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If anyone is interested in further reading on this topic, or on evolution/origin of life in general, I highly recommend "The Logic of Chance" by Eugene Koonin.
by COGlory 5y ago
If anyone is interested in further reading on this topic, or on evolution/origin of life in general, I highly recommend "The Logic of Chance" by Eugene Koonin. The book pieces together the latest knowledge from all the major fields of biology (genetics/bioinformatics, structural/physics, etc), math, physics, and philosophy in a way I've never seen done before. It interrogates virtually every hypothesis of the origin of life, from all possible angles, starting mainly with what is evolution and what are the possible routes to where we are, as well as their probabilities, and critique of applying probability to these models.
I'm admittedly biased, because Koonin is a personal friend and occasional colleague of a member of my PhD committee, but what I've heard from everyone that I know who has interacted with him (unfortunately I've never had the opportunity, to my great dismay), is that he's completely unassuming and carries no ego at all. My experience reading "The Logic of Chance" has confirmed this. The book is accessible to anyone with an ability to read. It taught me more about how to think for myself and recognize bias than probably any other work I've read (perhaps excluding Taleb's "Incerto" series, which complement Koonin's work very nicely), and also taught me a lot about evolution. The book can be found on the usual websites that graduate students are apt to visit.
The RNA world hypothesis is almost single handedly responsible for my interest in virology.
- ramraj07 5y agoYou and I were probably the only folks who recommended this book in HN history so hi! Totally agreed that this is required reading for anyone interested in learning about modern science on evolution (as opposed to the Dawkins drivel)
- xenophonf 5y agoWhat's wrong with Dawkins (aside from him being an ass)?
- jacquesm 5y agoHow is it simultaneously possible to be a personal friend to someone and not have had the opportunity to interact with that person?
- changoplatanero 5y agolooks like a good book. i wish it wasn't so expensive on amazon
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- AllegedAlec 5y agoYou might also like the work of Collizi and Hogeweg. They did some rather interesting theoretical work on RNA world hypotheses, particularly on the issue of the error threshold.
- adrian_b 5y agoAbout virology, there is no doubt that the first RNA molecule was a virus. All the popular presentations about the "RNA world" are either incomplete and/or logically inconsistent. There certainly was a RNA world, in the sense of a world where there was no DNA, but only RNA. However, there must have existed 2 stages of the RNA world, the later stage, when protein synthesis based on translation from RNA existed, like today, and also an earlier stage, when only RNA replication existed, but RNA did not perform any useful function for its host living being, but it was only a virus that was replicated using energy and molecular components from its host. The fact that there are RNA molecules that can have a catalytic effect like enzymes, as mentioned in the article is completely irrelevant. If such catalytic RNA molecules had ever existed before the apparition of RNA replication, they would have immediately disappeared without living any descendants. Only from the moment when some self-replicating RNA molecules has appeared, i.e. the first virus, we have some chain of nucleic acid replications, which has continued until today and all the existing nucleic acid molecules must be descendants of the first virus. The first replicating RNA molecule required for its synthesis energy and molecular components, in the form of ATP and free nucleotides, which can condense into RNA. So there must have already existed an equivalent of a bacteria, with metabolism using energy from the environment (i.e. dihydrogen with carbon dioxide and ionic gradients), which was already able to make ATP, which would have been needed to synthesize the polymers made by condensation, e.g. peptides. The apparition of the first RNA virus was an initially undesirable side-effect of using ATP to perform polymer condensations. Because any memory molecule, like RNA, needs an already existing living being for its first replication, there must have been a stage prior to the RNA world, when there were self-replicating living beings, but without memory molecules. The self-replication of a system does not need a memory, it can be "hard-wired", where there is a closed chain of chemical reactions where each reaction synthesizes a new component based on previous components and eventually the first component is synthesized from the last components. However such a self-replicating system without a memory had extremely low chances of evolution, because any random change was almost certain to break the self-replication cycle, leading to death without descendants. Only after the apparition of RNA, and especially after the later appearance of the RNA to protein translation mechanism, it became possible for mutations to accumulate and eventually create a variety of living beings. While the first RNA must have been a virus, because diverting ATP and other useful internal components to the production of RNA molecules could not have been of any good for the host, some time after the apparition of RNA-based protein synthesis, some form of symbiosis between a host and some DNA virus must have created the ancestors of bacteria.
- kubanczyk 5y agoI've looked on Google Books' preview and it reads quite smoothly. I was surprised that Google's price is so much lower than Amazon's though? Less than a half? (Might be locale-dependent, I'm in Poland). It has been long since I bought anything on Google, but I assume it can still be converted to a DRM-free epub like described here?: https://www.reddit.com/r/kindle/comments/3menci/i_prefer_my_kindle_reader_and_app_but_google_is/ https://www.reddit.com/r/kindle/comments/3menci/i_prefer_my_... Where's the catch?
- redwood 5y agoLove the way you write--"It interrogates virtually every hypothesis" <-- terrific