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RNA May 'Run' Genetic Coding
leonbrooks writes "First a Stanford Medicine Magazine article speaks about RNA 'produced by plants that turn genes on and off', and now a Science Magazine issue says 'For a long time, RNA has lived in the shadow of its more famous chemical cousin DNA and of the proteins that supposedly took over RNA's functions in the transition from the 'RNA world' to the modern one. The shadow cast has been so deep that a whole universe [of RNA] has remained hidden from view, until recently' and speaks of 'an order of magnitude more transcripts than genes', suggesting that more actual coding is done through RNA than DNA. Is everything we know about genetics off-base? (no pun intended)"
Of course it's off base... I mean... first of all you've got that stuff about ribosomes... they're not even really called that... I was talking to God... and when He made them He actually called them, "those thingies" apparently we didn't realized that and started calling em something else... silly humans...
All your base are belong to RNA.
Is everything we know about genetics off-base? (no pun intended)
I thought it was a great pun.
I hate when ppl say, "no pun intended" when they obviously intended to pun.
...DNA and RNA code *you*!
No, wait. That can't be right...
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
And these RNA transcripts can be very small, but still regulate the translation of many genes. It'll be a while until the function of all of these RNA's are understood.
Its written in perl isn't it ?
On the contrary, whenever a scientific theory is proven wrong or incomplete, that just proves that all of science is wrong and the earth was created in 6 days, 6000 years ago.
Yeah, but does RNA run Linux?
Can they use this information to get the goddamn HSV1 virus out of my trigeminal nerves? (And the nerves of, what, something like 80% of the population of the planet?)
Fucking cold sores.
+++ATH0
but natural selection. I don't recall the source, but a physicist once said that chance does not exist but "uncaused effects" do. In other words, nothing happens without a series of events before it.
Science is really about distilling the inumerable naturalistic forces at work in the universe into coherent theories. At the macroscopic level, many of these forces appear random but so many forces come into play that is impossible to account for all of them in one observation.
I think it's the lack of certainty in the world that people object to more than anything else. The constant changes, alterations, and arguments to knowledge that science brings in attempting to answer some essential human questions disturbs a great many. The truth is science will never be able to answer with utter certainty these questions and will most often answer with a realm of probability rather than a black or white answer. Filling the gaps in human knowledge with "intelligent design" is just lazy thinking.
Imagine if intelligent design was applied to math, we'd end up with Pi to the value of 3 because 3.14.... ad infinitum is messy and reveals a level of unsettling uncertainty in the universe. Let's stop all scientific investigation and just apply a deus ex machina answer to all those niggling little science questions where the answer is never a round number, yes or no, true or false.
I am sure I don't need to tell you that you are welcome to the comfort of whatever designer you feel is necessary in your world. Just don't teach it as science and I won't ridicule and belittle your beliefs, because that's what those that believe intelligent design is science are doing to science.
Then again, I could be completely wrong about intelligent design since I am completely smashed and can barely find the backspace key...but that's another level of uncertainty in the universe for another time.
That's what we like about the Bible story, it doesn't keep changing around every few years. God said it, I believe it, end of discussion, question answered and I can happily go about my business in small town USA. If you try to understand the scientific viewpoint you have to 'keep up' with 'current thinking' and relearn everything several times.
6000 years ago.
I dunno where YOU go to church, but here in the south we know it's really only 5000 years!
My minister even had a guy who graduated highschool stand up and tell us. We all know he's real smart 'cuz he might go to the community college this fall!