Double Helix: 50 Years of DNA

Dr from the Source writes "Despite previous posts, tomorrow (April 25, 2003) is the real 50th anniversary of the publication of the famous paper by J. D. Watson and F. Crick in the Nature journal. Readers can download such paper, along with a few other classic ones from Nature's archive."

Comments

We *are* genetically engineered to be intelligent

[leonbrooks]

The Christian Right are just one example among many of the dangers inherent in misreading or ignoring the manufacturer's instructions (you're another). Your brains work a lot better if you don't constantly abuse them in lifestyle and diet.

Sit down for a few hours and figure out the odds against enough genetic material arising spontaneously (together with a framework to support and replicate it all), no matter how many or how few steps it's done in, to produce the most basic lifeform. It lends new depth and richness of meaning to the term "impossible". The Medieval people called it "spontaneous generation" and we laugh at that concept - but the only new ingredient we add is time.

Even living critters like us, if we die, don't spontaneously burst back into life again or spawn simpler critters. All of the ingredients are there, in the right arrangements and ideal concentrations, an immensely better situation than any of the ephemeral "primordial soup" scenarios, yet we don't get new life from dead bodies, we just get food for worms and bacteria.

So if it didn't happen by accident, it happened by design. Is there a third alternative?