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From: bill@utastro.UUCP (William H. Jefferys)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Re: New results from the laboratory
Message-ID: <201@utastro.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 27-Apr-84 19:54:50 EDT
Article-I.D.: utastro.201
Posted: Fri Apr 27 19:54:50 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 29-Apr-84 07:56:19 EDT
References: <199@utastro.UUCP>
Organization: UTexas Astronomy Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 31

Sorry, I left out a key sentence in my quotation from William
Thwaite's article in *Creation/Evolution* #13.  The full
quotation is as follows, with the missing sentence included
between *backwards* square brackets: ]...[.

--------------------------------------------

	"RNA ... has all sorts of properties that we are just
	beginning to discover.  A very recent finding showed
	that not only can RNA carry coded genetic information,
	but also can carry out specific chemical reactions that
	were previously thought to be the exclusive domain of
	proteins (Lewin, 1982).  Prior to this finding, origin-
	of-life theoreticians were faced with a chicken and egg
	type of problem.  Present-day life uses nucleic acids,
	both RNA and its close relative DNA, to direct the
	synthesis of proteins.  Some of these proteins are needed
	for both DNA and protein synthesis.  ]The old puzzle was
	where the first proteins came from to help DNA and RNA
	direct protein synthesis.[  While a lot of work
	remains to be done in this new area, we now know that the
	question was naive.  The claim that life couldn't have
	started with nucleic acids since they would have had no
	help from proteins seemed reasonable only until someone
	discovered that RNA can function as if it were a protein."
-- 

	Bill Jefferys  8-%
	Astronomy Dept, University of Texas, Austin TX 78712   (USnail)
	{ihnp4,kpno,ctvax}!ut-sally!utastro!bill   (uucp)
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