What'sNEW
Michael Lynch (b. 1951) is a distinguished professor of evolutionary biology at Arizona State University, and has served as president of several science societies established for that subject. A conservative advocate for mainstream neo-darwinism, he even disapproves of the "extended evolutionary synthesis" (EES), saying that those ideas were already incorporated into the mainstream theory. Now he has another anti-establishment movement to rebut, advocacy by a small group of physicists, chemists, and geologists to rescue the field of evolutionary science ...by introducing new theories and laws said to have grand unifying potential.
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Complexity myths and the misappropriation of evolutionary theory," by Michael Lynch, PNAS abstract, 10 Jun 2025.
One of their problems is the mistaken assumption "that a primary goal of natural selection is the production of increased complexity," Lynch says. But this is "an entirely anthropocentric construct. ...Of course, today's organisms are more complex..., but there was only one direction to go four-billion years ago." After that, prokaryotes have not gotten more complex, and eukaryotes did so in one step, when they ...originated. Then, "...the embellishments of cellular complexity that arise in certain lineages are unavoidable consequences of a reduction in the efficiency of selection in organisms experiencing high levels of random genetic drift." Not sure I'm following this. (Is he aware of horizonal gene transfer?)
Lynch asks, "What is functional information? Wong et al. never tell us, but they must have something quantifiable in mind,
as they conclude that this feature increases over time." I suggest that genetic programming is functional information. Casually termed "genes," it enables higher forms of life to function in ways that lower forms without those genes, can't. That's quantifiable.
 Macroevolutionary Progress Redefined... a suggested way to quantify functional information.
Lynch makes several other counter-arguments, but his main point is that the new theorists don't know enough biology to even know what they are talking about. — What they are ultimately talking about is the lack of any credible account for the apparent inventiveness of evolution. The lack is so acute that they believe a new kind of science is worth considering. And Lynch, inspite of himself, seems open to that. "...biology is not simply chemistry or physics," he says.
We don't need a new kind of science. We need to abandon unfounded assumptions and ask the right questions.
23 Oct - 01 Nov 2023: local notice of the articles to which Lynch is reacting.
03 Mar 2019: Another new theory in a book by Paul Davies, also at ASU.
15 Oct 2014: background about EES.
Is Sustained Macroevolutionary Progress Possible? an example of an unfounded assumption.
Panspermia Asks New Questions.
Jayant Vishnu Narlikar died May 20th at age 86. He was a respected cosmologist who doubted (with Fred Hoyle and others) the consensus big bang theory. He founded the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics in Pune, India, where astronomers from every country were welcome to collaborate. I was fortunate to visit him there to seek samples gathered by Indian balloon missions conducted under his coordination, beginning in 2000. I will always remember his wisdom, kindness, humility, and warm hospitality in his home with his wife, Mangala.
 Thanks for alerting me and for a sweet cartoon, Chandra Wickramasinghe. I know you will miss him.
"Jayant Narlikar...," obituary by Pranav Sharma, Nature, 20 May 2025.
An Atmospheric Test of Cometary Panspermia, by N.C. Wickramasinghe, F. Hoyle and J.V. Narlikar, 2000.
Facts and Speculations in Cosmology and
A Different Approach to Cosmology: books coauthored by Narlikar.
Bringing together proponents of rival theories to test their ideas against each other can advance science — but only if all sides can accept that they might be wrong.
"Make science more collegial: why the time for 'adversarial collaboration' has come," editorial, Nature, 06 May 2025.
New genetic programs...,
Testing Darwinism... and
The Evolution Prize... propose adversarial collaborations.
A discussion via ZOOM with Prof. Chandra Wickramasinghe is scheduled for Saturday, 17 May 2025:
 The cosmic origin live interview event..., 7-9:30 AM EDT, hosted by Graham Steele, with Dr. Ted Steele.
 05 Apr 2025: more about Chandra.
| 05 May 2025 |
What'sNEW about HGT
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The long interspersed nuclear element–1 ...accounts for about 17% of the human genome. The amplification of L1 in the human genome is one of the main drivers for genetic diversity and human evolution....
LINE-1 ribonucleoprotein condensates bind DNA to enable nuclear entry during mitosis, by Sarah Zernia, Farida Ettefa et al, doi:10.1126/sciadv.adt9318, 02 May 2025.
How 'jumping genes' infiltrate DNA during cell division, NYU Langone Health via Phys.Org, 02 May 2025.
Viruses and Other Gene Transfer Mechanisms has all our links about HGT.
...biosignatures contained within freshly deposited ice in high-latitude regions on the surface of Europa are detectable using laser-induced UV fluorescence, even from an orbiting spacecraft.
"Fluorescent Biomolecules Detectable in Near-Surface Ice on Europa," by Gideon Yoffe et al, arXiv:2503.06971 [astro-ph.EP], 11 Mar 2025.
