Woese's progenote hypothesis

Abiogenesis science has often stated that the original replicators would probably be very different from life as we observe it today. If your only point is....an evolutionary scientist has given name to the proposed ancestors of the three kingdoms and said that this was the point before which 'life' was very different...then you have hardly sprung upon something particularly important. Quite right - some traits might not be passed on. Those traits don't get passed on. Other traits can be passed on, and selection acts on these. Once again, this is nothing new. If you've ever read Dawkins, you'll be familliar with his almost alien speculations on early replicators. The craziest was the 'clay hypothesis'. When we start going to the early replicators stage, one has to stop thinking of current life forms since they will be, by definition, fundamentally different than current life forms.It is not really mind blowing to hear that 'current observed processes of reproduction and evolution could not account for the 3 kingdoms arising.' because that situation basically had to have happened at some time between the first replicator and current ones.

I think you missed my point somewhere.The first replicators (Abiogenesis) are widely regarded to be massively different than current life. This is nothing new.The second replicators are widely regarded to be massively different than current life.The third, the fourth and so on and so forth are all regarded as being different from current life.At some point, they started to resemble modern life forms in their cell function etc.Woese proposes that this happened as the kingdoms began to form. IE before the kingdoms, life is significantly different than it is now.The idea that such a line exists is not new, Woese has theorized the temporal location of that line. It depends what you mean by known evolutionary processes. The early replicators are conceived to have evolved through differential replicative success - a known evolutionary process. Obviously the exact manner that replicative success was determined is unknown when life was so primitive as to be fundamentally different than life today.

Basically yes. Sounds about right. If there is some connection with heredity, there is potential evolution (cumulative selection). The Devil is in the details, how much connection is there? what is the nature of that connection? etc etc. I might have missed it. What does Woese propose as the time scale of this 'sudden' emergence?

It works fine at the moment and phenotype is not precisely linked to the genotype.Incidentally, you didn't entirely respond to my Message 30. Woese has proposed nothing that is not consensus as far as the grand scheme of common ancestry goes. As far as the idea goes there had to be a time when the early replicators did things very differently than they do now. Woese proposes that the urkingdoms are the line beyond which things start happening differently, and gives a rather interesting reason why he proposes it.Natural selection should work if there is any link between phenotype and genotype. The tighter the connection, the more 'useful' the selection is.

It seems that there is a major disconnect between my post and your reply which is indicative of some kind of communications problem. It could be you, me, or as is more commonly the case partially the fault of both parties. For example: Is the kind of comment one might expect to see in reply to a post that says something like

quote:

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Woese does not propose a non-vertical evolutionary process

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which I certainly did not say. In Message 80 you questioned how natural selection can work if there is not precise linkage between phenotype and genotype: I merely commented that natural selection works fine with modern organisms and in modern organisms the genotype is not precisely linked to the phenotype. I assume you agree that genotype and phenotype are not currently precisely linked and that natural selection works now. This is precisely what I was discussing, so you must excuse me if I am confused as to how you missed this. Nevertheless accept my apologies if my posts were confusing or unclear. Let me try to rectify this. I am specifically discussing the 'hypothetical'/'non-observed' creature. Woese has done nothing inherently new in discussing these hypothetical entities.That the early replicating entities were fundamentally different from modern and observed life is not a new concept - even at the time of this paper. That Woese proposes this entity is not the point, it's irrelevant! It's common sense that an entity fundamentally different from current life must have existed if the consensus opinion on common descent were to be true.The only thing that makes Woese's ideas different is that he is specifying certain things - the temporal point before which life worked differently and one part of the nature of difference (less connect between genotype and phenotype).Has my clarification succeeded? Are you now clearer on what I am trying to communicate to you?