DNA information

[Rando]

See Momo, this is how you can tell you're dealing with creationist dishonesty. If you want to know what kind of "information" your dealing with in a conversation, simply ask for a formula. I'm sure HackandSlash or one of the other posters could demonstrate this, but, if you ask about Kolmogorov or Shannon Information, you can easily get a series of complex formulas and a step by step methodology for measuring how much "Information" is in a system. However, for creationist "information," which the Sensuous Curmudgeon compares to Vitalism, https://sensuouscurmudgeon.wordpress.com/2014/10/22/phlogiston-vitalism-and-information/ creationists will never produce a formula. They will obfuscate, insult, and lie, but will NEVER give a formula or a methodology for calculating it, but hey, I'm more than willing to be proven wrong, if Elshama would produce this formula, I would be more than willing to apologize....


But I won't be holding my breath.

 

[SpecialFrog]

What evidence do you have that intelligence can exist without a biological brain?

Near-death experience in survivors of cardiac arrest: a prospective study in the Netherlands

Your evidence of non-biological brains is spooky-sounding NDE stories?

Too bad the largest study ever on the subject found absolutely squat. If the data was solid the fact that it is entirely inconsistent with what we know about neurology (and physics) would be a puzzle. No solid supporting data and an incompatibility with actual science makes it fantasy.

Try again.

Also, Dawkins is primarily a science communicator at this stage. Metaphor is his forte.

I posted a link in this thread by one of the leading proponents of biosemiotics and even he couldn't say that the information theory model was even useful when looking at molecular biology, let alone necessary. And he chairs a department in the subject.

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

Near-death experience in survivors of cardiac arrest: a prospective study in the Netherlands

Your evidence of non-biological brains is spooky-sounding NDE stories?

Too bad the largest study ever on the subject found absolutely squat. If the data was solid the fact that it is entirely inconsistent with what we know about neurology (and physics) would be a puzzle. No solid supporting data and an incompatibility with actual science makes it fantasy.

Try again.

Near-death experiences? Watch, his next evidence is going to be electronic voice phenomanon.

 

[Elshamah]

See Momo, this is how you can tell you're dealing with creationist dishonesty. If you want to know what kind of "information" your dealing with in a conversation, simply ask for a formula. I'm sure HackandSlash or one of the other posters could demonstrate this, but, if you ask about Kolmogorov or Shannon Information, you can easily get a series of complex formulas and a step by step methodology for measuring how much "Information" is in a system. However, for creationist "information," which the Sensuous Curmudgeon compares to Vitalism, https://sensuouscurmudgeon.wordpress.com/2014/10/22/phlogiston-vitalism-and-information/ creationists will never produce a formula. They will obfuscate, insult, and lie, but will NEVER give a formula or a methodology for calculating it, but hey, I'm more than willing to be proven wrong, if Elshama would produce this formula, I would be more than willing to apologize....


But I won't be holding my breath.

the dishonesty is in acusing creationists without a shred of knowledge of how they define information.

 

[Rumraket]

How do you know the number is 100%?

I don't care about what intelligent minds are capable of. I want to know whether they actually did it. So, how do you get the 100% number?

Ignoring for a moment the truly abysmal grammar in that picture, that is a non-sequitur. It doesn't follow that because we have only observed X produce N, therefore all other instances of X must be produced by N.

For example you might say "I have only ever observed milk go bad when it has been left out of the fridge, and I have no observation that milk has gone bad while in my fridge, therefore milk only goes bad when left out of the fridge". That is clearly an invalid argument, the conclusion does not follow from the premise. It doesn't matter that you have only observed milk go bad in one way and never observed milk go bad in another way, all that tells us is that you have not observed much at all. It tells us almost nothing about what actually happens to milk that makes it go bad.

As you can see, your argument is suffering from this very same problem. So your argument has a fundamental logical flaw, the conclusion does not follow from the premise.

I can slightly alter your argument to make the error more glaring to you:

Premise 1. We have only ever observed human beings create codes.
Premise 2. The genetic code is a code.
Premise 3. We have never observed non-human beings or natural processes create codes.
Conclusion: Therefore the genetic code was made by human beings.

(I know hackenslash disagrees with the genetic code being a literal code, and so do I, but I can accept that premise for the sake of argument here because as just demonstrated, your argument still fails even if the genetic code was a literal code).

