Chapter 6 brilliant mistake

The single greatest achievement of nature to date is, of course, the invention of the DNA molecule.We've had it from the beginning.It was contained in the very first cell, the cell with membranes and all, that appeared somewhere in the soupy water about three billion years ago as the planet cooled.The DNA that runs through all the cells on Earth today is nothing more than the result of the expansion and mismanagement of that first DNA.In an essential sense, we cannot claim to have made any progress, since the techniques of growth and reproduction remain largely unchanged. But we have made progress in all other areas.Although, today it is out of fashion to talk about progress in evolution, because if you use that word to refer to anything like improvement it implies some kind of value judgment that science is powerless to do, I still can't think of a better one. terms to describe what has happened.After all, all the way from a living system with just one primitive microbial cell, from a colorless career in a marsh kelp, to everything we see around us today - Paris City, Iowa, Cambridge University, Woods Hole (Woods Hole Marine Biology Experimental Station), Yugoslavia's Plitvice National Park, the huge terraced, travertine-lined lakes and waterfalls, the horse chestnut tree in my backyard, and vertebrates Those rows of neurons in the cortical module—it can only represent improvement.We've really come a long way since that one ancient molecule.

We can never do this through human intelligence.Even if molecular biologists have flown here on satellites from the very beginning, with laboratories and all, coming here from some other solar system, it's useless.Yes, we evolved scientists and thus know a lot about DNA, but if our minds were challenged to design a similar molecule from scratch that would reproduce, we would never succeed of.We would make a fatal mistake: our molecules would be perfect.In time, we'll figure out how to do it, nucleotides, enzymes, whatever, and make a perfect, identical copy, but it never occurs to us that the thing has to be able to something went wrong.

The ability to be a little bit wrong is the true miracle of DNA.Without this peculiar quality, we would still be anaerobes, but not music.Viewed individually, each mutation that has brought us along represents some random, entirely spontaneous accident, yet mutations occur by no means by accident; mistake. If we were to do it, we would find some way to correct these mistakes, and evolution would stop halfway.Just imagine, some scientists are successfully engaged in the reproduction of protocells with completely correct text, anucleated cells like bacteria, and when nucleated cells suddenly appear, how panicked they will be.Think how the disturbed committees would meet to explain the disgrace why those trilobites proliferated and filled the ground; think how they would use group fire, how they would undo ownership.

We say that people make mistakes, but we don't like the idea very much.It is even more difficult for us to accept the fact that making mistakes is also in the nature of all living things.We prefer to stand firm and make sure that doesn't change.But here's the thing: we're here by sheer chance, by mistake, so to speak.Somewhere along the evolutionary path, nucleotides shifted sideways to let in new members; possibly viruses migrated in too, bringing with them small alien genomes; radiation from the sun or outer space caused A small crack was opened, and human beings were born.

In any case, so long as the molecule has this fundamental instability, that's probably the only way things can go.After all, if you had a mechanism designed to continually change the way of life; if all new forms had to fit together and fit together as they evidently did; if every improvisation, The new genes that represent the modification of the individual are likely to be selected for this species; if you also have enough time, perhaps, this system is simply destined to develop a brain and consciousness sooner or later. Biology really needs a better word than "error" for this evolutionary drive.Or, the word "error" is used after all.As long as you remember, it comes from an ancient root that means to wander about, to seek.