Did Protocells Serve As Software 'Code' In Early Evolutionary Biology? (sciencedaily.com) 163
Software developer nickwinlund77 writes:
A new study following Nick Lane, et al.'s protocell study mentioned on Slashdot offers an explanation for how ''protocells'' could have emerged on early Earth, eventually leading to the cells we know today.
The work suggests that molecules called cyclophospholipids may have been the ingredient necessary for protocells to form important internal structures called vesicles, which likely kicked off the evolutionary process.
Are protocells basically a form of preliminary software-like 'code' in evolutionary biology?
The work suggests that molecules called cyclophospholipids may have been the ingredient necessary for protocells to form important internal structures called vesicles, which likely kicked off the evolutionary process.
Are protocells basically a form of preliminary software-like 'code' in evolutionary biology?
Why would you ask if the hardware is software? (Score:4, Insightful)
If DNA or RNA was the early "software" i.e. the information carrier, then the early protocells (which may well have come later) would be moire akin to hardware, would they not?
Re:Why would you ask if the hardware is software? (Score:5, Informative)
If DNA or RNA was the early "software" i.e. the information carrier, then the early protocells (which may well have come later) would be moire akin to hardware, would they not?
Definitely. Phospholipids are basically fat or oil cells that are more or less attracted to themselves, so they tend to form tiny spheres, inside of which other life forming chemicals can be sequestered.
This is low level chemistry, quite promising as a hypothesis, and fascinating in it's simplicity. RNA and DNA fit the software concept, not lipid cell formation.
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No. (Score:4, Interesting)
They're hardware, or 'wetware' if you like, but they are not software.
I guess if it weren't a bad analogy, it wouldn't belong on Slashdot.
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Yeah, it's more like a car where DNA is the engine and the RNA is the transmission.
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So it isn't wetware, it is wetware? Do you not know the definition of wetware?
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Do you not know the definition of wetware?
The wetware is the hardware, but made out of biological components. It's you that doesn't know the definition of wetware. As usual, you don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Why do you even try?
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Dual use (Score:2)
Early life may have been both. It's own structure, or a large part of it, may have served as a kind of proto-DNA. The separation of DNA (or RNA) from functional areas may have been a later refinement.
Remember, the first life had no significant competition, and could be very simple, slow, and clunky by today's standards. (Insert a government job or Comcast joke here.)
Some amazingly complete "protocells", then (Score:2)
DNA doesn't gain information, it loses information.
Organisms "devolve" to alternate states, from a sufficiently complete -originally existing- data state.
So, on this one I'll accept a "troll" moderation. It's about the only thing on this topic that will lead to interesting discussion.
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So, like, basically Adam was made complete and from then on it was all downhill?
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We are just pointing out how ridiculous your statement was. You might as well believe in Adam.
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Yeah, there is nothing ridiculous about believing that human beings came into existence complete and not via evolution. I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
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Curious how you can't resist taking a question on a scientific issue to a religious one, for the purposes of attacking it, either.
Says exactly the right looney.
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I think that sort of direct conceptual leap would be imprudent.
It is, however, a remarkably religious-sounding notion that life has common ancestry back to -precisely one- organism. I don't see any scientific reason to conclude that.
More likely, there are multiple original "proto-organisms" originating multiple biological trees. It's essentially a question of how far "back" you assert the original one or ones developed.
Do I think it's possible the original human was created ex nihilo and complete? Yes, b
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"Do I think it's possible the original human was created ex nihilo and complete? Yes"
Ah, I am glad I made fun of you then.
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Fair enough.
I'll console myself with the knowledge that only one of us can survive evolution, and that's me, even according to you.
Don't underestimate what an entity with infinitely advanced technology could do, though.
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If you are the evolutionary path we should sterilize the planet.
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Now, your opinion just needs to matter is some possible, theoretical way.
Random Guy On Internet isn't significant enough for me.
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only one of us can survive evolution
As is common for religious loonies, you've completely missed the point of evolution.
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It is, however, a remarkably religious-sounding notion that life has common ancestry back to -precisely one- organism. I don't see any scientific reason to conclude that.
The evidence is that all life discovered so far strongly seems to be related. They all use the same proteins, have the same handiness when it comes to things like sugars and various other chemical processes that are shared. Being related implies one common ancestor who survived. Whether there were other types of life that died out is close to unknowable.
