Signature in the Cell?

(The following is a follow-up to a comment I made in this thread.) There is much abuzz in the ID-o-sphere regarding Stephen Meyer’s new book, “Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design”. The book is a lengthy recapitulation of the main themes that ID proponents have been talking about for the past 15 years or so; indeed, there will be precious little that is new for seasoned veterans of the internet discussions and staged debates that have occurred over the years.

Long though the book is, it is built around one central theme - the idea that the genetic code harbors evidence for design. Indeed, the genetic code - the triplet-amino acid correspondence that is seen in life - is the “Signature in the Cell”. Meyer contends that the genetic code cannot have originated without the intervention of intelligence, that physics and chemistry cannot on their own accords account for the origin of the code.

It is this context that a recent paper by Yarus et al. (Yarus M, Widmann JJ, Knight R, 2009, RNA-Amino Acid Binding: A Stereochemical Era for the Genetic Code, J Mol Evol 69:406-429) merits discussion. This paper sums up several avenues of investigation into the mode of RNA-amino acid interaction, and places the body of work into an interesting light with respect to the origin of the genetic code. The bottom line, in terms that relate to Meyer’s book, is that chemistry and physics (to use Meyer’s phraseology) can account for the origin of the genetic code. In other words, the very heart of Meyer’s thesis (and his book) is wrong.

For details, follow this link, where comments may be left.