76 Self and the Phenomenon of Life
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question of the Origin of Life uncanvassed as being altogether ultra vires in
the present state of our knowledge, and that I dealt only with the manner of
succession.” See: de Beer G. (1959) Some Unpublished Letters of Charles
Darwin. Notes Rec. R. Soc. Lond., 14: 12–66. - Richards Dawkins, for one, seemed to entertain this possibility in his book:
“The present lack of a definitely acceptable account of the origin of life
should certainly not be taken as a stumbling block for the whole Darwinian
world view.” See: Dawkins R. (1986) The Blind Watchmaker. Norton,
New York, (1996 paperback ed. p. 166). - In an article published in the Wall Street Journal (September 12, 2009),
Dawkins put it more bluntly, “Evolution is the creator of life.” - Cited by Dawkins in his book. See: Dawkins R. (1986) The Blind Watch-
maker. Norton, New York, (1996 paperback ed. p. 131). - Spiegelman S. (1967) An in vitro analysis of a replicating molecule. Am Sci-
entist 55: 63–68; Mills DR, Peterson RI, Spiegelman S. (1967) An extracel-
lular Darwinian experiment with a self-duplicating nucleic acid molecule.
Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 58: 217–224; Kacian DL, Mills DR, Kramer FR,
Spiegelman S. (1972) A replicating RNA molecule suitable for a detailed
analysis of extracellular evolution and replication. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA
69: 3038–3042. - Darwin C. (1859) The Origin of Species. last sentence.
- Dawkins R. (1976) The Selfish Gene. Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford; 1989
edition. - Dawkins R. (1982) The Extended Phenotype: The Gene as the Unit of
Selection. Oxford: Freeman, p. 114. - Small segments of RNA can regulate gene expression by acting either
directly on DNA or indirectly on messenger RNA. - Jablonka E, Lamb MJ. (2005) Evolution in Four Dimensions. MIT Press,
Cambridge, MA. - Wickner RB. (1994) URE3 as an altered URE2 protein: evidence for a
prion analog in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Science 264: 566–569; Sond-
heimer N, Lindquist S. (2000) Rnq1: an epigenetic modifier of protein
function in yeast. Molecular Cell 5: 163–172; Li RM, Lindquist S. (2000)
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