Proteins, Apes & Us: dhw look!!! (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, April 22, 2012, 23:29 (4599 days ago) @ dhw


> I'm delighted with this reply. I see little difference between the inventive drive of DNA and the intelligence and cooperation of cells. Your inventive DNA will get nowhere if it doesn't suit a particular environment, and my inventive cell gets going when the environment is suitable. I agree that Darwin's random mutations seem the least likely of the three, and in view of all the unanswered questions I would say that all three theories are (still) in their infancy. That is where they will remain until science comes up with some direct evidence of how innovations are caused.-Deepak Chopra reviewing Dawkins latest book on science for tennagers has the following paragraph which fits our discussion:-"He ignores, either willfully or through ignorance, the evidence for directed mutagenesis first put forward by John Cairns of Harvard in 1988. John Cairns showed that if you grow bacteria with the inability to metabolize lactose, they evolve that ability in petri dishes tens of thousands of times faster than would be predicted if mutations simply occurred randomly. Professor Rudolph Tanzi of Harvard Medical School further points out that mutations in the human genome do not occur randomly but cluster in "hot spots" that are hundreds of times more likely to undergo mutation.
Could these hot spots be driving the evolution of humans according to our current need for survival? Tanzi and others are eager to speculate and thus expand Darwinsim, where Dawkins uses evolution merely as a club against superstition and organized religion -- this does a disservice to young readers and betrays the hollowness of Dawkins' allegiance to scientific objectivity. Recent evidence from whole human genome sequencing has shown that in a newborn there are roughly 30 new (de novo) mutations that were not present in mom or dad. So, for the first time, we can earnestly begin to ask whether human DNA undergoes directed mutagenesis that has been already observed in bacterial genomes. (Tanzi and I have had several conversations on how the mind may influence the flow of energy and information in living things, and beyond that to the universe as a whole.) (my bolds)-http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deepak-chopra/dawkins-magic-of-reality_b_1004216.html