Even if all the premises were true, the conclusion would still not follow. For example, as you believe, god could have created the genetic code. So the structure of your argument does not allow you to reach the conclusion that you put forward. You will have to try something else.

So I must ask you again, to try another way to come up with the probability that god created life. You say a natural origin of life is unlikely. Fine, I accept that. What is the probability that life was created by god? How do you find out what the number is?

 

[Deleted member 619]

River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life, Dawkins writes:

“…The machine code of the genes is uncannily computer-like. Apart from differences in jargon, the pages of a molecular biology journal might be interchanged with those of a computer engineering journal.”

Elsewhere, Dawkins writes:

“What has happened is that genetics has become a branch of information technology. The genetic code is truly digital, in exactly the same sense as computer codes. This is not some vague analogy, it is the literal truth.”

Yes, it is the literal truth that DNA is uncannily computer-like, and that the genetic code is truly digital, in that it exists in a range of well-defined states. However, the 'code' is our treatment of DNA, not the DNA itself. Note my signature, which tells the entire story. Like all creationists, you're massively conflating the map with the terrain.

Lovely commission of the stolen concept fallacy you have there, I note.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8335231

The genetic language is a collection of rules and regularities of genetic information coding for genetic texts. It is defined by alphabet, grammar, collection of punctuation marks and regulatory sites, semantics.

Here, your conflating the language used to describe DNA with the DNA itself. DNA is simply a molecule which, because it exists in a range of well-defined states, states that can inform us as to its behaviour, can be treated as a code. Again, the code is our treatment of it, not the molecule itself.

What lies at the heart of every living thing is not a fire, warm breath, not a ‘spark of life’. It is information, words, instructions…Think of a billion discrete digital characters…If you want to understand life think about technology – Richard Dawkins (Dawkins 1996, 112)

Did somebody mention information?

Here, we require a definition of information that is robust. Now, there are two robust formulations of information theory, and both of them need to be considered. The first is that of Claude Shannon and, while this is the formulation that most of them will cite, largely due to apologist screeds erecting various claims about information having to contain some sort of message and therefore requiring somebody to formulate the message, it doesn't robustly apply to DNA, because it's the wrong treatment of information. Indeed, when dealing with complexity in information, you MUST use Kolmogorov, because that's the one that deals with complexity.

So just what is information? Well, in Shannon theory, information can be defined as 'reduction in uncertainty'. Shannon theory deals with fidelity in signal transmission and reception, since Shannon worked in communications. Now, given this, we have a maximum information content, defined as the lowest possible uncertainty. Now, if we have a signal, say a TV station, and your TV is perfectly tuned, and there is no noise added between transmission and reception of the TV signal, then you receive the channel cleanly and the information content is maximal. If, however, the TV is tuned slightly off the channel, or your reception is in some other respect less than brilliant, you get noise in the channel. The older ones of you will remember pre-digital television in which this was manifest in the form of 'bees' in the picture, and crackling and noise in the audio. Nowadays, you tend to get breaks in the audio, and pixelated blocks in the picture. They amount to the same thing, namely noise, or 'an increase in uncertainty'. It tells us that any deviation from the maximal information content, which is a fixed quantity, constitutes degradation of the information source, or 'Shannon entropy' (Shannon actually chose this term because the equation describing his 'information entropy' is almost identical to the Boltzmann equation for statistical entropy, as used in statistical mechanics.

This seems to gel well with the creationist claims, and is the source of all their nonsense about 'no new information in DNA'. Of course, there are several major failings in this treatment.

The first comes from Shannon himself, from the book that he wrote with Warren Weaver on the topic:

The semantic aspects of communication are irrelevant to the engineering aspects

And

The word information, in this theory, is used in a special sense that must not be confused with its ordinary usage. In particular, information must not be confused with meaning. In fact, two messages, one of which is heavily loaded with meaning and the other of which is pure nonsense, can be exactly equivalent, from the present viewpoint, as regards information.

So we see that Shannon himself doesn't actually agree with this treatment of information relied on so heavily by the creationists.

The second is that Shannon's is not the only rigorous formulation of information theory. The other comes from Andrey Kolmogorov, whose theory deals with information storage. The information content in Kolmogorov theory is a feature of complexity or, better still, can be defined as the amount of compression that can be applied to it. This latter can be formulated in terms of the shortest algorithm that can be written to represent the information.