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"So, like, basically Adam was made complete and from then on it was all downhill?"
Sure, he took a rib from Adam to clone Eve and then they absolutely had to mate, even though they were clone twins and got 2 inbreds to match, who invented murder.
Nice try.
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So little do you understand.
Meanwhile, Slashdot will be going insane over asking when they can buy Japanese and/or Chinese sex clones.
As for murder, I have to wonder how you think you came into existence in an evolutionary history free of "murder".
Perhaps you just "poofed" into existence from nowhere, eh?
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DNA doesn't gain information, it loses information.
Wrong. There's plenty of proof that information gets added to DNA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Yes, any base pair that gets added to DNA is increasing the amount of information, for any reasonable definition of the word "information". If you disagree, then please explain what definition you're using, or find a different word to use.
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Well, being in IT, I don't consider "purposeless information" to be "information" in a strict sense. I consider it "noise".
However, feel free to describe "purpose" as it validly relates to your notion of evolution, and I'll be more specific.
It tends to be a challenge, though, as even the most ardent atheist can't seem to write two paragraphs about evolution without "slipping" into using concepts implying teleology.
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I don't consider "purposeless information" to be "information" in a strict sense. I consider it "noise".
There is no purpose, just random changes. Some changes happen to be good and beneficial, some are bad, most are neutral. The bad changes don't survive, so the good and neutral ones stay, and increases information that appears to be purposeful.
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And they only way they can "stay" is if each step is not overtly harmful, as basically everything unfinished or broken is, and the sequence of organisms survives for the next mutation and the next and the next on the open-ended stack of mutations required to produce a functional system.
You are absurdly oversimplifying drawing equivalence to a single mutation, unless you think, say, the immune system can be produced with a single set of mutations in a single generation. At that point the improbability is so
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Incorrect. Any mutation, by definition, is new information. Simply because you do not understand how things work, doesn't mean you are justified in inserting spurious claims as a result. You should, instead, start with "I don't know" and then do the work necessary to understand. One can do this by taking classes in biology, or by using the internet to find credible sources of information to help you understand better. This, of course, requires you are sufficiently equipped to understand what is credible a
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It may be "information" in the sense that random numbers are "information", but it is not useful, constructive, specified information.
Perhaps I should have been more specific. As for "understanding", I have quite cogent information from a Professor of Biochemistry, which I won't name, pending the standard pointless political smear. I'll simply leave that unstated, and have you present what you feel is the science on this, through objective means.
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Drug dealers are not Professors of Biochemistry.
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You've made enough particularly stupid trolls already for this thread, haven't you?
I'm done with them, and will just wait and let evolution eliminate you for me. Enjoy.
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You will be waiting a long time. I'm not planning on being eliminated any t
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It may be "information" in the sense that random numbers are "information", but it is not useful, constructive, specified information.
The new organism, born with that piece of "information" will try their chance to survive in nature. If the information is useful and constructive, they will be more likely to succeed, and pass that information on to their children. If the information was harmful, it will be more likely to die out.
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Except, in the general case, mutations are hugely disadvantageous to survival
You have about 50 mutations compared to your parents. Are you hugely disadvantaged ?
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And I have trillions of new cells. "Mutations" that overtly physically express.
Am I about to get a new sensory organ, with all the neuronal brain wiring necessary to receive and interpret new data from it? Kind of like a next generation wi-fi router, with all the software for the TCP/IP protocol being added via random chunks of bytes pasted in, and all the hardware via random IC's being randomly soldered together, while never losing my Internet connection in the process?
Neat.
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Of course it does. It's called a mutation. By your argument evolution isn't a thing and DNA is no more complex now than it was before humans existed.
Re: Some amazingly complete "protocells", then (Score:2)
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Re: Some amazingly complete "protocells", then (Score:2)
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Re: Some amazingly complete "protocells", then (Score:2)
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DNA is no more complex now than it was before humans existed.
That's the question at hand, yes.
Do you have reasons to support that human DNA is more complex than that of, say, dinosaurs?
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No, his claim made it purely contingent on time, and that claim was false, and that claim was refuted.
If you want to argue with yourself in a way that has nothing to do with me, enjoy.
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Yes, and it isn't in the least "ridiculous".