Life on Europa, Other Moons, Other Planets? has related updates.
...a tendency to constantly question what he was told....
James Lovelock, the founder of the Gaia theory, had a long and interesting life. Near the end of it, he granted journalist Jonathan Watts complete access to his correspondence and records, household and family, and many hours of interviews. Now the definitive biography of Lovelock is published. It includes an unusually close look at his personal life, and some facts that surprise even those who knew him best. Having read little about Lovelock except what he himself wrote, I was surprised to learn about his long association with Shell Oil and his extensive classified work for British military intelligence. I was also glad to know about Dian Hitchcock, whom he met at JPL, and who helped shape the first iteration of Gaia. Years afterward, Lovelock even influenced Magaret Thatcher to become a powerful advocate for the environment. Watts, also an environmental activist, is annoyed that Lovelock didn't do even more, but ultimately he portrays him as a multi-talented, complex, imperfect, lovable hero. I highly recommend this biography.
At JPL and NASA, Lovelock and Hitchcock guessed that life-detection could be done by looking at the atmosphere. Oxygen and methane are both found on Earth, but this situation cannot persist without something that keeps supplying them. It must be life, they concluded — the planet is breathing. Meanwhile, Mars's atmosphere is in chemical equilibrium. From a top-down perspective, Lovelock and Hitchcock concluded that Mars is dead. (I think it may be only comatose, with a poor prognosis.)
Later in the development of Gaia, Lynn Margulis enters the picture. A biologist, she knew that methanogens make methane and cyanobacteria make oxygen. Gaia began to comprise many other environmental effects of microbial metabolism, such as the burial of carbon in marine limestone. Cosmic ancestry depends on these bottom-up planetary engineering processes. On Earth, they have succeeded far better than anywhere else we can observe. Do they also explain the redness of Mars, or the nitrogen atmosphere and methane lakes of Titan? And what would Lovelock, an expert on dimethyl sufide, have said about its presence on comets, asteroids and extrasolar planets?
The Many Lives of James Lovelock: Science, Secrets and Gaia Theory, by James Watt, Canongate Books, 2024.
Thanks for a review copy, Jackie Flanagan.
Gaia has thoughts and links about Lovelock, planetary engineering and the environment.
How is it Possible? has early speculations about panspermia and planetary engineering.
Bacteria: The Space Colonists suggests that they could start almost anywhere.
Life on Mars! has support for "comatose".
| 26 Apr 2025 |
What'sNEW about HGT
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...'mitochondrial transfer' has been observed in a wide variety of cells and in organisms as diverse as yeast, molluscs and rodents. What?! Mitochondria can escape from eukaryotic cells and move to other cells within the organism? ...by three different mechanisms? The phenomenon is not in doubt, and probably has implications for human health. But as another kind of gene transfer, could it also, somehow, have implications for evolution?
Cells are swapping their mitochondria...., by Gemma Conroy, Nature, 10 Apr 2025.
Viruses and Other Gene Transfer Mechanisms has all our links about HGT.
The only scenario that currently explains all the data ...is one where K2-18b is a hycean world teeming with life, says Nikku Madhusudhan, astrophysicist at the Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, UK. The exoplanet, seen with the James Webb Telescope, is 124 lightyears away and 8.6 times as massive as Earth, orbiting in the "habitable zone" of a red dwarf star. It appears to have a global ocean and a hydrogen-rich atmosphere that also contains dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and dimethyl disulfide (DMDS). On Earth, these trace gasses come only from microbial life such as marine phytoplankton.
"Scientists find strongest evidence yet of life on an alien planet," by Will Dunham, Reuters, 16 Apr 2025; re:
"New Constraints on DMS and DMDS in the Atmosphere of K2-18b from JWST MIRI," by Nikku Madhusudhan et al, doi:10.3847/2041-8213/adc1c8, ApJL, 17 Apr 2025.
Thanks, Jim Powers and Rob Cooper.
02 Jul 2024: More about extraterrestrial DMS.
12 Sep 2023: An earlier report from the same UK team.
Life on Europa, Other Moons, Other Planets? links to more examples.
"A Possible Biosignature at K2-18b?," informed commentary by Paul Gilster, Centauri Dreams, 18 Apr 2025.
 "Hopes for alien life dim as doubts emerge...," by Daniel Lawler, Phys.Org, 24 May 2025
...we present here complete, phased, diploid genomes of six ape species.... A large international team of genomicists, bioinformaticians and others, captained by Evan Eichler, has resolved many of the former difficulties in sequencing the genomes of humans and their near relatives. Now they have made those genomes available to all. One important benefit is ...the added value for standard evolutionary analyses.... For example, the figure below shows human chromosome 16 compared to the corresponding chromosomes (descending in the figure) in chimpanzee, bonobo, gorilla, Bornean orangutan and Sumatran orangutan. The green ribbons indicate "a single transposition [that] relocates about 4.8 Mb of gene-rich sequence in gorilla."