Returning to our TV channel, we see a certain incongruence between the two formulations, because in Kolmogorov theory, the noise that you encounter when the TV is slightly off-station actually represents an increase in information, where in Shannon theory, it represents a decrease! How is this so? Well, it can be quite easily summed up, and the summation highlights the distinction between the two theories, both of which are perfectly robust and valid.

Let's take an example of a message, say a string of 100 1s. In it's basic form, that would look like this:

1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111

Now, there are many ways we could compress this. The first has already been given above, namely 'a string of 100 1s'.

Now, if we make a change in that string,

1111111110111111111011111111101111111110111111111011111111101111111110111111111011111111101111111110

We now have a string of 9 1s followed by a zero, repeated 9 times. We now clearly have an increase in information content, even though the number of digits is exactly the same. However, there is a periodicity to it, so a simple compression algorithm can still be applied.

Let's try a different one:

1110011110001111110111110001111111111100110011001111000111111111110111110000111111000111111110011101

Now, clearly, we have something that approaches an entirely random pattern. The more random a pattern is, the longer the algorithm required to describe it, and the higher the information content.

Returning once again to our TV station, the further you get away from the station, the more random the pattern becomes, and the longer the algorithm required to reproduce it, until you reach a point in which the shortest representation of the signal is the thing itself. In other words, no compression can be applied.

This is actually how compression works when you compress images for storage in your computer using the algorithms that pertain to Jpeg, etc. The uncompressed bitmap is the uncompressed file, while the Jpeg compression algorithm, roughly, stores it as '100 pixels of x shade of blue followed by 300 pixels of black', etc. Thus, the more complicated an image is in terms of periodicity and pattern, the less it can be compressed and the larger the output file will be.

What the above does is comprehensively demolish any and all creationist claims concerning information.

Information?

Spoiler: 2

From sand dunes, we can learn about prevailing wind directions over time and, in many cases, the underlying terrain just from the shape and direction

Information?

Spoiler: 1

Dogshit. The dogshit can tell us what the dog ate, how much of it ate, how big the dogs anus is, how long ago the dog shat on your lawn, the digestive health of the dog, whether there are parasite eggs in the shit and contain traces of the dog's DNA we can sequence to identify the individual dog. Seems like a lot of information to me. It also seems like more than enough information is present to shoot your assertion down

Information?

Spoiler: 3

DNA is information in the sense that it informs us about the system, not that it contains a message. It is not a code, more something akin to a cipher, in which the chemical bases are treated as the letters of the language. There is nobody trying to tell us anything here, and yet we can be informed by it.

Information (actually, I just decided that this is my new favourite example, because it is so informative)?

Spoiler: 4

ABout 1% of the interference pattern on an off-channel television screen is caused by the cosmic microwave background.

Information?

Spoiler: 5

This is information in the sense that the squiggles represent more data than would be contained on a blank piece of paper, although even a blank piece of paper is information. In this example, information is defined as the number of bits it would take to represent it in a storage system. This is pure kolmogorov information.

Information?

Spoiler: 6

Of all the information sources in this post, this is the only one that actually contains a message, and is therefore the only one to which Shannon information theory can be applied, as it is the only one that could actually decrease in terms of signal intergity.

Which of the above are information?

Answer: All of them. They are just different kinds of information.

More here by the Blue Flutterby:
http://www.rationalskepticism.org/viewtopic.php?p=1934111#p1934111

http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/handbook/basics/dna

The information in DNA is stored as a code made up of four chemical bases: adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C), and thymine (T).

For the ones that deny that DNA carries literally coded information, but argue that its just metaphorically a code
. Look what Richard Dawkins has to say on the issue : See after the seventh minute:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wa55s9Gs_Eg

http://elshamah.heavenforum.org/t1281-dna-is-literally-a-code

Note the bold. You're clutching at straws that have already been ripped out of reach. DNA contains no code.

 

[Deleted member 619]

(I know hackenslash disagrees with the genetic code being a literal code,

I agree with the comment in general, but I actually disagree with this bit. The genetic code IS a literal code. However, DNA is not the genetic code, our treatment of it is (or, more accurately, a cipher).

