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DNA is now firmly established as the carrier of species information between generations, and as the source of the genetic variations which are the underlying drivers of evolution.

We know that it's the RNA templates sourced from our cellular DNA that order the protein synthesis into the specific proteins needed by cells, and that this variation in the production of proteins drives the differentiation of cellular functions between cells of different types.

But - to use a computer analogy - is DNA the program? Or is it the data?

It's clear that there's a mechanism (or mechanisms) in cells for switching particular genes on and off, so that a cell produces the particular proteins that give it its own particular characteristics. One can understand that this owes something - probably a great deal - to the influences of neighbouring cells (and not so neighbouring cells, in the case of nervous and distant hormonal influences), as well as to the ongoing processes within the cell.

So it seems pretty likely that DNA is actually the data, which the actual processes within cells use as a template to give them the proteins that they need. This does not of course imply that there is in any case a "program" separate from the cellular processes. I only suggest that DNA is not like a program, and that it's the cellular processes themselves as a whole which are important (of which DNA is only one contributor, albeit an important one).*

But there is a further fact. A fact that is at once extremely simple, yet at the same time a fact which is extraordinarily profound, the more one thinks about it.

It is this. The ongoing processes in our cells - indeed in the cells of all currently existing living things - are part of a continuous process (a continuous chemical reaction if you like), which goes back in a continuous unbroken chain (carried by our germ cells) to the beginning of life.

We know this must be so, because if the process stops in a cell, then the cell dies.

I find this a staggering thought - that the processes in my own cells are part of a continuous chemical reaction which has gone on unceasingly through all the cells of the original single celled organisms at the dawn of terrestrial life, through all the weird and wonderful creatures of the Cambrian and Precambrian seas, over the time of the dinosaurs during their own millions of years on the Earth, and through my mammalian and primate ancestors.

It's amazing to think that the chemical processes in my body - in all our bodies - are part of an unbroken chemical process that has gone on continuously for all that time. We're talking of at least 3,500 million years since the process first started in the first bacterial-type cell.

Or did it?

Because if we believe (and our existing knowledge still leaves us firmly in the realm of speculation here) that these cells originated from earlier complex "organic" molecules in some sort of "primordial soup", then when exactly did this chemical reaction start? Was it when these organic molecules reached a certain complexity? Or was it when "inorganic" molecules gained the characteristics of organic molecules? Or was it when the planet gained all the different inorganic molecules? We can take our pick.

Or do we feel that the origin of cellular forms from organic and inorganic molecules is just too far fetched and improbable? In the absence of any better evidence this is certainly my own current leaning.

So this is why I'm currently attracted to the presently increasingly popular ideas about panspermia.

But there's a further speculation that I would like to throw in here, and although we will be treading even further into the realm of uncertainty rather than fact, I find it a fascinating speculation which is therefore worth making. There are two planks on which it rests:-

1. The first is panspermia, for which see my other page entitled "A discovery of cosmic life?".

2. The second concerns the theory of the "big bang" origin of the universe.

It's notable that people often talk these days as though "big bang" was an established fact.

Although I have not studied the technicalities of "big bang" theory, it seems to me as an interested layman, that the evidence for "big bang" is rather tenuous. One can speculate that in fact it owes as much to the linear view of history promoted by the three Judaic monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) as to any really hard evidence. I know that the finding of  background cosmic radiation was said to adjudicate against "steady state" and in favour of "big bang". Nevertheless I suggest this may owe something to wishful thinking.

At the present state of our knowledge, the view of the cosmos put forward by some eastern religions, which is of the cyclical and eternal nature of the universe seems to me to be just as likely as "big bang".

So then: if panspermia is true, and if the universe is cyclical and not linear, we can speculate that the chemical processes that we call life have (somewhere in the cosmos) been running for ever, and will continue to run (somewhere in the cosmos) for all eternity.

Having taken the thought process thus far, it occurs to me that this concept (if true) would give more meaning to life than the rather limited (and equally unsubstantiated) idea that life is just a chance chemical event on an obscure minor planet.

But there's more. If a "mere" 3,500 million years is "staggering" for the age of the life processes, what about for ever? Is this possible? Well, the "inorganic" manifestations of the universe have been going on either for ever, or (if the universe had a start point) since it started. The processes of cells appear very complex to us, but who are we to say what is complex and what isn't? For example, is it not complex even that a hydrogen atom exists in the first place?

Is it perhaps that life processes are much more intimately connected with the other processes of the universe than we might think?

Is there perhaps a valid analogy here between the Hindu concepts of Brahman and Atman, with Brahman being a general presence of life pervading the universe, and Atman being its higher manifestation (it's intelligent and conscious manifestation) on the various receptive outposts which we call planets?

Does this have anything to say about the possibility of immortality? Perhaps life itself is immortal? But what of the individual manifestations of conscious intelligence? What relationship do they bear to each other, such that when one dies others take it's place? Is there some "me" which can hope to be conscious again, or is every "me" different - or is the difference between conscious entities somehow an illusion generated by consciousness itself?

And what of species? It seems absurd and arrogant to think that mankind has the only existing consciousness on earth.

One thing is for sure, and that is that we need a much more sophisticated view of the cosmos than is offered by our traditional religions.



*A systems orientated discussion of cell DNA usage by a professional physiologist can be found in "The Music of Life: Biology beyond genes" by Denis Noble (Oxford University Press). The author himself describes this book as a 'polemic', but despite its arty sounding title it is an erudite book which is actually grounded in biological science, although it is well oiled with anecdotes which the author introduces for the purposes of analogy. The author does an excellent job of illustrating the complexity of cell DNA usage, and that there is still much to be discovered.