Evolution
Chapters
page 1 of 2 pages | next »Natura non facit saltum (Nature does nothing in jumps)
Christian Schwabe
Latin is intimidating, and people tend to defer to anything expressed in that venerable language. Of all the errors chiseled into our cultural foundation in Latin, the title of this chapter is remarkably wrong. The creation of atoms, the movement of electrons, m...
Adaptive Evolution of the Genetic Code
R.D. Knight, S. J. Freeland and L.F. Landweber
All known genetic codes use 4 bases and 20 amino acids, but many other bases and amino acids have been synthesized and/or found in organisms. The coding relation ships between particular trinucleotides and amino acids can and have evolved, as shown by variants in both mitochondrial and nuclear li...
Development of Biological Potential
Christian Schwabe
Should development come after speciation? Yes, of course, in the new model it is natural, one produces the Anlage and develops it to its potential. The word evolution is derived from the latin term evolvere which means to roll out and that describes preci...
Early Evolution of DNA Repair Mechanisms
Jocelyne DiRuggiero and Frank T. Robb
DNA repair is critical for the maintenance of genome integrity and replication fidelity in all cells, and therefore was arguably of major importance in the Last Universal Cellular Ancestor (LUCA) as well. Archaea, and hyperthermophiles in particular, are well suited for studying early DNA repa...
Expanding the Genetic Code in Vitroand in Vivo
Thomas J. Magliery and David R. Liu
Insight into biological function at almost every level, from catalysis to signal transductionto structure, requires a detailed understanding of proteins, biopolymers of remarkable di-versity assembled from only twenty amino acid building blocks. Site-directed mutagenesis—the process by which an amin...
Experiments in Evolution
Christian Schwabe
Conceptual science interfaces with the experimental world as predictions emanate from the internal logic of a paradigm. Hypotheses concerning the origin and unfolding of life have their first brush with reality when they are held up against fossils. Molecular ge...
Extant Variations in the Genetic Code
Manuel A.S. Santos and Mick F. Tuite
The discovery in the 1960s of an identical genetic code in Escherichia coli, viruses and mammalian cells suggested that all living organisms use the same genetic code. The existence of a universal genetic code prompted Crick1 to propose the “Frozen Accident Theory” which states that the genetic c...
Functional Evolution of Ribosomes
C. Briones and R. Amils
Protein synthesis is a complex process that constitutes the last step of gene expression. The first studies that correlated this cellular activity with certain “ribonucleoprotein par ticles” present in the microsomal fraction are dated from the mid-fifties.1 Subsequently, extensive research was c...
Genomism and the Nature Trail
Christian Schwabe
As genes move into the center of a hypothesis one needs an "ism" to refer to the background of ideas that make up the new model. Thus, as the term Darwinism describes the single origin, the descent with variation, adaptation and constructive mutations ...
Life in a Tenuous Universe
Christian Schwabe
The question is, do we live independent of the shape of our universe, or are we an intimate partner as well as a beneficiary of its peculiar structure and its awesome dimension? The space-time that life needs to exist has been torn out of matter energy in the co...
Molecular Geneology
Christian Schwabe
Is it rational to expect proteins such as insulin, relaxin, hemoglobin, or cytochrome to have followed the evolutionary route of the organisms from which they were taken? Of course it is , but it does not follow a priori that protein structures would reveal relatedness between spe...
On the Evolution of Humans
Christian Schwabe
Ancient bones are somewhat like wind vanes that show from which direction a particular hypothesis breezes across the fossil field. If a paradigm is useful one should be able to predict what will be found at the end of the projected course. This means that one ca...
Origin and Evolution of DNA and DNA Replication Machineries
Patrick Forterre, Jonathan Filée and Hannu Myllykallio
The transition from the RNA to the DNA world was a major event in the history of life. The invention of DNA required the appearance of enzymatic activities for both synthe- sis of DNA precursors, retro-transcription of RNA templates and replication of single- and double-stranded DNA molecules. ...
Our Young Planet: One is not a Choice
Christian Schwabe
The old model begins with one origin and the biochemist knows that to be impossible. The scientific basis for the genomist’s position has been discussed and will be on the agenda again, but now it is time to pay tribute to the plausibility side of the argum...
Quintessence
Christian Schwabe
Steven Weinberg once said that the complexity of physics today reaches very close to the edge of the human intellect.1 Where would that leave us, the biochemists and biologists, who study a subject many times more complex than physics? Biology has inv...
Reconstructing the Universal Tree of Life
James R. Brown
The universal tree of life depicts the evolutionary relationships of all living things by grouping them into one of three Domains of life; the Archaea (archaebacteria), Bacteria (eubacteria) and Eucarya (eukaryotes). The “canonical universal tree” topology is actually a composite of phylogenies...
Ribozyme-Catalyzed Genetics
Donald H. Burke
RNA World research in recent years has sought to establish whether ribozymes have the catalytic versatility and potency to transmit genetic information and to sustain a credible metabolism. At a minimum, organisms from just before the Protein Revolution would have had to catalyze nucleotide polym...
The Condensation of Life
Christian Schwabe
The course of biogenesis was carved into molecular structures by the events of the primeval initiation of our universe. The speed at which pure energy segregated into baryonic matter leads one to think that there was no other possibility. (Physicists quipped tha...
The Early Earth
Oliver Botta and Jeffrey L. Bada
The Earth is so far the only place in the Universe where life is known to exist. Is the Earth special, or are there other places both in our own solar system and beyond where life may have originated and either became extinct or still exists today? Hopefully, in the not to distant future we ma...
The Evolutionary History of the Translation Machinery
George E. Fox and Ashwinikumar K. Naik
Current theories on the origin of life envision an RNA World as the culmination of chemical evolution. The extent of this RNA World, and the biochemical complexity of the progenotes1 that populated it, is subject to much debate. It, nevertheless, is likely a point of agreement among workers in th...
The Frame for New Hypotheses of Evolution
Christian Schwabe
How does one present any new idea, which is in principle impossible to proof? Hypotheses are self-limiting and an old paradigm of evolution will fall victim to its errors in logic. In biology in particular (because it is so close to our skin), old paradigms tend...
The Genomic Potential Hypothesis: Introduction
Christian Schwabe
The Genomic Potential Hypothesis is a biochemists' view of the origin, evolution, and development of life. Large numbers are second nature to a biochemist and though he rarely ever thinks of it explicitly, the concept of mass action is a part of t...
The Invariance Concept
Christian Schwabe
Tucked away, if it were possible, within the hollow of the tip of a dart gun needle aimed at man or beast one could make a memorable discovery. Just a moment after skin penetration the overwhelming impression would be ‘sameness’. A human, a pachyderm, ...
The Nature of the Last Common Ancestor
Luis Delaye, Arturo Becerra, and Antonio Lazcano
Until the late 1970’s cellular evolution was assumed to be a continuous, unbroken chain of progressive transformations that begun with the emergence of life itself and contin ued until the endosymbiotic origin of eukaryotes marked the major biological discontinuity. This scheme was challenged whe...
The Origin of Complexity
Christian Schwabe
Clearly, molecular complexity was a precondition for biogenesis. Contiguous molecular structures are monkey bars for electrons that provide the stream of energy required to extend that complexity to a level not observed in the abiotic world and to constantly ren...
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