Excellent. Here is extensive precise sequencing for relatively recent evolution. The sequences include hundreds of new candidate genes and regions to account for phenotypic differences among the apes. The transitions include insertions, relocations and inversions of large segments. Given the approximately known populations and time brackets, it shoud be possible, under neo-darwinian logic, to calculate the likelihood of the human evolution revealed here, particularly that of the "new candidate genes."
"Complete sequencing of ape genomes," by Yoo, D., Rhie, A., Hebbar, P. et al. (>100 authors), doi:10.1038/s41586-025-08816-3, Nature, 09 Apr 2025.
"What makes us human? Milestone ape genomes promise clues," by Humberto Basilio, Nature, 09 Apr 2025.
Thanks, Evan Eichler, 13 Apr 2025.
29 Nov 2023: ...hundreds of thousands of regulatory elements that emerged very recently
04 Jan 2016: Thousands of human and/or chimpanzee-specific genes are derived from previously silent DNA.
18 Jan 2006: Eichler hypothesizes that "jumping gene" segments contribute rapidly to primate gene evolution.
30 Sep 2005: The chimp genome has been sequenced.
Human Genome Search describes an early, related project, begun Nov 2001.
New genetic programs... describes a naive continuation of the project.
Robust Software Management: a system for managing insertions, relocations, inversions, etc.
Observations of interstellar extinction probably provide the most direct clues concerning the optical properties of interstellar dust. So wrote Chandra Wickramasinghe, in 1972, in a 500-page oversize reference book on the subject. Interstellar dust was a little-noticed topic, but, by then Wickramasinghe had spent ten years investigating it with Fred Hoyle. The book includes some history and many equations, but the bulk of it is columnar tables listing values of scattering functions and graphs of extinction curves for particles of different shapes and compositions. Wickramasinghe had become a world authority. No one had looked more carefully.
Light-Scattering Functions for Small Particles, by N.C. Wickramasinghe, Adam Hilger, London, 1973.
Chandra Wickramasinghe has an early essay about evolution, and many updates.
In 1972, the sizes and shapes of the dust particles were still imperfectly known, and the composition might include graphite and water ice. As the research continued, more evidence for larger, life-related organics emerged, the size range of the particles narrowed, and clues about their refractance began to converge. After almost 20 years, in 1981, Fred Hoyle and Wickramasinghe reached an astounding conclusion — freeze-dried bacteria provided the best match, by far, for the dust. Initially, they were as surprised as anyone. A chronicle of this research, from 1962 to 1983 is available in a collection of 25 scientific papers and accompanying discussion. The story needs to be much better known; this record makes it hard to dismiss.
From Grains to Bacteria, by Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, ISBN 0-906449-64-2, University College Cardiff Press, 1984.
Hoyle and Wickramasinghe's Analysis of Interstellar Dust has background.
Fred Hoyle Interviewed... includes his account of their finding bacteria in space.
| 03 Apr 2025 |
What'sNEW about HGT
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...the diatom Nitzschia sing1 ...abandoned its original photosynthetic lifestyle, ...to thrive on algae derived sugars...[by acquiring] an alginate lyase gene from a marine bacterium. Once integrated into the diatom's genome, the ancestral alginate lyase underwent extensive duplication and diversification.... [A] significant functional shift in the ...enzymes was driven by a 15-base pair insertion, which restructured the enzymes' catalytic pockets to favor terminal cleavage rather than internal cutting.
According to cosmic ancestry, macroevolutionary advances become possible when genetic programming is acquired. The acquired sequence can be tested for ultimate deployment, silent retention, or rejection. Testing could include duplications, targeted insertions, deletions and recombinations. It might might even include "directed" point mutations for task optimization. Another example of HGT seems to neatly illustrate much of this testing and deployment.
"A single enzyme becomes a Swiss Army knife," by Andreas Sichert, PLoS Biol, 02 Apr 2025; re:
"Diatom heterotrophy on brown algal polysaccharides emerged through horizontal gene transfer, gene duplication, and neofunctionalization," by Zeng Hao Lim et al, doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.3003038, PLoS Biol., 01 Apr 2025; and:
"...How a borrowed bacterial gene allows some marine diatoms to live on a seaweed diet," Phys.Org, 01 Apr 2025.
Robust Software Management is a proposed name for the operating system that tests acquired programming.
Viruses and Other Gene Transfer Mechanisms cites >1,000 examples of HGT into eukaryotes.
According to neo-darwinism (including all modern variants), mutation-and-selection are sufficient to write new genetic programs leading to macroevolutionary advances. Where are the clear illustrations of that process?
Testing Darwinism versus Cosmic Ancestry elaborates on this question.
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