对这段视频的部分transcript和分析,摘要如下:
Venter vs. Dawkins on the Tree of Life -- and Another Dawkins Whopper
The question for discussion at the forum was "What is life?" Most of the panelists agreed that all organisms on Earth represent a single kind of life -- a sample of one -- because all organisms have descended from a last universal common ancestor (LUCA)...
Venter disagreed -- in a remarkable way (start at the 9:00 minute mark). "
I'm not so sanguine as some of my colleagues here," he said, "that there's only one life form on this planet. We have a lot of different types of metabolism, different organisms. I wouldn't call you [Venter said, turning to physicist Paul Davies, on his right] the same life form as the one we have that lives in pH 12 base, that would dissolve your skin if we dropped you in it."
"Well, I've got the same genetic code," said Davies. "We'll have a common ancestor."
"
You don't have the same genetic code," replied Venter. "In fact, the Mycoplasmas [a group of bacteria Venter and his team have used to engineer synthetic chromosomes]
use a different genetic code that would not work in your cells. So there are a lot of variations on the theme..."
(
Human and Mycoplasma cells do not read their DNA in the same way)
"
The tree of life is an artifact of some early scientific studies that aren't really holding up...So there is not a tree of life." replied Venter.
Dawkins is Flabbergasted
Fast forward to 11:23, when moderator Roger Bingham turns the microphone over to Dawkins:
"I'm intrigued," replies Dawkins, "at Craig saying that the tree of life is a fiction. I mean...the DNA code of all creatures that have ever been looked at is all but identical."
WHOPPER. Venter just told the forum that Mycoplasma read their DNA using a different coding convention than other organisms (for "stop" and tryptophan). But Dawkins is undaunted:
"Surely that means," he asks Venter, "that they're all related? Doesn't it?"
As nearly as we can tell from the video, Venter only smiles.
这段话前面已经贴过,俺自己记下来的,好像在40分钟左右
Leland Hartwell: I found that the more we learn about the cells, the more complex they seem.
They are just incredibly complex things. To go from what we can see today to try to reason where we came from, I think it's really impossible