Re: OOL X - The origin of the RNA world.

Perplexed in Peoria <jimmenegay@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote or quoted:
> "Tim Tyler" <tim@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:d2pvfp$det$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > tinyurl.com/uh3t <rem642b@xxxxxxxxx> wrote or quoted:
> > > > From: Tim Tyler <tim@xxxxxxxxxxx>

> > > > I think you have to have some sort of evolving system before the term
> > > > "genetic" becomes very useful.
> > >
> > > I'm not sure what you mean by "useful", like useful as a word to
> > > describe what's happening, or useful as a process for evolution. If the
> > > latter, I agree. But if the former: "Genetic" merely refers to any data
> > > that is usually retained across many generations (of replication).
> > > Already when the first successful replicator occurs, the single "1" bit
> > > in the bitmask of possible replicators is turned on and stays on for a
> > > very long time, so it surely qualifies as "genetic".
> >
> > Evolving systems don't necessarily have to have clearly defined
> > generations - nor do they need to replicate anything.
> >
> > What they do need to do is preserve information across reasonable
> > spans of time.
>
> Hmmm. I think there has to be replication (of the information) at some
> point for there to be evolution under natural selection.

Yes - for there to be selection there have to be alternatives to
select between.

I'm talking more about the possibility of a single large organism,
which doesn't reproduce, and instead maintains itself.

> Or, at the very least, there has to be some kind of "fitness" subject
> to selection and dependent on the information that is being preserved.
> Perhaps it is lack of imagination on my part, but I don't see how this
> "fitness" is definable without producing copies of the information.

I don't know how you would define the fitness of a single large
persistent organism either. The concept seems rather irrelevant.

It could be argued that a single large organism would - in
practice - have to keep backup copies of its genome in order
to avoid a mutational meltdown - and would have to identify
errors, copy information between copies - and after a long
period of time all the information in each copy would have
been replaced - and that time period could be christened as
being one generation of replication.

There's some truth in this - but such a definition seems
to have arbitrary elements, and seems to be stretching
definitions a bit.

It could also be argued that the term "replicate" *must* refer to
data - and not information - and that encrypted polymorphic computer
viruses transmit information to their offspring without replicating
it.
--
__________
|im |yler http://timtyler.org/ tim@xxxxxxxxxxx Remove lock to reply.

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