At 08:24 AM 1/17/00 -0800, you wrote:
>Arthur Chadwick quoting from:
>From "Chance and Necessity" by Jaques Monod:
>
>".... The development of the
>metabolic system, which, as the primordial soup thinned, must have
>"learned" to mobilize chemical potential and to synthesize the cellular
>components, poses Herculean problems. So also does the emergence of
>the selectively permeable membrane without which there can be no viable
>cell. But the major problem is the origin of the genetic code and its
>translation mechanism. Indeed, instead of a problem it ought rather
>to be called a riddle.
> The code is meaniningless unless translated. The modern cell's
>translating machinery consists of at least fifty macromolecular components
>WHICH ARE THEMSELVES CODED IN DNA: THE CODE CANNOT BE TRANSLATED
>OTHERWISE THAN BY PRODUCTS OF TRANSLATION [emphasis original]. It is
>the modern expression of omne vivum ex ovo [all life from eggs, or
>idiomatically, what came first, the chicken or the egg?]. When
>and how did this circle become closed? It is exceedingly difficult
>to imagine."
It's a very good thing that the world is not bounded by the limits of
Monod's imagination!
Susan
--------
Peace is not the absence of conflict--it is the presence of justice.
--Martin Luther King, Jr.
Please visit my website:
http://www.telepath.com/susanb
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Feb 03 2000 - 22:14:51 EST