Meyer and Nelson on a Failed Explanation for the Origin of the Genetic Code

Ann Gauger has already drawn our attention to the new paper, published just last week, in the journal BIO-Complexity. Authored by Discovery Institute's Stephen Meyer and Paul Nelson, the paper is concerned with the question of the origin of the genetic code, and seeks to evaluate the efficacy of the so-called Direct RNA Templating (DRT) hypothesis as an explanation for its origin.

First formulated and proposed by Michael Yarus in 1998, the DRT scenario has enjoyed support from such...