What'sNEW
Asteroid Bennu carries all the ingredients for life as we know it.
121 grams of sample was collected, in 2020, by NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission, and returned to Earth in 2023. Now a team coordinated at Tohoku University in Japan have found sugars not seen in previous analyses. Another study observed all five nucleobases of DNA and RNA, and a previously undetected amino acid, tryptophan, in the samples.
Traditional science takes this as further evidence for "pseudo-panspermia," the deivery from space of "pre-biotic" ingredients for a soup from which life can eventually originate. That's already a small step in the right direction. But the evidence is more easily explained if the life-related compounds from space are post-biotic. That is, they are the degradation products of former life on Bennu's parent body.
 Bio-essential sugars in samples from asteroid Bennu, by Furukawa, Y., Sunami, S., Takano, Y. et al, Nature Geoscience, 02 Dec 2025.
Commentary, by Chris Simms, New Scietist, 02 Dec 2025.
Prebiotic organic compounds in samples of asteroid Bennu indicate heterogeneous aqueous alteration, by Angel Mojarro et al, PNAS, 24 Nov 2025.
 Comets Rendezvous has background and updates about Bennu.
| 01 Dec 2025 |
What'sNEW about HGT
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Integrating transcriptomic data with comparative genomics and phylogenetics revealed a conserved repertoire of protein-coding genes likely acquired through multiple lateral gene transfers (LGTs).... LGT from bacteria to eukaryotes is now increasingly recognized as a major evolutionary process....
"An Evolutionarily Conserved Laterally Acquired Toolkit Enables Microbiota Targeting by Trichomonas," by Adam J Hart et al, OA article, Molecular Biology and Evolution, 11 Nov 2025.
Viruses... has a primer and many links about evolution by gene transfer.
Cosmic Ancestry is now on Substack. What'sNEW alerts will be posted there, and subscriptions are free. To receive email alerts, enter your address at right and "Subscribe." There will be a couple of hoops to click through. (Unsubscribing is also easy.) You hould receive one to three emails per week, once I get it going. Commenting and making suggestions will be straightforward, and welcome.
The third interstellar comet seen, so far, is getting closer.
NASA releases close-up images of interstellar comet making a rare flyby, CBS News, 19 Nov 2025.
 ...new images of interstellar object, BBC News, 5-min YouTube video, 19 Nov 2025.
Comets: The Delivery System has background and updates.
..by a "preponderance of evidence" standard, Viking had found microbial life on Mars. Three of the four life-related experiments on that mission, in 1976-77, got results that were positive by their own design criteria. These observations come in an open eLetter to Science from respected biochemist Steve Benner and associates.
Search for Organic and Volatile Inorganic Compounds... [original article - scroll to] "The mistaken assignment" for eLetter by Steven A. Benner, Dirk Schulze-Makuch, Jan Spacek and Clay Abraham, 25 Sep 2025; and see:
How a scientific mistake from the 1970s derailed Mars exploration, by Dirk Schulze-Makuch, BigThink, 11 Nov 2025.
Life on Mars! has background, updates about Viking, and more evidence for life.
06 Apr 2000: Gerald Soffen says, "NASA never said there was no life on Mars." But see above!
| 06 Nov 2025 |
What'sNEW about HGT
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Ancient viral DNA sequences control human embryonic development. This conclusion follows a study at Stanford Medical School of certain endogenous retroviruses (ERVs), also called long terminal repeat (LTR) retrotransposons. Using stem-cell-based models they observed that a hominoid-specific transposon acts as an essential developmental switch.
Endogenous retroviruses (ERVs)... comprise approximately 8.9% of the human genome.
"A human-specific regulatory mechanism revealed in a pre-implantation model," by Fueyo, R., Wang, S., Crocker, O.J. et al, Nature, 01 Oct 2025.
"Ancient viral DNA in the human genome shapes early development," by Sherif Khodeer and Vincent Pasque, Nature, 01 Oct 2025.
Here we see vital genetic programming that is assembled from pre-existing components, some of which may be ancient. Smart genomic operating software can plausibly put the components together, but their programmatic meaning must be already available in them. ERVs are pre-existing components with programmatic meaning, we see here.
