Accepted:
20 Dec 2003
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/vol10/huen04/ | © Copyright 2002 | |||
| Volume 10 | Received: Accepted: |
30 Mar 2002 20 Dec 2003 |
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A simple theory to explain the 4-narity of DNAs
Huen, Y.K. |
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| Abstract | |
| As a mathematician, the author is quite puzzled as to why textbooks and published papers in genetics, biochemistry and molecular biology are so glaringly silent on the important issue of how DNAs in modern time could have inherited uniquely four types of nucleotide bases. Is this an unwritten dogma in genetics? These put him on a hunting trail. The author hypothesizes that if in the prebiotic world there were only five types of bases, viz., adenine (A),cytosine (C),guanine (G), thymine (T) and uracil (U) and if it can be proved that genomes with number of bases other than four cannot survive in bioevolution then the puzzle is solved. He discovers that there are two equally satisfactory proofs one involving chaos theory whilst the other is so simple that even high school students should have no difficulties understanding it. Adhering to the philosophy of Occam’s Razor [1], a simple theory is deemed more elegant to be presented in this paper. To carry out analysis, the author conjures up various prebiotic scenerios where combinations ranging from 2 to 5 types of nucleotides selected from a stable of G,C,A,T and U could exist. A theorem on the influence of narity values on compressibility of strings is proved. Findings from analysis prove conclusively that only 4-nary genomes could survive whilst the remaining combinations either cannot be realised because of odd-narities or these could have gone extinct early in bioevolution. As a windfall, the proof also implies the nonexistence of the hypothetical RNA or preRNA world since Life started right away with 2-nary DNAs which was subsequently taken over by 4-nary DNAs. Most probably genetic takeover by RNAs and proteins happened much later in evolutionary in order to increase complexity incrementally. Starting with DNAs instead of RNAs certainly made genetic takeover by RNAs and proteins later on much easier. | |
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Multimedia Links (none) Reference Links Citation Reference Huen, Y.K. (2002), A simple theory to explain the 4-narity of DNAs, Complexity International, Volume 10, Paper ID: huen04, URL: http://www.coplexity.org.au/ci/vol10/huen04/ |
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