GENETIC SYSTEMS

Right Place, Right Time

It had to happen. The Earth was too rich chemically. The temperature was just right. Everything needed was here. Some three billion years after its creation life began on Earth. You have to remember that the most plausible reason for the creation of the Earth was a near collision of a another star and our sun. It need not have been a star like our own sun, it could have been a white dwarf or a black neutron star. It had to have enough density and mass that when it passed close by, its gravity could have pulled a great streamer out of our sun. Our sun is rotating on an axis. The streamer would have formed a giant arc of incandescent material. Local collapse of the streamer could form the planets. The planets Jupiter and Saturn would have most of the stuff with the rest left over for Mercury, Venus, Earth, Marsh Neptune, Uranus, and Pluto. Another planet didn't quite make it. In a belt between Mars and Jupiter are thousands of tiny asteroids, tiny planets actually, that were they in one piece they would be a respectable planet.

Life-giving Sun

The sun is mostly hydrogen. It is the hydrogen acting as a fuel in the sun's nuclear furnace that generates the heat that makes it visible and keeps it expanded to its present size. When the Earth and the other planets formed they must have been mostly hydrogen but with other heavier elements that had already formed in the sun. When the mass of gases that was to form the Earth cooled down it still left an atmosphere thick in hydrogen. Hydrogen is a light gas. So light that the Earth's gravitation force was not and is still not able to keep it here and it slowly diffuses into space. We don't have much of it in our atmosphere anymore but there are tons of it in the water of the oceans.

A Reducing Atmosphere

We are used to an atmosphere rich in oxygen. Oxygen oxidizes—burns—things. Cellulose, a long chain compound made of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, when burned becomes carbon dioxide (CO₂) and water (H₂O). It is not likely that life could have formed in an atmosphere like our present one. Without protection from our oxidizing atmosphere, the long chain molecules of our time would be oxidized. In our atmosphere and in our oceans, spontaneous reactions of inorganic substances have not been known to produce living substance. In our time, living substance comes from living substance. However, in a hydrogen atmosphere lots of things can happen that do not happen in an oxygen atmosphere. Lightening can form amino acids from inorganic molecules containing carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen in a hydrogen atmosphere. Hydrogen compounds are rich in energy. When oxygen is added, energy is released and the compounds contain less energy. Wood has chemical energy stored in it. When it is burned, energy is released and the end products are energy poor.

A reducing atmosphere, a lot of hydrogen, as opposed to an oxidizing atmosphere, a lot of oxygen, is a great place for life to start. There could have been a near infinite number of kinds and sizes of molecules form in a reducing atmosphere. Only one or a few number had to be able to duplicate themselves. They would be going around like Pac Man devouring everything in sight. A self-reproducing molecule is a far cry from life as we know it, but its a start.

Chicken or Egg?

Did the cell come first or did the genetic material, standard chicken and egg problem. We will probably never know since they are no records of the beginning of life and we can't go back. What's more the creation of life changed the world. The processes set in motion with the creation of life have drastically changed the Earth to where it is unlikely that life will start, it has to come from preexisting life. In its early stages life could start many times. Many forms of self-duplicating molecules could have arisen. In the early ecology of life there would be a great competition for the building blocks of life and some life forms would devour others to get their essential nutrients. This is still going on. Deoxyribose nucleic acid, ribose nucleic acid, and the proteins won the competition. They became the genetic system. The primary message of life was written on RNA. RNA, can reproduce itself so can DNA but it needs help from some proteins. DNA and RNA can make proteins and the proteins acting as enzymes can make everything else. The living organism is an interlocked system of chemical reactions strictly controlled by enzymes that were produced by RNA from instructions they got from DNA. Which came first the chicken or the egg? We would have to say egg, since an egg is a cell and cells came before organisms. (There are two chicken eggs; the big one you crack and fry for breakfast is the biological machine the chicken uses to incubate and grow the chick; the second little egg is a single cell that usually has to be fertilized by the rooster's sperm to grow into the chicken and which is contained in the big egg.) Which came first the genetic material or the cell? We have to conjecture genetic material in a reducing environment.