New genetic programs in Darwinism and [Cosmic Ancestry] has an early proposed test.
21 Sep 2009: Nearly half of the human genome is derived from transposable elements....
Viruses... has a primer and links about evolution by gene transfer.
De novo genes are ones that seem to have come nowhere. They weren't formed, apparently, by any process of mutation-and-selection. Fifteen years ago, they were thought to be "extremely rare," because a gene-length strand of unselected nucleotides is absurdly unlikely to encode a functional protein.
In the same fifteen years, the knowledge base of sequenced genomes has has become orders of magnitude larger. By now, evidence that the genes aren't actually de novo, but were formed by mutation-and-selection, should have been observed. Instead, the reverse has happened. De novo genes are now too numerous to count. New genetic programs often include them.
Yesterday, a team from China reports, Our results provide insights into the mechanism of de novo gene origination.... In their summary and illustration, we see a gene of two exons with a recruited transposable element for a promoter. No process of mutation-and-selection that would properly sequence the exons is mentioned.
"A de novo-originated gene drives rose scent diversification," by Yajun Li, Runhui Li, Junzhong Shang, Kaige Zhao et al, Cell, 30 Oct 2025.
Actually, it is a story about the repositioning of existing exons and the puzzle-solving of making them work with other existing pieces like transposons and introns. That's how cosmic ancestry works. Strands of nucletides long enough to have programmatic meaning must be available. If so, robust software management can tinker them together.
...De Novo Genes has background and links.
Li et al cite a reference by Adam Levy that concludes, Although de novo genes remain enigmatic, their existence makes one thing clear: evolution can readily make something from nothing.
This statement reveals science blinded by its own dogma. The dogma says evolution can make something from nothing, but de novo genes reveal the very opposite — something from something.
"How evolution builds genes from scratch" aka "Genes from the Junkyard," Nature, 16 Oct 2019.
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| 29 Oct 2025 |
What'sNEW about HGT
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Interactions with microbes have played a key role throughout the history of plant evolution.
"Land plant evolution: from microbial interaction to horizontal gene transfer," by Jinling Huang and Qia Wang, Trends in Plant Science, online 29 Oct 2025.
 Thanks, Google Alerts.
Viruses... cites evidence of HGT across all kingdoms.
Panspermia is the subject of a half-hour video from Brian Cory Dobbs. Remarks by Richard Hoover and Chandra Wickramasinghe accompany clear looks at fossil diatoms from the Orgeuil and Polonnaruwa meteorites. Blogger George Howard endorses the Russians' finding of bacteria on the International Space Station.
24 Mar 2018: background about reported bacteria on the ISS.
| 24 Oct 2025 |
What'sNEW about HGT
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Fungi evolved much earlier than the fossil record indicates.... At least that's the conclusion of an international collaboration of genomicists who used evidence of horizontal gene transfer (HGT) to infer the ages of genes from 110 species of fungi. By that method, the genes for fungi appeared much older than the first fungi dated by the fossil record, as shown with contrasting colors in the horizontal bargraph below.
As traditional neo-darwinists, the genomicists must assume that the fungi had already evolved by the earlier date — hence the headline. But no other evidence supports this, so another possibility deserves consideration: the genes may have existed then but the fungi didn't emerge until much later. There are countless other examples of genes apparently older than their phenotypic products, and this order of events aligns with cosmic ancestry. BTW, one thing is certain: HGT played a major role in the evolution of these eukaryotes.
"A timetree of Fungi dated with fossils and horizontal gene transfers," by Szánthó, L.L., Merényi, Z., Donoghue, P. et al, Nat Ecol Evol, 01 Oct 2025; and commentary:
"Fungi paved the way for life on land hundreds of millions of years earlier than previously thought," Universitat Oberta de Catalunya via EurekAlert! and ScienceDaily, 22-28 Oct 2025.
Thanks, Google Alerts.
Metazoan Genes Older Than Metazoa? lists many examples of genes that look older than their related fossils.
Viruses and Other Gene Transfer Mechanisms cites evidence of HGT across all kingdoms.
