From: Eugene Leitl (Eugene.Leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)
Date: Thu Aug 22 1996 - 03:53:36 MDT
> On Aug 21, 2:55pm, CurtAdams@aol.com wrote:
>
> Actually the ribosome RNA sequences indicate eukaryotic and prokaryotic life
> are approximately equal in age. Eukaryotic life, with its hodgepodge of
> interacting and varied systems and vast amounts of apparently useless baggage
I think "apparently" is just the word... Prokaryontes might be leaner &
meaner, but the eukaryontes still quite often get the best of them. You
know, this intron/exon paraphernalia are not entirely useless. They may
appear as ballast at replication, but better modularity vastly increases
speed of adaptation in a highly dynamic fitness landscape. Remember, only
the eukaryontes got the knack of organizing into multicellular organisms,
which e.g. can maintain much better environment homeostasis by carrying it
around (the organism as a whole can go where no single cell has ever gone
before), or much better efficiency due to specialization (differentiated
cell types).
> is a much more plausible model for spontaneous self-organization a la
> Kauffman than efficient, minimized prokaryotic life.
>
_______________________________________________________________________
| ui22204@sunmail.lrz-muenchen.de | cryonics, nanotechnology, |
| Eugene.Leitl@uni-muenchen.de | >H transhumanism, [...] |
| c438@org.chemie.uni-muenchen.de | "deus ex machina, v.0.0.alpha"|
| http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~ui22204 | >H: "alpha-->omega" |
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