 

[Elshamah]

(I know hackenslash disagrees with the genetic code being a literal code,

I agree with the comment in general, but I actually disagree with this bit. The genetic code IS a literal code. However, DNA is not the genetic code, our treatment of it is (or, more accurately, a cipher).

the paper and the ink is the hardware. The message written with it is the software. The special arrangement of the letters is the code. Pretty simple.

http://elshamah.heavenforum.org/t2057-origin-of-translation-of-the-4-nucleic-acid-bases-and-the-20-amino-acids-and-the-universal-assignment-of-codons-to-amino-acids

the conversion of the information in RNA into protein represents a translation of the information into another language that uses quite different symbols. Moreover, since there are only 4 different nucleotides in mRNA and 20 different types of amino acids in a protein, this translation cannot be accounted for by a direct one-to-one correspondence between a nucleotide in RNA and an amino acid in protein. The nucleotide sequence of a gene, through the intermediary of mRNA, is translated into the amino acid sequence of a protein. This code was deciphered in the early 1960s.

Question: how did the tranlation of the triplet anti codon to amino acids translation, and its assignment, arise ? There is no physical affinity between the anti codon and the amino acids. What must be explained, is the arrangement of the codon " words " in the standard codon table which is highly non-random, redundant and optimal, and serves to translate the information into the amino acid sequence to make proteins, and the origin of the assignment of the 64 triplet codons to the 20 amino acids. That is, the origin of its translation. The origin of a alphabet through the triplet codons is one thing, but on top, it has to be translated to a other " alphabet " constituted through the 20 amino acids. That is as to explain the origin of capability to translate the english language into chinese. We have to constitute the english and chinese language and symbols first, in order to know its equivalence. That is a mental process.

What must be explained, is the arrangement of the codons in the standard codon table which is highly non-random, and serves to translate into the amino acid sequence to make proteins, and the origin of the assignment of the 64 triplet codons to the 20 amino acids. That is, the origin of its translation. The origin of a alphabet through the triplet codons is one thing, but on top, it has to be translated to a other " alphabet " constituted through the 20 amino acid sequence. That is, as to explain the origin of capability to translate the english language into chinese. On top of that, the machinery itself to promote the process itself has also to be explained, that is the hardware. When humans translate english to chinese, for example, we recognise the english word, and the translator knows the equivalent chinese symbol and writes it down. In the cell, Aminoacyl tRNA synthetase recognise the triplet anticodon of the tRNA, and attach the equivalent amino acid to the tRNA. How could random chemical reactions produced this recognition ? Some theories try to explain the mechanism, but they all remain unsatisfactory. Obviously. Furthermore, Aminoacyl tRNA synthetase are complex enzymes. For what reason would they have come to be, if the final function could only be employd after the whole translation process was set in place, with a fully functional ribosome being able to do its job? Remembering the catch22 situation, since they are by themself made through the very own process in question ? Why is it not rational to conclude that the code itself, the software, as well as the hardware, are best explained through the invention of a highly intelligent being, rather than random chemical affinities and reactions. Questions: what good would the ribosome be for without tRNA's ? without amino acids, which are the product of enormously complex chemical processes and pathways ? What good would the machinery be good for, if the code was not established, and neither the assignment of each codon to the respective amino acid ? had the software and the hardware not have to be in place at the same time? Were all the parts not only fully functional if fully developed, interlocked, set-up, and tuned to do its job with precision like a human made motor ? And even it lets say, the whole thing was fully working and in place, what good would it be for without all the other parts required, that is, the DNA double helix, its compactation through histones and chromatins and chromosomes, its highly complex mechanism of information extraction and transcription into mRNA? Had the whole process , that is INITIATION OF TRANSCRIPTION, CAPPING, ELONGATION, SPLICING, CLEAVAGE,POLYADENYLATION AND TERMINATION, EXPORT FROM THE NUCLEUS TO THE CYTOSOL, INITIATION OF PROTEIN SYNTHESIS (TRANSLATION), COMPLETION OF PROTEIN SYNTHESIS AND PROTEIN FOLDING, and its respective machinery not have to be all in place ? Does that not constitute a interdependent, and irreducible complex system ?

 

[JRChadwick]

DNA codes for proteins! That's the basic concept! The genetic "software" is the mechanism for replication. If yo want to compare the DNA to software, than it is also the hardware.

