The Central Dogma of Molecular Biology has never been seriously challenged. Here is your chance: can you conceive of a mechanism whereby genetic information can flow directly from proteins to nucleic acids?
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This description of "non-Dogmatic" information transfer reminds me of all the great debates between Crick and Gamov and the others about how coding would work. But I do wonder if we are missing things. The Cairns-Smith "life from clay" was one approach:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Cairns-Smith
And so far as the deeply weird, how about "cortical inheritance"? First described in protists, it is far more widespread:
http://science.jrank.org/pages/48371/Cortical-Inheritance.html
Who knows what we are all missing? Joshua Lederberg used to wonder if we are so fixated on DNA/RNA based life that we might miss "shadow life" here on Earth! He used to suggest trying to grow organisms from an inoculum to which was added a huge amount of radioactive phosphorus. I don't know if anyone ever tried that!
Posted by: Mark O. Martin | November 25, 2009 at 11:59 PM