Readers may recall that a couple of days ago, we noted the surprising find that even more species of bacteria do not use the traditional universal genetic code they were thought to have inherited from the First Cell or whatever. From a researcher: “Changing the genetic code requires changing ancient, important molecules like tRNAs that are so fundamental to how biology works.”
Tim Standish at the Geoscience Research Institute offers some thoughts on the situation — and the spin put on it:
The spin inherent in the headline for this article is fascinating: Screen of 250,000 Species Reveals Tweaks to Genetic Code.
Changing codon meaning isn’t merely a tweak. As one of the authors notes, “It’s just mind-boggling that an organism could survive that.” But he is dead wrong when he says, “Stop codon shifts are considerably less ‘dramatic’”. Changing a stop codon seems significantly more challenging than changing any other codon meaning because the mechanism for stop codon recognition is totally different and involves more than RNA-RNA interactions.
It’s also a mindbender that on average having 1/3 of genes read through after a regular stop codon, producing who knows what random AA sequence until another still functioning stop codon is encountered, could be survived. Even if either kind of change was survivable, the idea that there might be some incremental increase in fitness at each necessary step along the way makes about as much sense as hitting one’s big toe with a hammer and expecting this will make you a faster runner.
As is so common with these things, some functional explanation for why the different genetic codes in these new examples are somehow better than the “universal” code is treated as sufficient to explain these impossible changes that must be achieved in an incremental and unguided way. This implies that some need on the part of an organism is miraculously capable of producing an outcome that resolves the need. If only life was really like that, because I need a few million dollars to buy a home on the shore of Sydney Harbour and a private jet to get there.
I’m not sure that they are listing all known genetic codes in this article as there are variations in the genetic codes used in mitochondria, and these show an interesting pattern of distribution that requires the same changes in multiple taxa. In addition, using a different genetic code than the nucleus makes moving genes from mtDNA to chromosomal DNA and expecting a good outcome incredibly optimistic.
Good luck with the private jet and Sydney Harbour, Tim. That mind of magic only works with Darwinian theory. Not with life.
You may also wish to read: Five more species of bacteria use alternate genetic codes At The Scientist: “The genetic code has been set in stone for 3 billion years,” study coauthor Yekaterina Shulgina, a Harvard University graduate student in systems biology, tells The Scientist. “The fact that some organisms have found a way to change it is really fascinating to me. Changing the genetic code requires changing ancient, important molecules like tRNAs that are so fundamental to how biology works.”
As to:
Even Richard Dawkins, in one of his rare moments of honesty, agreed with Standish’s observation.
Specifically, Dawkins stated, “The reason is interesting. Any mutation in the genetic code itself (as opposed to mutations in the genes that it encodes) would have an instantly catastrophic effect, not just in one place but throughout the whole organism. If any word in the 64-word dictionary changed its meaning, so that it came to specify a different amino acid, just about every protein in the body would instantaneously change, probably in many places along its length. Unlike an ordinary mutation…this would spell disaster.”
The preceding article links to the following cite which lists the “variant” Genetic Codes as such:
,,, The origin of the standard Genetic Code is already considered to be, for all intents and purposes, impossible,,,
,,, The origin of the standard Genetic Code is already considered to be, for all intents and purposes, impossible, thus for there now to be found multiple ‘variant’ Genetic Codes is to make what was already a bad situation for Darwinists exponentially worse.
Though not directly addressing the origin of multiple variant Genetic Codes, the following quote is, none-the-less, very fitting, “For it to happen in a single species once through chance, is mathematically highly improbable. But when it occurs so often, in so many species, and we are expected to apply mathematical probability yet again, then either mathematics is a useless tool, or we are being criminally blind.,,,”
In short, Darwinists can’t even explain the origin of one Genetic Code, much less can they explain the origin of multiple ‘variant’ Genetic Codes.
In fact, there is a 10 million dollar prize being offered for the first person who can demonstrate the origin, not just of the Genetic Code mind you, but the origin of ANY code whatsoever by unguided processes.
Moreover, it is not just the fact that there are multiple variant Genetic Codes in different species that is causing an extreme headache for Atheistic Naturalists/Materialists, but even more problematic for Darwinian Atheists is the fact that it is now shown that there are multiple overlapping codes within each individual organism.
In the following video, Edward Trifonov elucidates codes that are, simultaneously, in the same sequence, coding for DNA curvature, Chromatin Code, Amphipathic helices, and NF kappaB. In fact, at the 58:00 minute mark he states, “Reading only one message, one gets three more, practically GRATIS!”.
The concluding powerpoint of the lecture (at the 1 hour mark) states:
In fact, at the 7:55 mark of the video, there are 13 overlapping codes that are listed on a powerpoint.
And here is a wikipedia article on the subject:
As should be intuitively obvious, multiple overlapping codes create yet another insurmountable difficulty for Darwinian materialist.
In short, if we were to get a ‘beneficial’ mutation in a genome of 4 overlapping codes we would be facing a situation very similar to trying get a ‘beneficial mutation in the following palindrome.
This ancient palindrome, which dates back to at least 79 AD, reads the same four different ways, Thus, if we change (mutate) any letter we may get a new (beneficial) meaning for a single reading read any one way, but we will consistently destroy the other 3 readings of the message with the new mutation (save for the center letter). Moreover, mutating any subsequent letter in the palindrome will obviously induce “antagonistic epistasis” towards the first mutated letter, wherein any benefit that the first mutated letter may have conferred will be compromised by any subsequent change, with the benefit being compromised even further as even more letters are changed in the palindrome.
Moreover, mathematical analysis has now confirmed what is, or what should be, intuitively obvious. Namely, the probability of getting a truly beneficial mutation in a poly-functional genome is, for all intents and purposes, ZERO.
Moreover, there are now found to be many other codes in life which are not even part of DNA sequences,
In fact, classical information, such as DNA sequences, is now known to be a subset of quantum information.
In the following site entitled “Quantum Information Science”, a site where Charles Bennett, (of quantum teleportation and reversible computation fame), himself is on the steering committee,
On that site, they have this illustration showing classical information to be a subset of quantum information,
Moreover, the fact that quantum information is ubiquitous within life has now also been theoretically and experimentally established.
As Elisabeth Rieper states in the following video, “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.,,,”
The absolutely fascinating thing about finding quantum information to be ubiquitous within life, “in a wide range of important biomolecules”, (and finding classical information to be a subset of quantum information), is that it takes a ‘non-local’, i.e. beyond space and time, cause in order to explain quantum correlations in the first place,. (In fact, quantum non-locality, i.e. instantaneous action at a distance, is precisely the primary thing that makes quantum mechanics so ‘spooky’ and inexplicable for Atheistic Materialists).
As the following paper entitled “Looking beyond space and time to cope with quantum theory” 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,”
Darwinian Atheists, 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 information and/or quantum entanglement that is now found to be ubiquitous within biology.
Whereas Christians, on the other hand, readily do have a beyond space and time cause that they can appeal to so as to explain ‘non-local’ quantum entanglement.
Moreover, it is also important to realize that quantum information is 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.
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 empirical evidence strongly suggesting that we do indeed have an eternal soul that is capable of living beyond the death of our material bodies. As Stuart Hameroff states 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.”
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 theological, even personal, significance.
As Jesus once asked his disciples and a crowd of followers, “Is anything worth more than your soul?”
Moreover, it is also very interesting to note that the Bible is on record as to uniquely, and correctly, predicting that life had an author long before it was even known that life is filled to the brim with multiple different, and overlapping, codes.