"The DNA code common to all living things is not quite as uniform as previously thought. Evolutionists have seen the uniformity of the genetic code as evidence for their claim that all life evolved from a common ancestor. But there is more “babel”-like variety in microbial genomes than anyone ever suspected.
“All along, we presumed that the code or vocabulary used by organisms was universal, applying to all branches of the tree of life, with vanishingly few exceptions,” says Edward Rubin, senior author of a paper just published in Science. “We have now confirmed that this just isn't so. There is a significant portion of life that uses different vocabularies where the same word means different things in different organisms.”
In DNA, a genetic “word”—or codon—consists of a triplet of DNA base pairs. Most codons stand for amino acids used to build proteins. A gene is a series of codons punctuated with a “stop” codon. Until recently scientists thought all codons meant the same thing in all organisms. But now a study has shown that the “periods” at the ends of “genetic sentences” are routinely re-purposed in many microbial genomes. Codons ordinarily read as “stop; this gene ends here” do not, it turns out, always mean “stop.”
Some microbes—particularly friendly bacteria that inhabit the human body—see things differently. For instance, some read one of the “stop” codons as “insert glycine here.” A codon with an alternative meaning also appears in at least one microbial eukaryotic ciliate. And bacteriophages—viruses that insert their genomes into bacterial genomes in order to replicate themselves—can even re-purpose a couple of these stop signals to code for an amino acid that suits their needs.
Stop signals indicate where one gene ends and the next begins. Only three of the 64 DNA codons—nicknamed Amber, Opal, and Ochre—are “stop” codons. Natalia Ivanova, lead author of the report in Science, discovered some bacteria with extraordinarily short genes—only 200 base pairs long compared to the usual 800-900. But they don’t really have pint-sized genes; instead, these bacteria simply march to a different drummer. In their language, “Opal” doesn’t mean “stop”; it means “glycine,” one of the amino acids.
“When trying to interpret the sequence of these bacteria using the canonical codon table, Opal, normally interpreted as a stop sign, resulted in the bacteria having unbelievably short genes,” Rubin explains. “When Natalia applied a different vocabulary where Opal, instead of being interpreted as a stop, was assumed to encode the amino acid glycine, the genes in the bacteria suddenly appeared to be of normal length. Their interpretation of the finding was that ‘Opal-recoded’ organisms, instead of stopping, incorporated an amino acid into the polypeptide, which kept growing and eventually produced normal-sized proteins.”
All organisms God originally created would have therefore served valuable roles. While 6,000 years of sin’s curse has perverted much of that good world, the abundance of microbes and viruses in all ecosystems, even inside our bodies, as well as the valuable roles they play are consistent with a biblical understanding of our origins.
While evolutionary thinking would expect to find primitive simplicity in microbes, these DNA code variations represents a level of complexity that defies evolutionary expectations." AnswersInGenesis
“All along, we presumed that the code or vocabulary used by organisms was universal, applying to all branches of the tree of life, with vanishingly few exceptions,” says Edward Rubin, senior author of a paper just published in Science. “We have now confirmed that this just isn't so. There is a significant portion of life that uses different vocabularies where the same word means different things in different organisms.”
In DNA, a genetic “word”—or codon—consists of a triplet of DNA base pairs. Most codons stand for amino acids used to build proteins. A gene is a series of codons punctuated with a “stop” codon. Until recently scientists thought all codons meant the same thing in all organisms. But now a study has shown that the “periods” at the ends of “genetic sentences” are routinely re-purposed in many microbial genomes. Codons ordinarily read as “stop; this gene ends here” do not, it turns out, always mean “stop.”
Some microbes—particularly friendly bacteria that inhabit the human body—see things differently. For instance, some read one of the “stop” codons as “insert glycine here.” A codon with an alternative meaning also appears in at least one microbial eukaryotic ciliate. And bacteriophages—viruses that insert their genomes into bacterial genomes in order to replicate themselves—can even re-purpose a couple of these stop signals to code for an amino acid that suits their needs.
Stop signals indicate where one gene ends and the next begins. Only three of the 64 DNA codons—nicknamed Amber, Opal, and Ochre—are “stop” codons. Natalia Ivanova, lead author of the report in Science, discovered some bacteria with extraordinarily short genes—only 200 base pairs long compared to the usual 800-900. But they don’t really have pint-sized genes; instead, these bacteria simply march to a different drummer. In their language, “Opal” doesn’t mean “stop”; it means “glycine,” one of the amino acids.
“When trying to interpret the sequence of these bacteria using the canonical codon table, Opal, normally interpreted as a stop sign, resulted in the bacteria having unbelievably short genes,” Rubin explains. “When Natalia applied a different vocabulary where Opal, instead of being interpreted as a stop, was assumed to encode the amino acid glycine, the genes in the bacteria suddenly appeared to be of normal length. Their interpretation of the finding was that ‘Opal-recoded’ organisms, instead of stopping, incorporated an amino acid into the polypeptide, which kept growing and eventually produced normal-sized proteins.”
All organisms God originally created would have therefore served valuable roles. While 6,000 years of sin’s curse has perverted much of that good world, the abundance of microbes and viruses in all ecosystems, even inside our bodies, as well as the valuable roles they play are consistent with a biblical understanding of our origins.
While evolutionary thinking would expect to find primitive simplicity in microbes, these DNA code variations represents a level of complexity that defies evolutionary expectations." AnswersInGenesis
So God created man.... Genesis 1:27
