On 9/1/2014 10:54 AM, John Clark wrote:
On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 1:03 PM, Stephen Paul King <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
> Hold it! Where is the information about the physical system required to
run that
750 Meg of information contained?
DNA contains information on how to make stuff but it doesn't actually do anything, only
proteins and RNA do things. DNA by itself just sits there and a 1000 line lisp program
printed out onto 100 pages of paper would just sit there, both need hardware to run on.
To run the 750 meg DNA program a cell needs Mitochondrial RNA, Transfer RNA, Messenger
RNA, and several thousand protein enzymes. And to answer your question, every single bit
of information needed to make all those different types of RNA and all those different
types of proteins is contained in that original 750 Meg, it's equivalent to not only
containing the program but also all the information you need to make the computer to run
the program on. And if that reminds you a little of the chicken or the egg problem
welcome to the club, it has caused origin of like theorists no end of problems. Did DNA,
which knows what to do but can't do it, come first or did proteins, which can do things
but doesn't know what to do, come first?
The most popular theory is that RNA came first.
Brent
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