The Selfish Ribosome Theory
motherboard.vice.com
motherboard.vice.com
Even allowing for hype, can someone give this some clarity?
Was linked in the article, might shed some light on your question.
Or did I miss something?
Modern cells are vastly complex; self-replication must have started with something orders of magnitude more simple.
Some of the components that appear essential are, on the other hand, too simple to self-replicate, such as DNA.
A popular notion alluded to elsewhere on this page is the "RNA world", that RNA, not DNA, is where it all started, but the arguments along those lines have truly major gaps in what the original machinery would have been.
This paper apparently shows some decent evidence (not proof) that ribosomes are capable of being the original self-replicators.
Since ribosomes are critical machinery, but not usually considered the primogenitor, this up-ends mainstream thinking in a chicken/egg sort of way.
Edit: here's the key part of the article regarding that:
> Under this radically new view of the origin of life, genes only became independent of ribosomes because ribosomes began using them to gain an advantage over their rivals—while traditional theory says that ribosomes were only created and refined because they gave genes a more efficient way of affecting their surroundings and outcompeting their rivals.
Ribosomes are made up of proteins and rRNA! And the Peptidyl transferase catalytic reaction which forms peptide bonds is entirely conducted by the rRNA[1]. Proto/paleo ribosomes were probably entirely RNA in the RNA world, long ago. Dawkins alludes to this (though I cannot remember the precise language since I don't have the book in front of me now).
"what DNA (or evolution) really wants" "Eventually, some pre-living ribosomes would have associated with bubbles of fatty acids" - as if they have wants and desires, or ability to act with intent.
I think evolution is a kind of alternative religion for many people.
Using that language with events that always happen doesn't lead to problems. But as soon as you use it with events that only happen sometimes you cause your thinking to be skewed.
There is also a difference with complexity level - using "want" for single step events is not the same as using it with multi-step complex events, that only as a final result "want" something. Doing that leads you to personify the system.
> The problem usually is people who don't know what they are talking about misinterpreting it as though atoms/molecules/cells/etc. have feelings.
Exactly. Which is why you should not do it.
Yudkowsky's "An Alien God" talks about this: http://lesswrong.com/lw/kr/an_alien_god/
In many many areas, we use personification to easily abstract complex behavior and rulesets. It's a signal to the reader/listener that we are deferring discussion about exactly why or how something happens.
The oxygen "wants" to bind to the iron to create rust, because we're glossing over electron orbitals. The T-cell "thinks" it has found an intruder, because we're not tracing it's internal algorithm. The computer "guesses" when to retransmit a packet, because the details of exponential backoff are outside the scope of my explanation...
Most of the time your kind of descriptions of the "how" are not presented thus ppl. mis-conceptualize.
Sometimes I think it would be best science used its very own language partly like Latin in medicine is used.
I don't think scientists make that mistake, although some philosophers have argued that they (rarely) do. It is very likely that laypeople reading such articles might, though.
Nerd trivia: his son is Ze Frank.
Now I'll have to google "vlogging format"...
Does anybody have good literature I could read into?