Mutations of WHAT?

Author(s): David Lynn Abel

Typically ignored in evolutionary biology is the perfectly legitimate scientific question: “Mutations of WHAT?” What exactly is being altered? What programmed the initial genome? Are all polymorphisms pointless, or are some prescribed? The object acted upon by mutations was already programming and cybernetically executing extraordinary computational biofunction. Otherwise, no organism, let alone the fittest, would be alive to differentially survive and reproduce. What orchestrated the first symphony of homeostatic protometabolism far from equilibrium in a naturalistic, inanimate, prebiotic environment? Whatever this something is that is so subject to mutation even uses various superimposed, multi-dimensional sign/symbol systems to represent and process its semiotic commands. Shannon’s measure of Uncertainty is far from Szostak’s “functional information,” [1,2] and even further from Abel’s more refined “Prescriptive Information (PI)” [3-5]. We settle for measuring mere general, nonspecific statistical possibility in large phase spaces. We fail to appreciate that irreversible nonequilibrium thermodynamics lacks utilitarian direction, purpose, and efficaciousness. No explanation is provided for specific steering, control and the formal organization of life. The mere self-ordering phenomena of Prigogine does not begin to explain the integration of circuits or the formal orchestration of biosystems. What crafted initial protometabolic schemes? What was the source of Prescriptive Information (PI), recipe, commands and the execution of computational halting? What engineered the first subcellular nanocomputers and stunning molecular machines at the same time and place as the first programs? If mutations are so critical to evolution, why don’t we regard what is being mutated as being far more critical?.