You can claim the #5 book in Developmental Biology is "ridiculous", but it simply isn't, and your drooling level of bias won't change that, even when you repeat it. [amazon.com]
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"Science"!
Pfft. Go away. Evolution will take you out for me.
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Well, you know, I must whip it.
Particularly since it self-identifies as an "it".
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It's a weird way of looking at it, but it's almost always true. That's where the "selection" part of evolution comes in. Most changes to hereditary are bad. Many of them are instantly fatal. It's only the rare one that's good enough to survive as well as the parent. And of those it's only a rare one that's differently well enough.
Statistically, almost all mutations are bad. But filter those out for long enough, and variants that are at least equally good show up.
OTOH, "devolve" is an invalid concept.
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but those surface reasons suffice
Ah, no they don't. We're talking about science.
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"The harmful mutations do not survive long, and the beneficial mutations survive much longer, so when you consider only surviving mutations, most are beneficial."
This easily wins the Tautology Award for the day.
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Ah, wrong. I do.
But since you don't, let's try another word: "Unfalsifiable".
Perhaps you have a scenario where, if we only consider mutations that are beneficial, most of those are not beneficial?
False (Score:2)
False.
Organisms "devolve" to alternate states, from a sufficiently complete -originally existing- data stat
False.
This is so laughably ignorant, that I'm not going to spend any more time responding to it. Anybody can check a child's science textbook to learn that this is completely wrong.
Interesting! (Score:3)
This hypothesis would explain the platypus as a species coded in Perl. Cancer would be a bug in a C++ implementation.
Uhhh don't use 'code'! (Score:3)
Whenever the word 'code' is used in biology, such as in describing DNA, it throws needless confusion into the mix. Chemical processes are not code. Code is written by, and with purpose, by a coder... or a creator. And that is not what this is. The waters just get muddied for anyone clinging to nonsensical religious machinations about the origin of life.
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Whenever the word 'code' is used in biology, such as in describing DNA, it throws needless confusion into the mix. Chemical processes are not code. Code is written by, and with purpose, by a coder... or a creator. And that is not what this is. The waters just get muddied for anyone clinging to nonsensical religious machinations about the origin of life.
I understand your point and disagree. If a computer is built 100% with ASICs, its still running code, even if that code is hardware created. Same applies to computer made by the likes of turning. It's OS was hardware. Its still code.
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Is everyone here nuts? Where did he say anything about ASICs, or hardware created, or whatever?
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Just like the comment from MikeDataLink, "I understand your point and disagree."
DNA is a code. The information of how to make a new organism is all recorded there. Each sentence in the code is an explicit set of commands or instructions to produce a given peptide or protein. As you stated, "code", as you imply it, is written by someone or some entity. The information is abstract. It is recorded as letters on paper, or cuneiform on clay tablets, or holes on a punch card, or magnetic orientations of iron
Re: Uhhh don't use 'code'! (Score:2)
Re: Uhhh don't use 'code'! (Score:2)
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No, it just annoys you, because hard as it is for you to deny the universe as it is generally perceived to be was designed, the evidence of it being a simulation (which there certainly is) [scientificamerican.com] stretches your ability to lie to yourself to the point you fear your head will explode with the effort.
See how easy things are to understand when you are marginally honest?
Re: Uhhh don't use 'code'! (Score:2)
Re: Uhhh don't use 'code'! (Score:2)
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It doesn't say that, and that isn't what God is.
If you were intellectually honest, you'd simply say "God" as the standard terminology, and expect that to be sufficiently convincing of your case. The fact you want to use one descriptor for the purposes of identification with God, and another asserting you're talking about something else, just demonstrates you aren't, remotely. Your dishonesty is ingrained all the way down to your automatic linguistic level.
But, all roads lead to you being ash, anyway, righ
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Where'd that one come from?". It's pointless mental masturbation to talk about the universe being a simulation.
Like a typical human you think in absolutes. You need to stop thinking that everything requires a beginning and/or and ending. It does not. Infinity is just that infinite. It may be that there are a never ending set of simulations up the chain. Or an ever larger set of "universes". There may not be a "first" one.
Re: Uhhh don't use 'code'! (Score:2)
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You have a lot of experience with Flying Spaghetti Monkeys, then.
We promise to always treat you as you self-identify.
