Home page. The truth about DNA.
Human Genome Study Comments:
The term "Book of Life" and other exaggerations mask the very limited answers which the basic decoding of the human DNA genome provides in terms of the mysteries and unexplained deep realities of life.
Certainly the medical implications of understanding the proteins related to the human genome are important. Speculations relating to evolution and those related to supposed fundamental understand of life based on the genome alone can, however, be very misleading. Unraveling The DNA Myth: The Spurious Foundation of Genetic Engineering
THE GENOME IS COMPOSED OF DNA WHICH IS A CARRIER OF A CODE. AS WE REFERENCE BELOW IN THIS ESSAY, HOWEVER, ARTICLES IN SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MAGAZINE, HOWEVER, MAKE IT CLEAR THAT DNA DOES NOT PROVIDE ALL THE INFORMATION REQUIRED FOR LIFE. LIFE IS MUCH MORE COMPLICATED THAN THAT. DNA DOES CODE FOR PROTEINS WHICH ARE IN THEMSELVES EXTREMELY COMPLEX MOLECULES AND WHICH ARE IN TURN USED TO REPLICATE DNA AND PERFORM NUMEROUS FUNCTIONS VITAL TO LIFE. (SCIENCE DOES NOT EVEN UNDERSTAND HOW PROTEINS FOLD INTO THE COMPLEX SHAPES THEY MUST EXIST IN FOR THEM TO FUNCTION IN LIFE.)
WITH THE CODE CARRIED BY THE DNA OR FROM ANY OTHER SOURCE, FOR A CODE TO HAVE MEANING AND IN PARTICULAR TO INFLUENCE COMPLEX LIFE, IT IS REQUIRED THAT THERE EXIST SOPHISTICATED MOLECULAR MACHINERY TO READ THAT CODE. THERE MUST ALSO BE SEPARATE AND SPECIALIZED MOLECULAR MACHINERY TO REPLICATE AND REPAIR THE DNA. THE REALITY ABOUT HOW DNA IS USED BY OUR BODIES IS IN FACT EXTREMELY COMPLEX. Important DNA repair mechanism linked to premature aging. How could life have been vital enough to reproduce before such a complex repair mechanism "evolve?" DNA is dependent on a repair mechanism! A surprising feature of the repair system that it can evaluate the placement of the strand signal to one side or the other of the mismatch and work from there"!
AS DISCUSSED IN THE BOOK UNRAVELING DNA, THE TRUTH IS THAT THERE IS A SECOND CODE AS WELL USED BY THE MITOCHONDRIA IN THE CELLS AND MANY OTHER MYSTERIES NOT EXPLAINED BY THE CENTRAL DOGMA OF BIOLOGY NOR BY DARWINIAN EVOLUTION.
DNA STRUCTURE IS VERY LIMITED IN WHAT IT CAN TELL US. THIS IS CONTRASTED TO UNDERSTANDING THE FAR MORE COMPLEX COMPLETE LIFE FUNCTIONS THAT THE CODE CARRIED BY THE DNA PRODUCES WHEN READ BY THE VERY COMPLICATED MOLECULAR MACHINERY NEEDED TO REPLICATE AND READ DNA. STRUCTURE (DNA CODES FOR PROTEINS) AND FUNCTION (DNA ALSO CODES FOR PART OF THE COMPLEX SET OF CONTROLS REQUIRED BY LIFE) ARE VERY DIFFERENT THINGS IN THE DYNAMICS OF THE MIRACLES OF LIFE.
IF ONE LOOKS AT THE PART OF DNA FUNCTION WHICH IS REASONABLY WELL UNDERSTOOD (DNA CODING FOR PROTEINS), THE SIMPLEST POSSIBLE ANALOGY WOULD BE TO THAT OF BUILDING A STRUCTURE OUT OF DIFFERENT TYPES OF BRICKS AS RELATED TO THE STRUCTURE OF THE HUMAN BODY BUILT WITH PROTEINS. (REALITY IS ALMOST UNBELIEVABLY MORE COMPLEX THAN THIS ANALOGY.) IT IS TRUE THAT SOME DNA HAS CONTROL ACTIVITIES (HOX GENES.) IT IS NOT KNOWN , HOWEVER, WHAT ULTIMATELY CONTROLS HOX GENES AND WHERE IF EVER THE ORIGINAL INFORMATION COMES FROM NOR EVEN HOW MUCH INFORMATION IS INVOLVED IN LIFE WITH ITS ENORMOUS COMPLEXITIES.
