Robert Farrar sent in this link to Dr Jay L Wile at http://blog.drwile.com/?p=14280 … which discusses the 'universal genetic code' and says it is far from universal. This is a challenging statement that would rile uniformitarians and yet Dr Wile is able to point out, if mitochondria in invertebrates was a different genetic code from mitochondria in vertebrate, and both of these codes differ from the 'universal' genetic code what is that telling us? He says it means that the eukaryotic cells that evolved into invertebrates must have formed when a cell that uses the universal code engulfed a cell that used yet another different code. As a result, he suggests, invertebrates must have evolved from one line of eukaryotic cells while vertebrates must have evolved from a completely separate line of eukaryotic cells. However, this is not possible as evolution requires vertebrate coding from invertebrates. Couple this with the process of Horizontal Gene Transfer and the idea of a 'common ancestor' for all life becomes untenable, he adds. Rather than a single tree of life we might have, instead, a veritable forest of trees – with different ancestral origins,
He came across this in Dr Wayne Rossiter's 'Shadow of Oz' a book he is still in the process of reading. It will be reviewed in a later blog post. In chapter 6, 'Biology and Evolution' he was surprised to read the National Center for Biochronology Information, which houses all published DNA sequences (as well as RNA and protein sequences) currently acknowledges 19 different coding languages for DNA. The uniformitarian view is that the genetic code is unversal (see the 'Biology Encyclopedia' for example). The universality of the genetic code strongly implies a common evolutionary origin of all organisms. These include a few bacteria and protozons that have a few variations. Dr Rossiter is saying this is not in anyway correct accoding to Wile, and you need to know how a cell makes proteins.
Dr Wile, as he likes to be called, continues – but read the blog post yourself as the argument is readily understandable but lengthy. It is basically saying that the hypothesis of endosymbiosis has problems as it assumes prokaryolic cells become eukaryolic cells. Has Dr Wile hit on something amiss with evolution theory or not. He says if the mitochondria in invertebrates differs from same in vertebrates they must have evolved from completely separate lines of descent. The issue can be resolved by assuming invertebrates into vertebrates but their mitochondria also evolved to use a different code. He makes the point that these variations in the genetic code are problematical to the hypothesis of common ancestry – the present consensus view, which may be one reason the discovery is hidden from Joe Public. Has Dr Rossiter spilt the beans? .. or might there be more to this story.
In the comments one chap seems to think there is nothing odd about this as it has all been published and apparently missed by Dr Wile. He provides the title and date of various articles such as one in 2013 by several authors 'Multiple Overlapping Genetic Codes Profoundly Reduce the Probability of Beneficial Mutation' (2013). It includes 'we now know that DNA sequences are typically poly-functional. Trifanov has described at least 12 genetic codes that any given nucleotide can contribute to and showed that a given base pair can contribute to multiple overlapping codes simultaneously …' etc.
J Sanford (2008), 'Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome' FMS Pubishing of New York, and EN Trifanov (1988) 'Multiple codes of nucleotide sequences' in the Bulletin of Mathematical Biology, and another article (1997) in Molecular Biology 31 page 647-654.
Dr Wile replies, if people are proposing that the genetic code changes over time that requires an explanation. However, one area ignored by mainstream and by Dr Wile is the Electric Universe and how it might impact on cells. Clearly there is a lot out there to read up on – by everyone. A recent Japanese experiment of fish living on the International Space Station showed mitochondrial changes – as well as changes in bone density – see http://phys.org/print372964561.html