Re: Uhhh don't use 'code'! (Score:2)
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This was trite a decade ago.
But, at least you'll be consistent with your spaghetti god, as you get eaten by worms.
Re: Uhhh don't use 'code'! (Score:2)
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There is equal evidence for both.
No, completely false. A simple Google search will make this overwhelmingly obvious.
I suggest "Lancet NDE" for the very tip of the iceberg. I'd say the fact it is peer-reviewed should be of significance to you, but you're clearly too addicted to negating your own mind on this particular topic, for it to do so.
Ah well, natural deselection will be along for you shortly.
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No, it is evidence of exactly what it predicts, experiences that "just happen" to exactly correspond to the predictions of religion.
And no, that you would not accept direct verifiable observation of something as "evidence", simply demonstrates you are disingenuous in your admission of what "evidence" is. Completely boilerplate for an atheists, redefine what "evidence" actually means to something that nothing could possibly meet. Of course, you use that definition only in this one particular topic, and do
Re: Uhhh don't use 'code'! (Score:2)
Re: Uhhh don't use 'code'! (Score:2)
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No, they haven't been debunked. Lie on.
Oh wait, we agreed you were going to become ash. Just hurry up. You're useless, even to "your team".
Re: Uhhh don't use 'code'! (Score:2)
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Jesus is back whenever you've perceived him. Full manifestation of everything associated can wait.
His disciples said to him, "When will the kingdom come?"
"It will not come by waiting for it. It will not be a matter of saying 'here it is' or 'there it is.' Rather, the kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it."
--Thomas 113
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Another moderator owned!
And I don't mean in some lame Internet argument way. And, you'll know you deserve it.
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There are only individual organisms. And abstracting it to a group within a "population" doesn't change the fact that entire population will likewise be eliminated.
If you wish to console yourself with the notion as you're dying, "Well, there's patterns of alleles that are still existing, at least until those patterns are eliminated too..."
Enjoy your materialist mysticism. DNA, "selfish" or not, is a group of molecules, not whatever you are grasping for, to present something that survives in a way relevant
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Any "population" you name, state the set of organisms, will be -entirely eliminated- within 200 years. The set containing both those organisms and the set of organisms 200 years later will be an empty set.
You have some sort of essentially mystical association you are proposing between these two sets. What is that, exactly?
Ah, Dawkins. Of course. Another charlatan with a set of shells, and saying "don't look at this shell" (evolution means you die, and nothing more, ever, period), "look at this one" (som
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Individual organisms don't evolve.
Incidentally, there could be no better way for you to illustrate your mysticism than this.
Then, the only thing evolution acts upon is abstractions, and one could not determine there has been any evolutionary change by reference to any change in an individual organism. One can only detect it by reference to nothing material or specific. Neat.
No, they don't (Score:2)
They also do not serve as "banana for scale" or any other shallow stupid jornoanalogy
Self assembly, not coded (Score:2)
The lead off comment stated "Betteridges Law of Headlines applies here". True. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]. As stated, "Did Protocells Serve As Software 'Code' In Early Evolutionary Biology?". The answer is no. The problem is the Slashdot headline itself, which introduces "software code" into reports that had no such references.
This Slashdot article refers to a reporting piece from Science Daily:
"Scientists identify molecule that could have helped cells thrive on early Earth" https://www.scienceda [sciencedaily.com]
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There is another major transition that was needed in evolution, the move from non-protein protocells to protein dependent protocells. Life as we understand it in real karyotes depends on transmissible information, meaning nucleic acids (the memory) which in turn implies protein based chemistry.
Admitted: Software developer here, not biologist
Not to quibble with your interesting comment, but I wonder whether "transmissible information" strictly requires nucleic acids. It seems to me that a "stable protocell" instance whose membranes protect their internal structures could on occasion experience a pinching-off due to some environmental effect. The result would be something reminiscent of "replication" without requiring coded inheritance where a single instance transitions to more than one. Instances
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Yes, exactly. Those vesicles become a place where DNA is stored, but it could be anything - or nothing, as you posit. You understood that second to last paragraph exactly. The ability to replicate could be inherent in the self-assembly of the structure involved, as long as there is more substrate or "monomer" available that can assemble or crystallize on the remnant or fragment of the original. (That concept then becomes more certain if the existing structure can catalyze more monomer from the surroundi