The Chicken May Have Come Before the Egg

Muondecay writes "The age old question of which came first, the chicken or the egg, has been tentatively answered. The verdict? The chicken, or rather a key protein needed to form the shell of the egg. The protein, called ovocledidin-17, was known to be involved in binding calcite molecules that formed the shells, but the mechanism behind this was unclear until now. The protein acts as a molecular machine, binding to nanoparticles of calcite and guiding them to begin self-assembly of the shell. This gives tremendous insight for developing methods of nano-scale self-assembly based on natural processes, as well as settling heated cocktail party arguments everywhere."

Comments

Article is flawed. Egg came first.

[brunes69]

Putting aside extremely rare mutations in DNA (usually only caused by nuclear anonmoly), whatever DNA you have when you are born, you have when you die.

Life forms do not mutate/evolve/ during their lifespan; the mutations occur at the DNA copying phase when they are creating the next generation.

As such - the egg (IE embryo) came first. It is totally fundamentally impossible for the chicken to come first, because the chicken came from an embryo.