The Book of Life: Revised Edition
On April 5, 2005, the prominent British genetics professor Steve Jones published a witty essay in the London Daily Telegraph that explained with unusual frankness just how strange, and even paradoxical, is the role of mutation in neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory.
According to chemical laws, wrote Jones, who teaches at University College, London, we all ought to be dead by now. The basis for this gloomy prognosis is “thermodynamics, meaning the random noise that interferes with all chemical reactions and causes them to go wrong.” The chemistry of DNA ensures the continual production of much mutational noise, because “the chances of physical error as each DNA molecule is copied are such that mistakes—mutations—should build up with great speed and stop most of the dividing helices in their tracks. Even those that make it would be so damaged that their carriers would not survive.”
To explain why we don’t see genomic mutational meltdown, Jones appealed not to Darwinian natural selection, but to the DNA’s fantastic error-correction machinery, which he likened to a word processor’s spell-check software: “Special enzymes clean up the mess as they snip out a mutated segment, join together broken bits of the molecule, or replace a faulty piece with the correct version.”
This error-correction machinery can only work because the cell has access to a correct copy of the gene to compare with mutant genes for identifying errors. “In fact, the genome is built on backups, with repeat copies of genes that can be used to check when one has gone wrong.” Without the genes involved in the process, “we could not survive.”
Botanists recently announced the discovery of “a spectacular new talent in the world of biological proofreading.” One of the mutations in the plant Aradopsis makes parts of its flower fuse. According to the laws of inheritance, if both parents have two copies of the damaged gene, their offspring must be mutated, yet they often produce perfectly normal offspring.
The damaged gene has been fixed—but without a backup. “A closer look at the DNA shows that, in every case, the version restored is present not in the parents, but in an unmutated ancestor, as far back as a great-grandparent.”
Creative Errors
“Somehow,” Jones continued, “the altered gene has checked back for several generations to see what the correct answer should be (which is rather like turning to the ghost of Dr. Johnson for advice on how to spell ‘lexicographer’).” He did not attempt to explain how Darwinian natural selection would preserve a ghost-copy of a gene for use only in some possibly distant future generation.
The genome’s ability to correct errors is so spectacular that one wonders, as does Jones, why it allows any errors to persist. Why is the observed mutation rate not even lower than it is?
“We have no idea,” Jones cheerfully conceded, “but the errors are essential. Without mutations we would all certainly be dead (or, at least, unborn) for a system that copies itself precisely cannot move forwards. Evolution is a series of successful mistakes. Mutations are the fuel of the Darwinian machine and without them it could not keep running.”
There you have it. It is common to describe neo-Darwinism as “evolution by natural selection,” but it is more accurate to describe it as “evolution by creative copying errors.” Natural selection is merely a metaphorical term for the fact that some organisms fail to survive or reproduce. The role of natural selection is only to preserve or eliminate new characteristics mutation has created.
Phillip E. Johnson is Professor of Law (emeritus) at the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of Darwin on Trial, The Wedge of Truth, The Right Questions (InterVarsity Press), and other books challenging the naturalistic assumptions that dominate modern culture. He is a contributing editor of Touchstone.
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