We have a brain. We can think. We think we run the world to suit. We are also a DNA container. So also are monkeys, elephants, mice, sequoia trees, moss, bacteria, fungi, fish, and all other organisms—DNA containers. Without the DNA we would not be here but without us, the DNA would not be here. Are we here to satisfy our own ambitions or are we here to perpetuate DNA? From our viewpoint we are in charge. From the DNA viewpoint its in charge. How do we know that? Simple. We cannot make a living organism. DNA does it all the time. As individuals we had nothing to say about our DNA. DNA has everything to say about what kind of person we are going to be, maybe even if we are going to be alcoholic since it now appears that a gene may control the physiology of alcoholism.

Almost all the organic substance of the Earth is tied up in living organisms. A lot of it is former organisms that have sunk to the ocean floor where they reside as bottom sediments. Most of the living substance of the Earth is microorganisms. When you consider that under good conditions microorganisms may undergo cell division every twenty minutes, a huge amount of material is turning over because those microorganisms that make their own food have to make a lot of it to reproduce and those that don't make their own food have to get it elsewhere.

DNA Makes Us

The surface of the Earth is seething with life and the cauldron is a heavy duty reaction vessel. All this activity is directed by the information in the genes. We can destroy whole species and have done so. We can endanger others. We can be poor stewards of our heritage. Just remember when we destroy a species a whole compliment of DNA disappears. That complement of DNA is the species genome. Its not in any one individual. All the living organisms of the species at any given time contains the genome. Even if we weaken the species by extirpating regional populations we are destroying a part of that species genome. DNA makes us we don't make DNA and we sure as hell don't make the DNA of other species. When we destroy a species we are destroying a part of the creation. Species come and go. Lots of extinctions occurred before our time. We don't know why they happened we simply accept the world as we find it. To mindlessly destroy a species, however, is to desecrate the creation.

Genetic Equity

Our genetic equity is the complement of DNA we got from, our mother and father. Each living organism has a complement of DNA. That DNA is the genetic equity for that organism. The DNA, RNA, protein system is the greatest information management system ever. We and all life on Earth are a product of it. Our individual lives and the life of the planet is regulated by it. Our genetic heritage is the most precious possession we have, if we can be said to possess it at all. The husbandry of our genetic resources is the most valuable way we can spend our time. Mindless extirpation and extinction of species destroys assets we can not replace. To insist as many do that some species are less important—who needs long term spotted owls when some short term economic gain is to be had—is to live recklessly for the moment.

Nature v Nurture

Our genetic material determines our potential and the environment determines the extent to which that potential will be developed. The genetic material and the environment constitutes an ecological system. The immediate environment of the genetic material is the cell, but then in increasing complexity one to many cells will make an organism and the physical and biological environment of the organism creates the ecological systems we can see and of which we are a part. The environmental conditions that are necessary for the genetic system to survive are the genetic system's ecological equity. Human beings are the ecological equity for the human genome. In turn what is necessary for the survival of human beings is the ecological equity of Homo sapiens. It is obvious that each species' genome and each species also have an ecological equity. Determining the ecological equity for all the creatures of the planet is the basic task of planet management. We haven't paid much attention to planet management, but it is subject that will loom more important as humans discover the awful threat they pose to themselves and others on the planet.

It's Our Turn

The age of genetics is just beginning to dawn. Sufficient technology is now known about DNA to manipulate it for man's benefit. These are awesome powers and they should now enable us to use the bounty of nature without coincidently destroying it. Our genetic equity is to be a part of nature not to replace it. Understanding our genetic equity will make it reasonable to improve human life and existence while at the same time promoting genetic diversity. At last, we have the means to enrich Mother Nature. We owe a little something for the millennia of TLC we got from her.

...Ted Sudia...

© Copyright 1991
Institute for domestic Tranquility