There is no catch 22. The precursor to DNA is RNA and that is self replicating, but less stable. It is completely logical to deduce that RNA could evolve the necessary mechanisms to replicate DNA. I don't have much education in organic chemistry, but I found a good study that explains the transition from RNA to DNA. If your argument is that such a thing is irreducibly complex and no one has an explanation as to otherwise, than this proves that idea wrong.

I do not have the time to study up on this subject, but if anyone better suited to it would like to take a crack of walking you through the important parts of this article, have at it.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK6360/

I am trying to find some peer reviewed articles, but my campus access server is down right ow.

 

[Elshamah]

There is no catch 22. The precursor to DNA is RNA and that is self replicating, but less stable.

not possible.

http://elshamah.heavenforum.org/t2028-origin-of-the-dna-double-helix

I don't have much education in organic chemistry,

that can easily be observed. But thats not a shame. You can learn......

 

[JRChadwick]

There is no catch 22. The precursor to DNA is RNA and that is self replicating, but less stable.

not possible.

http://elshamah.heavenforum.org/t2028-origin-of-the-dna-double-helix

I am not impressed by creationists sources or anyone who uses Ben Stein as a references.

I don't have much education in organic chemistry,

that can easily be observed. But thats not a shame. You can learn......

I can, but you won't.

 

[Rumraket]

There is no catch 22. The precursor to DNA is RNA and that is self replicating, but less stable.

not possible.

It is not only possible, it is an observable fact. DNA is made from RNA in your cells. We've been over this, you were wrong then, you are still wrong now.

It is totally okay to be totally clueless about biochemistry like you, but you can learn if instead of thinking you have to prove god exists, you instead decide to find out what is actually true.

 

[Rumraket]

Had the whole process , that is INITIATION OF TRANSCRIPTION, CAPPING, ELONGATION, SPLICING, CLEAVAGE,POLYADENYLATION AND TERMINATION, EXPORT FROM THE NUCLEUS TO THE CYTOSOL, INITIATION OF PROTEIN SYNTHESIS (TRANSLATION), COMPLETION OF PROTEIN SYNTHESIS AND PROTEIN FOLDING

Why do you write this in all caps? Do you think the words become more impressive when the letters are larger?

I know you are super impressed by technical jargon, but they are just words. Just calm down and think for a moment.

and its respective machinery not have to be all in place ?

Bacteria have no cell nucleus, why would they need export from a nucleus they don't have, to the cytosol? By the way, the original nuclear envelope from which the version we see today subsequently evolved, was probably just a semipermeable membrane that gradually became sealed contemporaneously with the nuclear transport complexes evolving. A curious fact here is that several of the nuclear transport proteins are structurally homologous to bacterial cell-wall transport proteins. This implies outer membrane transport proteins were simply incorporated into the nuclear membrane before it sealed off.

But with regards to your question, you ask if they not all have to be in place. In place for what, for life as we know it? Yes, the things that make life as we know it, are required for life as we know it.

But, how does that establish that there cannot be an earlier stage of life that didn't have all these systems? Since one of your supposedly key systems is already totally absent in bacteria, what does this do to your argument?

The argument you are making here is suffering from the same fallacious inference as your "codes have only been observed to come from minds"-argument. The conclusion doesn't follow from the premise.

By the way Elsamah, you are aware bacteria don't have a cell nucleus right?

Does that not constitute a interdependent, and irreducible complex system ?

¨
Sure, but we already know irreducibly complex systems can evolve and in fact we expect evolution to produce irreducible complexity. A two component, irreducibly complex system evolved in the LTEE.

 

[Elshamah]

It is not only possible, it is an observable fact. DNA is made from RNA in your cells. We've been over this, you were wrong then, you are still wrong now.

you have a short memory, dont you ?

That brings us to the classic chicken and egg, catch22 situation. RNR enzymes are required to make DNA. DNA is however required to make RNR enzymes. What came first ??
We can conclude with high certainty that this enzyme buries any RNA world fantasies, and any possibility of transition from RNA to DNA world scenarios.

 

[Dragan Glas]

Greetings,

not possible.

http://elshamah.heavenforum.org/t2028-origin-of-the-dna-double-helix

I am not impressed by creationists sources or anyone who uses Ben Stein as a references.

that can easily be observed. But thats not a shame. You can learn......

I can, but you won't.

Touché! - on both counts.