THE GENES WHICH ARE WELL UNDERSTOOD SIMPLY PROVIDE THE
CODE FOR VERY COMPLEX MOLECULAR MACHINERY WHICH THEN MAKES PROTEINS WHICH ARE
THE "BRICKS" OF LIFE. EVEN JUST LOOKING AT THIS RELATIVELY SIMPLE AND
RELATIVELY SMALL SET OF THE GENOME DNA LEAVES THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS UNANSWERED
(NOTE, THE DOGMA IS THAT THE VAST AMOUNT OF INFORMATION NEEDED TO TURN THE
PROTEIN BRICKS INTO LIFE IS CONTAINED IN THE GENOME, BUT THAT IS NO MORE THAN A
BELIEF AND NOT A PROVEN FACT);
1)
DNA STRUCTURE ANALYSIS OF SINGLE GENES DOES NOT SAY HOW MANY BRICKS (PROTEINS) ARE TO BE MADE TO BUILD
THE STRUCTURE
2) DNA STRUCTURE ANALYSIS OF SINGLE GENES DOES NOT SAY WHERE THE
PROTEIN BRICKS ARE TO GO IN THE
STRUCTURE
3)
DNA STRUCTURE ANALYSIS OF SINGLE GENES DOES NOT DESCRIBE THE MECHANISM FOR GETTING THE
PROTEIN BRICKS TO
WHERE THEY ARE TO BE USED
4
5) DNA STRUCTURE ANALYSIS OF SINGLE GENES DOES NOT TELL US WHY THE SPECIALIZED
PROTEIN BRICKS WORK
THE WAY THEY DO
6) DNA STRUCTURE ANALYSIS OF SINGLE GENES DOES NOT TELL US WHY THOSE SPECIALIZED
PROTEIN
BRICKS ARE USED, RATHER THAN ANOTHER TYPE
7)
DNA STRUCTURE ANALYSIS OF SINGLE GENES DOES NOT SAY HOW THE BRICKS (PROTEINS) ARE TO REACT TO OTHER
BRICKS WHEN THEY GET TO WHERE THEY ARE TO BE USED
8)
DNA STRUCTURE ANALYSIS OF SINGLE GENES DOES NOT TELL HOW THE STRUCTURE OF BRICKS ACTUALLY BECOMES A LIVING STRUCTURE
9)
DNA STRUCTURE ANALYSIS DOES
OF SINGLE GENES DOES NOT TELL
HOW THE PROTEIN BRICK STRUCTURES ARE REPAIRED NOR HOW THE DECISION OF THE NEED FOR REPAIR
OPERATES
10) DNA STRUCTURE ANALYSIS DOES NOT TELL HOW THE SPECIALIZED (EXTREMELY IMPROBABLE) MOLECULES NEEDED TO FORM THE BRICKS (PROTEINS) FOR LIFE, CAME TO BE FORMED IN THE FIRST PLACE.
1
12) DNA STRUCTURE ANALYSIS DOES NOT EXPLAIN HOW DNA CAME TO EXIST IN THE FIRST PLACE NOR HOW IT WAS EVER REPLICATED WITHOUT ALL THE INCREDIBLY COMPLEX MOLECULAR MACHINERY NOW KNOWN TO BE REQUIRED.
EVEN THE WAY IN WHICH SOMETHING AS SIMPLE AS AN ABALONE SHELL IS CONSTRUCTED BY THE ABALONE FIRST ERECTING A MOLECULAR SCAFFOLDING (BIOMIMICRY BY J. BENYUS, PAGE 101) THEN FILLING IT IN. EVEN IN AN ABALONE SHELL, THE STRUCTURE OF LIFE IN NOT A SIMPLE MATTER OF PROTEIN "BRICKS" ATTACHING THEMSELVES TO ONE ANOTHER. IT IS NOT HARD TO IMAGINE HOW THAT THE ACTUAL FUNCTIONING OF THE HUMAN GENOME IS INCREDIBLY MORE COMPLEX.
