Design and synthesis of a minimal bacterial genome
Excerpt:
Cells are the fundamental units of life. The genome sequence of a cell may be thought of as its operating system. It carries the code that specifies all of the genetic functions of the cell, which in turn determine the cellular chemistry, structure, replication, and other characteristics. Each genome contains instructions for universal functions that are common to all forms of life, as well as instructions that are specific to the particular species. The genome is dependent on the functions of the cell cytoplasm for its expression. In turn, the properties of the cytoplasm are determined by the instructions encoded in the genome. The genome can be viewed as a piece of software; DNA sequencing allows the software code to be read.
My comment: What is currently known to serious scientists about molecular epigenetics lies beyond this simplistic explanation of gene-centric cell type differentiation. Most of the article’s attempts to link nutrient-dependent biologically-based cause and effect do not address the fact that there is no defined boundary between epigenetic and genetic. Similarly, they do not address most of the extant literature that has defined biodiversity in the context of terms used to describe the magic of evolution.
Reported on 3/24/16 as:
The creators of the first ‘synthetic life’ made a cell with just enough genes to survive
You have to define what life is going to mean each time,” Venter told The Post. In this case, life meant a bacterial cell that could grow rapidly in a glucose culture. If speed hadn’t been a priority, they could have trimmed the genome down a bit smaller. And if they’d wanted the cell to survive in conditions less sweet than a petri dish, they would have needed to give it a bigger genomic arsenal. “As soon as you want the cell to adapt to some environmental stress, it might not do it with the genes it has, it might just die,” he said.
My comment: Hugo de Vries 1904 definition of mutation is the basis for all assumptions made by theorists who still claim that accumulated mutations could lead to the creation of a new species. Venter just placed that neo-Darwinian pseudoscientific nonsense into the context of ecological variation and nutrient-dependent pheromone-controlled ecological adaptations.
All serious scientists know that nutrient-dependent RNA-mediated amino acid substitutions link biophysically constrained protein folding chemistry to supercoiled DNA, which protects the organized genomes of all living genera from stress-induced virus-driven entropy.
Thus, Venter helped to take us forward with the sequencing of the human genome. Now, he takes us back to Darwin’s ‘conditions of life.’ Life must be defined in the context of energy-dependent microRNA biogenesis for comparison to virus-driven energy theft, which is linked to all pathology and death.
See also: Replace the Modern Synthesis (Neo-Darwinism): An Interview With Denis Noble
Excerpt:
[W]hat Haldane, Fisher, Sewell Wright, Hardy, Weinberg et al. did was invent…. Evolution was defined as “changes in gene frequencies in natural populations.” The accumulation of genetic mutations was touted to be enough to change one species to another…. Assumptions, made but not verified, were taught as fact.
My comment: How to define evolution becomes a problem in the context of the report the the bacterial flagellum evolved over the weekend compared to no change in ~2 billion years in bacteria living in ocean sediments at depths that prevent UV light-induced hydrogen-atom transfer in DNA base pairs in solution from leading to the cell type differentiation that occurs in all other ecologically adapted living genera.
See also:
The Bull Sperm MicroRNAome and the Effect of Fescue Toxicosis on Sperm MicroRNA Expression
[…] See also: Creating nutrient-dependent life with enough genes to survive […]