The view of biology often presented to the public is oversimplified and out of date. Scientists must set the record straight, argues a new book.

Review of 2023 book: How Life Works: A User’s Guide to the New Biology Philip Ball. ISBN9781529095999

  • @Donjuanme
    3•11 months ago

    He needs to look at some plant DNA, there are places with 50 times now DNA codons per cell than Humans have, with many many many times fewer genes.

    “If it’s there it must be there for a reason” sounds an awful lot like intelligent design to me, and his putting down his colleges for holding alternative (seemingly more informed than his own) theories doesn’t help my view of him. More codons don’t mean more reason, evolution is not what is most efficient, it’s just what works best at any time. It’s also full of cross contamination at the simple life form level, and what’s good for one single cellular life form might benefit another life form, but the entirety of that first life form isn’t necessary for the second, so evolution would suggest that the absorbing life form will slowly whittle down what isn’t necessary.

    Or has mitochondria always been perfectly fit for it’s function in our cells? (Hint it hasn’t)

    • @[email protected]
      4•11 months ago

      I don’t think that Venter is suggesting intelligent design. He’s claiming, as a result of his research, that it’s not effective to assume simple explanations for genomics and especially for cellular biology.

      Every technological improvement in the methods of research has revealed more complexity in organisms and so it behooves us to suspend dogmatic approaches to the genome. That’s the subject of the book discussed in the article.

      Craig Venter is very controversial and his statements are provocative. I’m not qualified to critique the science in this field. But I’d recommend you to take a look at the work his team is doing with synthetic chromosomes and engineered cells.