AGAIN, WE UNDERSTAND THAT NOT ONLY IN THE HUMAN GENOME BUT EVEN IN VERY LOW LIFE FORMS THERE ARE GENES WHICH CONTROL OTHER GENES, AND EVEN SETS OF OTHER GENES AND THAT GENES OFTEN HAVE MULTIPLE FUNCTIONS (AND CAN CODE FOR MORE THAN ONE TYPE OF PROTEIN). THIS ACTUALLY ARGUES AGAINST A SIMPLE INTERPRETATION OF THE HUMAN GENOME AND AGAINST A DARWINIAN EVOLUTION EXPLANATION OF THE GENOME. COMPLEX INTERACTIONS ARE EVEN MORE IMPROBABLE BY SELECTION FROM CHANCE VARIATIONS AND THIS LEAVE THE QUESTION OF WHICH CAME FIRST, THE CONTROLLER GENES OR THE COMBINATIONS OF PROTEIN (BRICK) GENES THEY CONTROL? MULTIFUNCTION CONTROLLER GENES HAVE ALSO BEEN FOUND WHICH MAKES THE PROBLEM FOR DARWINIAN EXPLANATIONS EVEN WORSE YET.
SIMPLY PUT, DNA (AT LEAST IN SIMPLISTIC ANALYSIS OF ITS CHEMICAL STRUCTURE AND WHAT PROTEINS IT CODES FOR) IS ONLY A VERY SMALL PART OF THE BOOK OF LIFE, IF IN FACT SUCH A BOOK IS IN MATERIAL RATHER THAN "FIELD" FORM. THE OVERWHELMING COMPLEXITY OF LIFE IN FACT MORE PROBABLY POINTS AT A BRILLIANT AUTHOR/DESIGNER OR SOME OTHER EXPLANATION SUCH AS SOME FORM OF LIFE DIRECTING FIELD.
THE REALITY IS THAT WHICH DARWINISTS WOULD LIKE THE PUBLIC TO BELIEVE THAT THEY UNDERSTAND GENOMES AND THAT LIFE IS JUST A MATTER OF ASSEMBLING/ADDING UP THE PROTEIN "BRICKS". THIS IS FAR TOO SIMPLE AN ANALOGY AND THE DNA GENOME ANALYSIS TELLS US ONLY A LITTLE ABOUT THE TOTAL MIRACLE OF LIFE.
IN TECHNICAL TERMS, IN HIS BOOK ON PAGE 191 MR. LEWONTIN SAYS; "DEVOTEES OF THE GENOME PROJECT KNEW THEREFORE WHEN WE HAD ALL THE GENES WE WOULD KNOW ALL THE PROTEINS, THEY NOW SAY THAT, OF COURSE, THEY KNEW ALL ALONG THAT GENES DON'T MAKE PROTEINS. GENES ONLY SPECIFY THE SEQUENCE OF AMINO ACIDS THAT ARE LINKED TOGETHER IN THE MANUFACTURE OF A MOLECULE CALLED A POLYPEPTIDE, WHICH MUST THEN FOLD UP TO MAKE A PROTEIN. BUT THERE ARE DIFFERENT WAYS IN WHICH A LONG POLYPEPTIDE CAN FOLD, RESULTING IN DIFFERENT PROTEINS. THE WAY IN WHICH THE FOLDING OCCURS MAY BE DIFFERENT IN DIFFERENT CELLS OF DIFFERENT ORGANISMS AND DEPENDS IN PART ON THE PRESENCE OF SMALL MOLECULES, LIKE SUGARS, AND ON OTHER PROTEINS. MOREOVER, A GENE IS DIVIDED UP INTO SEVERAL STRETCHES OF DNA, EACH OF WHICH SPECIFIES ONLY PART OF THE COMPLETE SEQUENCE IN A POLYPEPTIDE. EACH OF THE PARTIAL SEQUENCES CAN THEN COMBINE WITH PARTS SPECIFIED BY OTHER GENES, SO THAT FROM ONLY A FEW GENES, EACH MADE UP OF A FEW SUBSECTIONS, A VERY LARGE NUMBER OF COMBINATIONS OF DIFFERENT AMINO ACID SEQUENCES COULD BE MADE BY MIXING AND MATCHING. SO KNOWING ALL THE GENES OF A HUMAN BEING DOESN'T REALLY TELL US WHAT WE WANT TO KNOW."
