>Having spent the first 6 years of my career in the digital signal
>processing part of my profession, one thing I learned was that information
>does not appear out of nowhere. Somewhere there must be a set of
>instructions for these repairs. If there is truly no instruction for this
>in the genome then we are witnessing a miracle where God himself changes
>the appropriate cytosines.
>
>Since I don't think God is doing this, I would like to see what is wrong
>with the following suggestion. This depends upon the existence of some
>info storage location. Lineages which lost the correct sequence but which
>also had a fortuitous correction mechanism were able to continue living
>and reproducing. Those that didn't have it, died.
Quibble point: I think it's fine to look for a mechanism. But if we find
a mechanism, I would not then claim that "I don't think God is doing this".
It simply means that the control mechanisms God uses to influence this
process are buried deeper than we have looked. If we are not to be
overcome with pride, we have to admit, I believe, that they may be buried
deeper than we are capable of looking (Deut 29:29 to me indicates that
there _are_ secrets buried deeper than we are allowed to look).
There was an article on error correction in the genetic code in Nature (I
believe) several years ago. I looked at the article but could see nothing
in it that seemed to bear any relationship to error-correction as I
understand it. (My understanding of error correction comes from having
worked in the telemetry, radar, electronic warfare and computer industries
in the past) I was probably looking for the wrong key words. But if
anyone is familiar with the literature on error correction mechanisms in
the genetic code and would be willing to do a bit of tutoring, I'd like to
go find that paper and related ones and try again.
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William E. Hamilton, Jr., Ph.D.
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Rochester, MI 48306
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