29 ms·
Not a biologist, but my impression is that the concepts involved in DNA/RNA, and especially the machinery around it, are so complicated and have so many degrees
by anyfoo 7y ago
Not a biologist, but my impression is that the concepts involved in DNA/RNA, and especially the machinery around it, are so complicated and have so many degrees of freedom, that snowflakes, which are rather simple crystallizations of only water, may not be an apt comparison.
Maybe it's closer to, say, someone having just learned the basics of analogue electronic circuits (but nothing beyond that), going into a basement, and coming out with a fully formed IBM-compatible PC with USB ports.
Again, not my field, and I'm happy to be taught otherwise on that one.
- insickness 7y agoIf you're saying that DNA is too complex to have evolved on earth, where else would it evolve? Panspermia just puts the origin of life in another location in the universe. It doesn't answer any questions about how that complexity would evolve.
- throwaway2048 7y agoThats not what is being said, hes saying that if life evolved twice, it would be almost certainly completely different and "incompatable" at a molecular level. Consider the design of processor architectures and operating systems, similar design goals but typically one cant run code from the other.
- marcosdumay 7y agoThe RNA to protein encoding specifically is completely free and arbitrary.