WHETHER YOU LOOK AT THE REALITY IN SCIENTIFIC TERMS OR WITH SIMPLE ANALOGIES AS ABOVE, THE HUMAN GENOME IS CLEARLY ONLY A SMALL PART OF THE REALITY OF LIFE. AS WITH MANY SCIENCE EFFORTS, THE MEANING IS OVERSTATED, PROBABLY TO GET THE FUNDING THE SCIENTISTS WANTED. SADLY THIS IS TYPICAL OF THE PROBLEM WITH FUNDING SCIENCE IN GENERAL. THE PUBLIC AND THOSE WITH THE PURSE STRINGS ARE OFTEN MISLED AND MISGUIDED. No one should approach the temple of science with the soul of a money changer. ~Thomas Browne
Since this essay was originally written (original contained in the sections below), articles in Scientific American magazine have confirmed our basic statements about the limited meaning of knowing what proteins our DNA (Genome) codes for. The Scientific American articles talk about the failures of the simplistic DNA dogma to explain the real complexity of life.
In the October 2004 Scientific American issue an article titled "The Hidden Genetic Program of Complex Organisms on page 61, states; "Assumptions can be dangerous, especially in science ---- Eventually, if the volume of troublesome information becomes unsustainable, the orthodoxy must collapse." (The author is referring to biology dogma about DNA containing all the information which is needed for complex life.) The author goes on to define all the ways in which complex life is dramatically different in kind from simple life like bacteria as it relates to genes.
The article outlines the existence of numerous information control systems beyond DNA which exist in all complex life forms and which are necessary for complex life to function at all. The reality is that as with other numerous recent and ongoing findings of science fact, "Selfish DNA", Darwinian macroevolution and other simplistic views of the origin and evolution of life are becoming untenable as more of the innate incredible complexity of life becomes undeniable and even obvious.
The finding that complex life is totally dependent on multiple complex control systems raises another red flag for Darwinism. There is what is known as the law of requisite variety (Ashby's law) which says: "the variety in the control system must be equal to or larger than the variety of the perturbations in order to achieve control". This means that the control system must contain at least as much or more information than there is in the rest of the system it is to control. (In other words, there must be at least as much information in the control element as there is in the rest of the system if there is to be control of the system.) This means that if Darwinian evolution is to explain such complex control systems as are found in all complex life above the bacterial level, Darwinism would have to explain how the control element (HOX genes, etc.) came to evolve before the system it was to control, as part of a total organism, came to exist to be controlled or how the organism survived until the control system evolved. "Coevolution" is invoked to say that two things evolved together, but that just multiplies together the already incredibly small probabilities that only survival selection from chance variations (Darwinism) is (supposedly) the whole explanation.
Certainly, the article author still invokes evolution as an explanation for all this complexity of control systems, but does not offer any explanation for how evolution could account for such extremely complex control systems. Evolution is not just a matter of adding together the pieces (molecules) or bricks of life that happen to occur by random variation. Control of the dynamics of life is necessary and much more information intense. The author of the October 2004 article says on page 65; "To build a house, one must specify the needed bricks, boards and beams, but one must also have an architectural plan to show how they fit together." The reality is even worse for the DNA dogma than the house analogy since a house is not dynamic or living. In any case, we agree with the point of the analogy and before the article was written, this page already was using the same analogy as something easy to visualize.
The article author then assumes that all that information is in the DNA despite outlining the opposite in most of the rest of the article. (This is after starting the article with the statement; "Assumptions can be dangerous, especially in science.") On page 62, he makes a statement which is a fact and not an assumption when he says that "DNA in a genome does not correlate well with the organism's complexity. It seems highly probably if not certain that if all the information needed by a life form were in the DNA, there would be a correlation. If DNA actually contained all the information, how could it be the fact that as he says on page 62; "Some amphibians, for example, have more than five times as much DNA as mammals do, and astonishingly, some amoebae have 1,000 times more." Could anyone believe that some amoebae need 1000 times as much information as a mammal? The strong implication is that there is another information source besides DNA.
One wonders if in making the statement about DNA and information, the author realized that he had to bow to the DNA dogma to get the article published in Scientific American which is quite dogmatic when it comes to evolution. The truth is that science does not know how much information is in fact required for any particular life form and consequently cannot know if all the information needed is in the DNA, or DNA plus RNA systems or is somehow obtained from a field of some sort to which the DNA or RNA couples and correlates, which has simply not been discovered yet. On page 61 the author (who should be saluted for the intellectual courage he has demonstrated in writing the article at all) says, speaking of science; "assumptions often graduate to articles of faith,".
