7 - Evolution of the genetic code and its modern characteristics

Summary

I believe no one will be surprised that a large number of the points considered demand a far fuller, more rigorous, and more comprehensive treatment. It seems impossible that full justice should be done to the subject in this way, until there is built up a tradition of mathematical work devoted to biological problems, comparable to the researches upon which a mathematical physicist can draw in the resolution of special difficulties.

Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher, (1958)

Early speculations on the evolution of the genetic code

The difficulty of determining the origin of the genetic code

Many papers have been published with titles indicating that their subject is the origin of the genetic code, but actually the content deals only with its evolution. Authors assume that the origin of the genetic code is inevitable once they have created a scenario that provides the components of an informational molecule.

As I have pointed out:

The calculations presented in this paper show that the origin of a rather accurate genetic code, not necessarily the modern one, is a pons asinorum that must be crossed to pass over the abyss that separates crystallography, high polymer chemistry and physics from biology.

(Yockey, 1981, 1992)

The paradox is seldom mentioned that enzymes are required to define or generate the reaction network, and the network is required to synthesize the enzymes and their component amino acids.