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Mark Burke

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Origin of biological information

What are the current thoughts on the source of biological information. It is well established that DNA is an information system for building life. Complex cellular machines build proteins and replicate DNA. But those machines themselves are built from DNA. So it is classic chicken and egg. What came first, proteins or DNA. Gnomes of even simple cells are huge repositories of information. How do you spontaneously get information from random chemical processes, natural selection and random mutation?

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  • Chandramouli Pandya

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    Jun 24 2011: Biology is not too different from chemistry. We can argue that replication, passing on of information starts at a very base level, atomic or even lower. Each atom, has a preferred state and it tries to maintain that state by modifying its environment or itself. How does it know what to do to stabilize itself? when you mix two chemicals, how do they know they need to react or not? Take this theory to a more complex set of chemicals, namely RNAs & DNAs. It is all a matter of trying to achieve the most stable state possible. The more complex the chemicals, the more complex the mechanisms.

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