The article goes on to discuss how prokaryotes and eukaryotes are fundamentally different and while he does not say it directly, this discontinuity in cell design is another show stopper for Darwinian evolution as the whole explanation for life.
In the November 2003 issue of the same magazine in another article about DNA, this article's author makes some astounding admissions about the failure of the science community to separate dogma from fact.
On page 49 in the article about the now admitted fact that the DNA in the genome cannot fully explain life, the articles author says; "I think this will become a classic story of orthodoxy derailing objective analysis of the facts, in this case for a quarter of a century." Mr. Mattick goes on to say: "The failure to recognize the full implications of this--particularly the possibility that the intervening noncoding sequences may be transmitting parallel information in the form of RNA molecules--may well go down as one of the biggest mistakes in the history of molecular biology." This writer is compelled to add that those outside the peer pressures the biological sciences have seen this fact for some time.
On page 48 the author says; "there is no longer any doubt that a new theory is needed to replace the central dogma that has been the foundation of molecular genetics and biotechnology since the 1950s." This is an astonishing statement for a scientist in the field to be making in a reputable science publication. We commend the author for his intellectual courage and wonder if the editors of the magazine understood the full implications of the admission about the basic failure of the science community and system to separate dogma and orthodoxy from fact.
Further support of the limits of DNA can be found at the following link to the Institute of Science in Society article titled; "Subverting the Genetic Text" which talks about the reality of DNA.
We also highly recommend the book; "IT AIN'T NECESSARILY SO, THE DREAM OF THE HUMAN GENOME AND OTHER ILLUSIONS" BY RICHARD LEWONTIN, FOR A REALISTIC VIEW OF THE HUMAN GENOME FINDINGS WHICH WAS PUBLISHED BEFORE THE SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN ARTICLES WE REFERENCE HEREIN. YOU MAY ALSO WANT TO READ OUR ESSAY ON DNA REPLICATION. On page 191 of his book, Mr. Lewontin says; "knowing all the genes of a human being doesn't really tell us what we want to know." On page 152 he says; "A deep reason for the difficulty in devising causal information from DNA messages is that the same "words" have different meanings in different contexts and multiple functions in a given context, as in any complex language." These facts are supported by the referenced Scientific American articles and many other references.
DNA does not, in any linear (the whole is just the sum of the parts) way, define how to build an organism from simple cellular bricks. It is so profound that the following is worth repeating; As Mr. Lewontin says on page 152; "A deep reason for the difficulty in devising causal information from DNA messages is that the same "words" have different meanings in different contexts and multiple functions in a given context as in any complex language." It is like English where "cat" can be an animal but it can also be the first three letters of catwalk, or of catastrophe, or catalytic, etc. DNA is not just linearly copied to form proteins which then move by natural forces to add together to make life. That is not how the DNA decoding works even in the simplest cells of life. The processes of life and its building blocks (bricks) are both far more complex than scientists make known to the general public. Life is far more than just the sum of a bunch of chemical building blocks. Life is not just a stack of living bricks.
On page 152, Mr. Lewontin gives an example of this nonlinear DNA decoded world can be. He says; "The code sequence GTAAGT is sometimes read by the cell as an instruction to insert the amino acids valine and serine in a protein, but sometimes it signals a place where the cell machinery is to cut up and edit the message; and sometimes it may be only a spacer, like the periphrastic "do" the keeps other parts of the message and appropriate distance from each other. Obviously, there is no unique definition of at least some of the DNA code words! It seems obvious that there must be other "intelligence" applied to the decoding of DNA. Making a more general statement on page 93, Mr. Lewontin points out that in science in general, there is a similar principle. He says; "There is no unique way to describe or study a natural object. We begin always with a problem that sets the conditions of our description." In such cases, the descriptions depend on the conditions which the scientist sets to begin with. Sadly that is especially true in evolutionary biology and the study of DNA and life.
WE ALSO RECOMMEND THE BOOK "UNRAVELING DNA, THE MOST IMPORTANT MOLECULE OF LIFE BY FRANK-KAMENETSKII. IN THIS BOOK, THE AUTHORS CLEARLY SHOW THAT THE CENTRAL DOGMA OF BIOLOGY AS REGARDS TO DNA IS A HYPER SIMPLISTIC IDEA OF VERY LIMITED VALIDITY.