is mind-bogglingly small and, to all intents and purposes, impossible.,, of the order of 10^-50 of possible small biomolecules and even less for proteins,”,,, “what exactly is the advantage that criticality confers?” https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/the-origin-of-life-and-the-hidden-role-of-quantum-criticality-ca4707924552
To drive this point home, this follow up 2018 article stated that “There is no obvious evolutionary reason why a protein should evolve toward a quantum-critical state, and there is no chance at all that the state could occur randomly.,,,”
Quantum Critical Proteins – Stuart Lindsay – Professor of Physics and Chemistry at Arizona State University – 2018 Excerpt: The difficulty with this proposal lies in its improbability. Only an infinitesimal density of random states exists near the critical point.,, Gábor Vattay et al. recently examined a number of proteins and conducting and insulating polymers.14 The distribution for the insulators and conductors were as expected, but the functional proteins all fell on the quantum-critical distribution. Such a result cannot be a consequence of chance.,,, WHAT OF quantum criticality? Vattay et al. carried out electronic structure calculations for the very large protein used in our work. They found that the distribution of energy-level spacings fell on exactly the quantum-critical distribution, implying that this protein is also quantum critical. There is no obvious evolutionary reason why a protein should evolve toward a quantum-critical state, and there is no chance at all that the state could occur randomly.,,, http://inference-review.com/article/quantum-critical-proteins Gábor Vattay et al., “Quantum Criticality at the Origin of Life,” Journal of Physics: Conference Series 626 (2015); Gábor Vattay, Stuart Kauffman, and Samuli Niiranen, “Quantum Biology on the Edge of Quantum Chaos,” PLOS One 9, no. 3 (2014)
As well, DNA itself does not belong to the world of classical mechanics but instead belongs to the world of quantum mechanics. In the following video, at the 22:20 minute mark, Dr Rieper shows why the high temperatures of biological systems do not prevent DNA from having quantum entanglement, and then at 24:00 minute mark Dr Rieper goes on to remark that practically the whole DNA molecule can be viewed as quantum information with classical information embedded within it.
"What happens is this classical information (of DNA) is embedded, sandwiched, into the quantum information (of DNA). And most likely this classical information is never accessed because it is inside all the quantum information. You can only access the quantum information or the electron clouds and the protons. So mathematically you can describe that as a quantum/classical state." Elisabeth Rieper – Classical and Quantum Information in DNA – video (Longitudinal Quantum Information resides along the entire length of DNA discussed at the 19:30 minute mark; at 24:00 minute mark Dr Rieper remarks that practically the whole DNA molecule can be viewed as quantum information with classical information embedded within it) https://youtu.be/2nqHOnVTxJE?t=1176
That quantum principles are at play, (not only at the microscopic level of biological molecules), but also at the macroscopic level of organisms is most easily, and clearly, demonstrated by the following finding. Specifically, “Research,, has shown that humans can detect the presence of a single photon, the smallest measurable unit of light”.,,, “it is remarkable: a photon, the smallest physical entity with quantum properties of which light consists, is interacting with a biological system consisting of billions of cells, all in a warm and wet environment,”,, and the researched added, “The response that the photon generates survives all the way to the level of our awareness despite the ubiquitous background noise. Any man-made detector would need to be cooled and isolated from noise to behave the same way.”,,, “What we want to know next is how does a biological system achieve such sensitivity? How does it achieve this in the presence of noise?”
Study suggests humans can detect even the smallest units of light – July 21, 2016 Excerpt: Research,, has shown that humans can detect the presence of a single photon, the smallest measurable unit of light. Previous studies had established that human subjects acclimated to the dark were capable only of reporting flashes of five to seven photons.,,, it is remarkable: a photon, the smallest physical entity with quantum properties of which light consists, is interacting with a biological system consisting of billions of cells, all in a warm and wet environment,” says Vaziri. “The response that the photon generates survives all the way to the level of our awareness despite the ubiquitous background noise. Any man-made detector would need to be cooled and isolated from noise to behave the same way.”,,, The gathered data from more than 30,000 trials demonstrated that humans can indeed detect a single photon incident on their eye with a probability significantly above chance. “What we want to know next is how does a biological system achieve such sensitivity? How does it achieve this in the presence of noise?” http://phys.org/news/2016-07-humans-smallest.html
It is also important to realize that classical information, (such as what is encoded on DNA, proteins, etc..), is now known to be a subset of quantum information.
Classical Information is a subset of Quantum information – illustration https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2000/nsf00101/images/figure1.gif below that illustration they have this caption, “Figure 1: The well-established theory of classical information and computation is actually a subset of a much larger topic, the emerging theory of quantum information and computation.” https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2000/nsf00101/nsf00101.htm Information is Quantum - Charles Bennett - 2020 https://www.reddit.com/r/QuantumComputing/comments/i1y9ij/information_is_quantum_charlie_bennett/
bornagain77
March 16, 2022
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