How Brewer's Yeast Evolves is a related new webpage.
Two new webpages have been added to this website:
How Prokaryotes Evolve: an upgrade of What'sNEW, 10 Mar 2021, about a very important paradigm shift.
How Brewer's Yeast Evolves: a new page about an important parallel shift among eukaryotes.
Comet 3i/Atlas is passing through the solar system. Photographed with the Hubble telescope, beginning 01 July 2025, it is the third known example of an interstellar comet. These provide direct proof that comets may travel across galaxies.
"Comet 3I/ATLAS," NASA, updated 25 Sep 2025.
Thanks, Rob Cooper.
Comets: The Delivery System has background.
Potatoes evolved from tomatoes by hybridization, according to genomicists at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. To trace "the origins of the potato's [two] key tuber-forming genes," they explain that each "came from" one of the hybrid's two parent lineages. Please notice, that's no "origin." The genes already existed.
"The potato evolved from the tomato 9 million years ago," Cell Press, 31 Jul 2025.
Neo-Darwinism... lists longstanding issue for the reigning theory, with updates.
How does life evolve? One way to aproach this question is to reconstruct the genomic changes that led to an unmistakable evolutionary transition. Which are the "new" genes behind the new features? Where did they come from? A species with features that make it an "outlier" should be an especially rich resource for this quest. That's why a multi-disciplinary team coordinated at University College London, London, chose to investigate arrow worms, with their "perplexing body plans."
A genome sequence and single-cell atlas of a marine worm species point towards bursts of gene emergence, duplication and loss as the drivers of lineage-specific body traits. That a one-sentence summary of the conclusion of the study. Let's look more closely. "Loss" is easy to understand. "Duplication" can allow optimization and subfunctoinalization, but duplicate genes aren't providing any truly new programming. What about "emergence" as the source of new genes.
In total, up to 2,250 gene families appear to be specific to chaetognaths (that is, found in at least two of the four chaetognath species considered, but not outside chaetognaths). In a figure these genes are described as "Origins (gains)." I understand that they are "gains," not inherited vertically. Surprisingly, related genes elsewhere, which would point to HGT, are not seen. And nearly-idenitical silent sequences in ancestral species, which would make them "de novo" genes, are also not seen. But they say these genes "originated in the chaetognath lineage...." How? They don't say.
The analysis also discusses regulatory changes, DNA methylation, cell specialization and much more. It makes a worthy contribution to the study of evolution. But, on close reading, it again reveals a bankruptcy underlying the mainstream, neo-darwinian theory. Its explanation for new genes is missing. The problem goes away if the genes aren't really "new," but are available to be acquired, as in cosmic ancestry. I welcome informed comments.
"The perplexing body plan of arrow worms decoded," by Thomas D. Lewin an d Yi-Jyun Luo, Nature, 25 Sep 2025; re:
"The genomic origin of the unique chaetognath body plan," by Piovani, L., Gavriouchkina, D., Parey, E. et al, doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09403-2, Nature, online 13 Aug 2025.
Duplication... has comments and resources for that subjecct.
New genetic programs in Darwinism and strong panspermia: an early proposal to investgate human genes.
Testing Darwinism versus Cosmic Ancestry lists other approaches to the opening question.
Complex organics in Saturn's E ring come from Enceladus's ocean. This conclusion follows a fresh look at data available in ice grains sampled by the Cassini mission in 2008. Until recently, it was thought that the organics in them had been "weathered" by long exposure in space to become the ones detected. But reanalysis shows that some ice grains containing the same organics were detected immediately after spewing from Enceladus, with no time for weathering. Life on Enceladus looks even more likely now.
"Cassini proves complex chemistry in Enceladus ocean," ESA via Phys.Org, 01 Oct 2025; re:
"Detection of Organic Compounds in Freshly Ejected Ice Grains from Enceladus's Ocean," by Khawaja, N., Postberg, F., O'Sullivan, T.R. et al, Nat Astron, 01 Oct 2025.
Life on Europa, Other Moons, Other Planets?... has related links.
...Analysis of Interstellar Dust has deep background.
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