Kindest regards,

James

 

[Elshamah]

Had the whole process , that is INITIATION OF TRANSCRIPTION, CAPPING, ELONGATION, SPLICING, CLEAVAGE,POLYADENYLATION AND TERMINATION, EXPORT FROM THE NUCLEUS TO THE CYTOSOL, INITIATION OF PROTEIN SYNTHESIS (TRANSLATION), COMPLETION OF PROTEIN SYNTHESIS AND PROTEIN FOLDING

Why do you write this in all caps? Do you think the words become more impressive when the letters are larger?

I know you are super impressed by technical jargon, but they are just words. Just calm down and think for a moment.

and its respective machinery not have to be all in place ?

Bacteria have no cell nucleus, why would they need export from a nucleus they don't have, to the cytosol?

In place for what, for life as we know it? Yes, the things that make life as we know it, are required for life as we know it.

But, how does that establish that there cannot be an earlier stage of life that didn't have all these systems? Since one of your supposedly key systems is already totally absent in bacteria, what does this do to your argument?

The argument you are making here is suffering from the same fallacious inference as your "codes have only been observed to come from minds"-argument. The conclusion doesn't follow from the premise.

By the way Elsamah, you are aware bacteria don't have a cell nucleus right?

Does that not constitute a interdependent, and irreducible complex system ?

¨
Sure, but we already know irreducibly complex systems can evolve and in fact we expect evolution to produce irreducible complexity. A two component, irreducibly complex system evolved in the LTEE.

its ridiculous to think you can reduce eukaryotic cells to prokaryotic cells. thats like comparing a rolls royce to a beetle.

 

[Rumraket]

It is not only possible, it is an observable fact. DNA is made from RNA in your cells. We've been over this, you were wrong then, you are still wrong now.

you have a short memory, dont you ?

No my memory is just fine, which is why I wrote "we've been over this, you were wrong then, you are still wrong now".

The sentence "we've been over this" means we have discussed this before. So I directly told you that I remember us discussing this. Why would you make such an elementary mistake?

That brings us to the classic chicken and egg, catch22 situation. RNR enzymes are required to make DNA. DNA is however required to make RNR enzymes.

No, you only need RNA to encode the transcript. It doesn't have to exist in DNA form first. There is no reason why that would be a requirement. Notice how the translation machinery acts on RNA, not DNA.

We've been over this before, you were wrong then, you are still wrong now.

 

[Rumraket]

its ridiculous to think you can reduce eukaryotic cells to prokaryotic cells. thats like comparing a rolls royce to a beetle.

Thank you for this statement about your beliefs. Your opinion here is informative about, well your opinion.

 

[Rumraket]

Mr. Elsaman, are you going to produce a number for the probability that god would create life, anytime soon? As discussed earlier, your argument was logically flawed, it could not support the conclusion you tried to extract. So, how do you know that a natural origin of life is less likely than divine creation?

We need a number for divine creation, but to get that number we have to have some method of establishing the probability that god creates life. How do we get that number? We need it so we can compare the two probabilities and see which one is greatest.

 

[Rumraket]

Lets have some fun with some admittedly simplistic back-of-the-envelope calculations and extrapolations, to see if we can try and estimate, on the basis of the LTEE, how much evolution could happen in the 3.5 billion year history of life on this planet.

Since in the LTEE, a two-component irreducibly complex system evolved in about 15 years, a four-component one should be able to evolve in 30 years. Right? I mean that is a rather simple extrapolation. If we can get two parts in 15 years, then we can get four parts in 30 years. That seems rather obvious.

How big a complex could evolve in a million years then? A system with 133.333 interdependent parts. (1.000.000/30*4=133.333)

How about 100 million years? A system with 1.333.300 parts (that's 1.3 million parts). Notice how a typical flagellum only has about 30-50 protein parts.

How about 3.5 billion years? A system with 46.665.500 parts could possibly evolve then (that's ~46.7 million parts).

And that's for a single isolated lineage that has a population size of a few billion (lets say 20 billion bacteria for an average fermentation flask).

What if we have 10[sup]30[/sup] organisms (which would correspond to the total number of organisms on Earth), how many such 20-billion populations would that correspond to? (10[sup]30[/sup]/2x10[sup]9[/sup] =50.000.000.000.000.000.000 populations).

So we could evolve a system with 46.7 million parts at least 50.000.000.000.000.000.000 times during the life history of Earth.

Personally I think this is grossly simplistic, but I'd interested to hear your thoughts on this one Elsamah.