Quotes about evolution.
Dr. Steven Chu, Director of the Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory and 1997
Nobel Laureate in Physics attended the
First Symposium of the
Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, "New Horizons in Molecular
Sciences and Systems: An Integrated Approach"
October 16th-18th
, 2003, Bankoku Shinryoukan, Okinawa, Japan
He gave a talk about
"Biological systems as nano-engineerd systems"
where he presented some beautiful work on the transcription mechanism of
cells. Transcription is the production of a protein from RNA. Transcription
the process that translates the information encoded in the RNA into an aminoacid
sequence that then makes a functioning protein.
Chu showed by some very elaborated experiments that the translation mechanism
has some built-in checkpoints, where it is checked whether the correct amino
acid is chosen. If it is the wrong amino acid, it is rejected and replaced
by a new amino acid. (see information
on Prof. Chu's page)
After his talk, I asked Prof. Chu how he could explain the evolution of
such a complicated checking mechanism. For sure, the first, more primitive
cells did not have such a correcton mechanism. Thus many wrong amino acids
must have been incorporared into the proteins, and thus lead to many non-functioning
or even poisonous proteins.
How could those first primitive cells survive?
His reply to me was "If you have doubts that this complicated mechanism
evolved, you could also doubt the whole theory of evolution."
and this is what I do.
Olaf Karthaus