From: rybicki@uctvax.uct.ac.za
Newsgroups: uct.chat,talk.bizarre
Subject: molecular genesis
Date: 8 Sep 92 12:14:15 +0200
Organization: University of Cape Town

A slight reworking, to upset the fundamentalists:

IN THE BEGINNING:

Was the Cosmic Bubble
And the Bubble was without form
And brightness was upon the face of the void

A few milliseconds later
Expansion had occurred
And the Universe was lumpy
As it is, lo, unto this day

And the plasma cooled, and the atoms associated
And condensation occurred, in clouds and planetesimals
And complex molecules came to be, hydrocarbons among them
Yea, and formaldehyde (HCHO) too came to be

And upon the surface of the newly-formed planets
Yea, and perhaps even in the interstellar spaces
Surface catalysis caused polymerisations
And lightning, and deepsea thermal vents
And volcanoes, and hot springs
All of these served as energy sources for the primal soup

And nucleotides came to be, and short oligoribonucleotides,
And amino acids, and lipids
Bilayers and multilayers did the lipids form
And so did they entrap primitive ribozymes
Which did replicate themselves crudely according to their
     kinds

And mutated, and made more ribozymes
And to each a different function:
     So there were the polymerases
     And the proto-ribosomes
     And the spliceosomes

And the reverse transcriptase, and eventually also the DNA,
     which was a partner to the RNA
And a better information store, though less generally useful
So it came to be that DNA usurped the role of RNA
And RNA was cast out into the proto-cytoplasm
Where it was a messenger, and an enzyme
And a helpmeet to the DNA

Though some of it escaped as viruses
Renegade genomes, beyond the cell
Even unto the outer darkness
Where there is wailing, and gnashing of teeth
For no obvious reason

And the DNA waxed fruitful
And it multiplied bounteously,according to its kinds
And it made new kinds, by Evolution
As the polymerases were not so accurate yet

And Urkaryote became Eubacteria and Archaea and Eukarya
And the Archaea and Eubacteria did excise all or most of
     their introns
And stayed small
While Eukarya kept theirs, and grew

And the kinds did multiply all over the face of the planet
And maybe also on other planets
And did change the face of it, and the air above the ground
To an oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere they did change it
By photosynthesis, mainly
And this did allow more energetic metabolic processes to
     occur
Which allowed more complex organisms

Which meant that, after three billenia
Animals could come to be
And it was so

And although large bolides did rain down upon the Earth
Yea, and comets
So as to cause ice ages and mass extinctions
So did the DNA keep multiplying and evolving
To make ever more complex organisms did it evolve

Until it came to pass
That apes did come down from the trees
In the dry Pleistocene, in Africa, did the apes walk
And maybe swim also
If we are to believe the Homo aquaticus story
Laid down in The Descent of Woman
But I digress

And they evolved to fit the new niche
Larger brains did they acquire
And upright carriage
And speech
And other problems

And lo, they did search for Meaning
And Truth
And Food and Sex also
And they did become confused, so they invented religion
To explain that which happened
And it came to govern them, so that they were not free to
     think
Which is the cause of the problem

But the Mother will fix it, eventually....
-- 
 _________________________________________________________________________
|                                 |                                       |
|  Ed Rybicki                     |    Now you've got the hang of it      |
|  Dept Microbiology              | There's nothing you can't do with it  |
|  University of Cape Town        |         If you're very into it        |
|  PB Rondebosch 7700             |         You can't go wrong....        |
|  South Africa                   |                                       |
|  fax 27 21 650 4023             |              - Mad John               |
|  ed@micro.uct.ac.za             | (Ogden's Nut-Gone Flake, Small Faces) |
|_________________________________|_______________________________________|
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