Thismay sound weird and strange but its serious.
It’s easy tothrow around words like crackpot, rogue, and maverick in describing thescientific fringe, but every now and then a paper like this comes along,leaving us blinking owlishly, unsure of where to even begin.
A total of33 names are listed as authors on this review, which was published by Progressin Biophysics and Molecular Biology. The journal is peer reviewed and fairlywell cited. So it’s not exactly a small, or a niche pay-for-publish source.
Sciencewriter Stephen Fleischfresser goes into depth on the background of two of thebetter-known scientists involved: Edward Steele and Chandra Wickramasinghe.It’s well worth a read. For a tl;dr version, Steele is an immunologist whoalready has a fringe reputation for his views on evolution that relies onacquiring gene changes determined by the influence of the environment ratherthan random mutations, in what he calls meta-Lamarckism.
Wickramasinghe,on the other hand, has had a somewhat less controversial career, recognized forempirically confirming Sir Fred Hoyle’s hypothesis describing the production ofcomplex carbon molecules on interstellar dust.
Wickramasingheand Hoyle also happened to be responsible for another space biology thesis.Only this one is based on more than just the origins of organic chemistry. TheHoyle Wickramasinghe (H-W) thesis of Cometary (Cosmic) Biology makes the rathersimple claim that the direction of evolution has been significantly affected bybiochemistry that didn’t start on our planet.
InWickramasinghe’s own words, “Comets are the carriers and distributors oflife in the cosmos, and life on Earth arose and developed as a result ofcometary inputs.” Those inputs, Wickramasinghe argues, aren’t limited to agenerous sprinkling of space-baked amino acids, either.
Rather, theyinclude viruses that insert themselves into organisms, pushing their evolutioninto whole new directions. The report, тιтled “Cause of Cambrian Explosion– Terrestrial or Cosmic?”, pulls on existing research to conclude that arain of extra-terrestrial retroviruses played a key role in the diversificationof life in our oceans roughly half a billion years ago.
“Thusretroviruses and other viruses hypothesized to be liberated in cometary debristrails both can potentially add new DNA sequences to terrestrial genomes anddrive further mutagenic change within somatic and germline genomes,” theauthors write.
Let thatsink in for a moment. And take a deep breath before continuing, because thatwas the tame part. It was during this period that a group of molluscs known ascephalopods first stretched out their tentacles from beneath their shells,branching into a stunning array of sizes and shapes in what seemed like aremarkably short time frame.
The geneticsof these organisms, which today include octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish, areas weird as the animals themselves, due in part to their ability to theirability to edit their DNA on the fly.
The authorsof the paper make the rather audacious claim that these genetic oddities mightbe a sign of life from space. Not of space viruses this time, but the arrivalof whole genomes frozen in stasis before thawing out in our tepid waters.
“Thusthe possibility that cryopreserved squid and/or octopus eggs, arrived in icybolides several hundred million years ago should not be discounted,” theywrite. In his review of the paper, medical researcher Keith Baverstock from theUniversity of Eastern Finland, concedes that there’s a lot of evidence thatplausibly aligns with the H-W thesis, such as the curious timeline of theappearance of viruses.
But that’sjust not how science advances. “I believe this paper justifies scepticismof the scientific value of stand alone theories of the origin of life,“Baverstock argues. “The weight of plausible, but non-definitive, evidence,great though that might be, is not the point.“
While theidea is as novel and exciting as it is provocative, nothing in the summaryhelps us better understand the history of life on Earth any better thanexisting conjectures, adding little of value to our model of evolution. Still,with solid caveats in place, maybe science can cope with a generous dose ofcrazy every now and then.
Journaleditor Denis Noble concedes that ‘further research is needed’, which is a bitof an understatement. But given the developments regarding space-based organicchemistry in recent years, there’s room for discussion.
“ᴀsspace chemistry and biology grows in importance it is appropriate for a journaldevoted to the interface between physics and biology to encourage thedebates,” says Noble. “In the future, the ideas will surely becometestable.”
Just in casethose tests confirm speculations, we recommend being well prepared for thereturn of our cephalopod overlords. Who knows when they’ll want those eggsback? This research was published in Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology.
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