Wounded King:
Am I just being paranoid about the ID nature of this paper?
For what context it may provide, The Origin-of-Life Foundation, Inc.®, where one of the authors works, says this about its Origin-of-Life Prize®:
quote:
Clarification of what the Foundation is looking for
We are primarily interested in how certain linear digital sequences of monomers acquired three-dimensional dynamic function. The Prize offer is designed to stimulate focused research on the origin of initial genetic instructions themselves.[....] How does an algorithmically complex sequence of codons arise in nature which finds phenotypic usefulness only after translation into a completely different language (AA sequence)? How did natural process produce so indirectly the hundreds of needed three-dimensional protein catalysts for life to begin?
Mathematically, it is impossible to go backwards from 20 AA to 64 codons. [....] Various models of code origin often pursue primordial codon systems of only two nitrogen bases rather than three. At some point, such a two-base codon system must evolve into a three-base codon system. But catastrophic problems such as global frame shifts would have resulted from such a change midstream in the evolution of genetic code.
[....]How did initial genetic code-certain sequences of codons-come to specify only certain three-dimensional sequences of amino acid strings that "work"?
The winning submission will likely provide both a novel and cardinal conceptual contribution to current biological science and information theory.
The Foundation welcomes theoretical models of a more direct primordial instruction system (one that might have preceded codon transcription and translation) provided the model provides explanation of continuous transition (abiding by the "continuity principle") to current prokaryotic and eukaryotic empirical life.
Inanimate stepping stones of abiotic evolution are essential components to any natural process theory of the molecular evolution of life. Full reign must be given to the exploration of spontaneously forming complexity and to self-ordering inanimate systems. But reductionistic attempts to provide models of life development must not sacrifice the very property of "life" that biology seeks to explain.[...]
http://www.us.net/life/
Archer
All species are transitional.
™ Version 4.2
