[ExI] Evolution

[The Avantguardian]

On Thursday, May 21, 2020, 10:41:37 AM PDT, Ben via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: 
On 21/05/2020 17:22, Re Rose wrote:
[snip]
> So DNA repair is a huge evolutionary sucess which relaibly carries 
> precious biological information forward in time, and the inherent 
> chemical and physical problems evolution solved in order for that 
> relaibility to occur are tremendous. Each type of DNA damage - base 
> adduct, strand scission, oxidation, dimerization, there are many more 
> - all have completely different chemistries, and each DNA repair 
> system deals with each one of these chemistries eparately. It is truly 
> an amazing feat, one which you (or any living organisim) literally 
> could not live without.
>
> Please. Respect for DNA repair!
[snip]

> Your very description of the different types of DNA damage, and the need 
for totally different strategies for addressing them, highlights how 
inefficient the process is, and how bad a medium for data-storage DNA 
is. No wonder it's so error-prone.

But the error rate that you and John complain about is an essential part of evolution. If DNA replication was 100% accurate then none of us would be here. Life would never have progressed beyond the RNA world or whatever the prototypical life scenario was. The ability to modulate the error rate and fine tune it over time and space is a feature of DNA-based wetware, and not a bug. Perfect fidelity is unnatural and changing environmental conditions will inevitably render any "perfect" organism extinct.

Stuart LaForge