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Will anyone here be really surprised if it turns out ribosomes are duplicating machines designed by some alien race?

The entire process of reading the DNA code and turning it into proteins is just amazing.



I understand the downvotes, but the wonder here with biology that the OP has is well placed. I came into bio from DoD/Physics and am constantly astounded by what nature has made. I mean, it's been ~4 billion years and the generation to generation time is ~20 minutes (~1.1E14 generations total), so I think we all can expect a fair bit from nature, but still, she is really clever.

I do think about this as well. The complexity, the reliability, the ability for nature to do what she does even in the face of all the thermal noise and viruses and enviroment, it really seems like there must be someone making it happen. Alas, no though! As far as we can tell, it's all just evolution and chance on a planet wide stage with microscopic actors. If anything, I think this makes nature even more exciting and awesome (in the true sense of the word). That she did so much with so little is stupefying to me.


I would be surprised (I consider terrestrial random origin to be more likely).

Ribosomes just turn RNA into protein. Don't forget about DNA and RNA polymerase, which are both very interesting as well.

It's really mechanical, but in a way that appeared to happen randomly by evolution, not through design.




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