God makes DNA replication suspiciously evolutionary, tricks me again : Pure Pedantry

Reality is always more complicated than you think.

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Jake Young is a MD/PhD student at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in NYC getting a PhD in Behavioral Neuroscience. He holds a BS and MS in Biological Sciences from Stanford University. If a volcano were to erupt Pompei-style in Central Park, his body would be preserved in a scoliotic posture over his lab desk. Archeaologists would later conclude that he spent most of his day training rats to perform tricks, until he went blind building electrical equipment by hand using a dissecting microscope. But, still, he died happy...because science is cool.

Pure Pedantry is a blog about science -- social sciences and otherwise -- as well as academic and scientific culture. No one can live on science alone, so I also like to dwell on pop culture, periodically explore the humanities, and indulge in other types of geeky goodness.

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God makes DNA replication suspiciously evolutionary, tricks me again

Category: Evolution
Posted on: July 18, 2006 12:01 AM, by NotoriousLTP

God is so tricky. New research reveals that the structure of a DNA replication molecule is similar across all three domains of life:

In two papers that will be concurrently published in the August edition of the journal Nature Structural and Molecular Biology (now available on-line), the researchers report the identification of a helical substructure within a superfamily of proteins, called AAA+, as the molecular "initiator" of DNA replication in a bacteria, Escherichia coli (E. coli), and in a eukaryote, Drosophila melanogaster, the fruit fly. Taken with earlier research that identified AAA+ proteins at the heart of the DNA replication initiator in archaea organisms, these new findings indicate that DNA replication is an ancient event that evolved millions of years ago, prior to when Archae, Bacteria and Eukarya split into separate domains of life.

...
Biochemist and structural biologist James Berger, a participant in both studies added, "Our findings of evolutionary kinship between the DNA initiators in all three domains make sense because, to paraphrase Francois Jacob, the one thing a cell wants to do is to become two cells. A cell can't do this if it doesn't replicate its DNA in the right place, at the right time, and in the right manner, while simultaneously avoiding over-replication." (Emphasis mine.)

See you would think that he would like me to conclude that the similarities of between three domains of life are because they evolved from a common origin, but actually he planned it that way just to play with me. This joke has been like 3 billion years in the making.

God...you so crazy!

The articles in Nature Structural Biology are here and here.

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Comments

Ah, you misunderestimate your enemy. Don't you see? If the same mechanism is used by multiple branches of the tree of life it makes it that much more improbably that they evolved. After all, how could such a mechanism spontaneously leap into existence? What could have existed before the fully competent machinery? It's too complicated to be understood! Quick, shield your brain!

Posted by: quitter | July 18, 2006 12:46 AM