Natural Science Forum / Biology / Evolution / April 2005

"SLP" <huxter4441@aol.com>

This quote from
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3778
The team fed data on the photochemistry of various organic
molecules into a computer model designed to simulate the

This is the first of a planned series of postings in which I will present
my viewpoint and some of my ideas regarding the origin of life.  The word
"viewpoint" was chosen carefully - in no sense will I be presenting a
"theory" of life's origin.

SPECULATIONS ON THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE
                        James D. Kendall
                     (Copyright March 2005)
1.SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

Peter F wrote:-

is

The notion of recombination hot-spots has been around a while, but this
recent Science article comparing the spatial distribution of hot-spots
between human and chimp genomes has me wondering.  Are recombination
hot-spots really discretely different in terms of recombination rate ...

Astrobiology
Nobody has yet seen an extraterrestrial, which may sound like a problem in
establishing a science of astrobiology. But in the past 20 years or so,
scientists have found clues that life may be quite common in the universe,

In all these origin scenarios words are tossed out
with the implied understanding that they can easily pop up
when needed - AND stay stable as long as needed - AND be
replenished when needed - AND no aspect of the environment

ORIGIN OF LIFE: ON REPLICATION IN THE RNA WORLD
The following points are made by William R. Taylor (Nature 2005 434:705):
1) It is now widely believed that almost 4 billion years ago, before the
first living cells, life consisted of assemblies of self-reproducing

With this posting, we begin discussion of the "lipid world", a
period in the origin and evolution of life which bridges the
gap between prebiotic chemistry and the RNA world.  This proposal
incorporates portions of the "iron-sulfur world" proposals of

Here is a new interesting published discussion:
"How is the Evolutionary Theory of Aging Holding up Against Mounting
Attacks?"
American Aging Association Newsletter,  April 15 issue 2005,  pages 2 -

Tim Tyler <tim@tt1lock.org> wrote in
news:d346gk$qrn$1@darwin.ediacara.org:

Are there any bacteria in which the GC content is high in non coding
region compared to coding region?
Ven.

I've been nursing an interest in genetics for the last few years, burying
myself in Hartl and Jones and learning the basics.  It's a rapidly expanding
and fascinating area of technology.
I've recently encountered detailed discussions about introns, the