Friday 1 May 2009

DNA - it HAD to be Intelligent Design (final?)

Asalaam alaikum Warahmatulah Wabarakatuh

D
NA - it HAD to be Intelligent Design



Intro

For a 'living' cell to pass its evolution on to future generations - it needs genetic material either in the form of DNA or RNA. Without genetic material, no progress can be passed on to the future generations. Your DNA contains all information necesairy for your body, it contains the blueprints of how things should be build such as your physical attributes (i.e. hair colour, eye colour etc. to how tall you would be, and some say - even how old your body can possibly age). Without these blueprints it's impossible for a body to be formed, a child to grow up. If any life form would suddenly and randomly appear without such a blueprint, it would not be able to copy itself, or to have offspring without any such guidelines. Therefore in order to preserve life, and pass down biological information, lifeforms must contain this genetic material.

DNA and RNA are both strands made of nucleotides. The difference is, that RNA is a single strand whereas DNA are two strands of nucleotides coiled together. Now for these strands to "fit" into one another, the right nucleotides need to be paired up. We call these paired up nucleotides from the two strands of DNA "base-pairs". Some other small differences, RNA does not use Thymine as one of the 4 nucleotides but uses Uracil instead. DNA uses deoxyribose instead of ribose.

DNA is the most common genetic material found inside the cells of plants & animals. RNA can be found in different places, it can be the genetic material of a virus. RNA is also used in our body to carry information (a transcript of a part of our DNA) to other places in the cell.


Being Made

DNA is made up of thousands of different genes, and genes are made up of base pairs. These "base pairs" are made of two paired up nucleotides. In other to form a base pair, we need to pair up specific nucleotides. Each type of nucleotide has a specific shape, so only certain combinations fit. There are 4 nucleotides. Adenine, Thymine, Guanine and Cytosine represented respectivly by the letters A,T,G and C. Due to their shapes only A and T or G and C fit into one another.

In regard to genetic material being formed out of natural processes; some might claim that genetic material was formed in chains naturally. However there is a whole bunch of objections to that idea. Fist of all the basic building blocks, neucleotides don't form spontaniously. Secondly they don't pair up to form base pairs correctly just like that either. And finally even if you could explain the previous two steps, it still wouldn't be a linear strand, but more probably a chaotic and branched strand. Finally, another problem is that they wouldn't for msuch long strands, and a short chain can only hold a very limited amount of information.


*Nucleotides (i.e. billions of A,T,C,G, match with their suited nucleoclide to become: Base Pairs [A-T, G-C] (millions of these matching pairs*)] ---> Genes (thousands of these*) --> DNA.

--> = come together to make up... [i.e. Base Pairs --> (combine to make Genes etc.)]




*(The haploidhuman genome (23 chromosomes) is estimated to be about 3 billion base pairs long and to contain 20,000-25,000 distinct genes.[1])

[1]International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium (2004). "Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome". Nature 431 (7011): 931–45. doi:10.1038/nature03001. PMID 15496913.[1]
  • 2 Nucleotides form a Base Pair
  • A specific number of Base pairs form a Gene
  • A whole strand of base pairs with different genes on it form DNA
  • DNA is folded, wrapped up with histones to form Chromosomes
  • Chromosomes are stored inside the Nucleus.
Connecting

Now since these nucleotides need to connect with each other to form base pairs, they have to do this thousands and millions of times - in the correct sequencing - in order for them to become useful genes. So millions of different A nucleotides will have to connect with millions of T nucleotides, and millions of G nucleotides have to connect with millions of C nucleotides. These combined will make our genes. One gene might contain any number from a small dozen up to thousands of nucleotides connected together into base-pairs, so there will be millions of nucleotides connected together in the matching sequences in the DNA.



Connecting two strands to make DNA

Since DNA is made up of two strands, proponents of the RNA world suggest that somewhere along evolution DNA was formed by merging two RNA strands toghether.

Now for two strands to connect - not only would they have to have approximately the same size, the nucleotides should also have to match up correctly. I.e. the A from one strand would have to connect with a T nucleotide from the other strand, and a G nucleotide to connect with a C nucleotide from the other strand. If we take two RNA strands with a million nucleotides, the probability of all nucleotides pairing up correctly would be 4^1million (four to the power of one million). Whereas in mathematics probability, In practice, probabilities smaller than 1 over 10 to the power of 50 [50 zeros after it] are thought of as "zero probability" Even if they were to argue that the chains were much smaller in the earlier days, the probability of this happening are still high (reaching to the mathematical probability of impossibility of such a thing happening.)

Right handed and left handed isomers - right handed only being useful for nucleotides:

Theres something else which is interesting aswell;

There are two types of nucleotides, left handed and right handed (isomers) [Imagine your left hand and right hand - they're the same - but the total mirror opposite of each other]. Someone can argue that yes, left handed ones were only present and this is why there was no harm in nucleotides coming together to form into the correct genes. The problem is though that even if they could show how nucleotides could form natuarally (which they can't) then both left handed as well as right handed nucleotide isomers would have produced equally. (Search Racemic mixture) [Pasteur concluded that organic molecules can exist in one of two forms, called isomers (that is, having the same structure and differing only in mirror images of each other), which he referred to as "left-handed" and "right-handed" forms. When chemists synthesize an organic compound, both of these forms are produced in equal proportions, canceling each other's optical effects.] - Term Paper on Biology. Essays, Research Papers on Bacteria -research material v. II,I

The nucleotides which make up our DNA are exclusively made up of right handed isomers [of nucleotides], and no left handed isomers. The same problem exists for our proteins. The proteins are made up of amino acids which are all made out of left handed isomers.

Its like tossing a coin 1000 times and it always landing on heads only. Would you say this is because of chance, or purposely controlled by someone with an Intelligence?


DNA needs to pass its genes on to future generations, but how?

Finally, even if for arguments sake DNA was to form, it would need to reproduce itself or it'd eventually end up being destroyed by the chaotic atmosphere. Replication is a vital part of evolution, without replication no advancement can be saved. For this it would need protein organelles, preferably kept together with our DNA by a cell membrane. The problem is though, DNA by itself can't do anything - it's just a Blueprint, or a set of instructions. So even if amino acids were present (based on Millers study some were produced), how did the amino acids know what to do? (Millers experiment does not explain how amino acids come together to form proteins and there is no successful study to show that this has actually ever occurred.)

To make a comparison, Imagine a factory with car parts (amino acids) laying around scattered, and some blueprints (dna/rna) laying inbetween them, and whole whole bunch of other random and even harmfull stuff. Would such an enviroment naturally produce a car? Everyone would agree you need factory workers [protein organelles and enzymes] who can sit within a factory (a cell membrane) and get their instructions from the DNA. The problem is though, that a simple cell membrane is made up of lipids (fat) only, so it can't open and close (like floodgates) at its own will unless it has a system within it [telling the different components what to do, and when to open up or close]. Fat/lipids by themselves aren't able to do this. So how did the DNA enter into this cell membrane in the first place, and how did any organelles enter into this cell membrane - so that they could work together to be productive in reproducing themselves on to future generations?

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