A group of researchers working at the Human Genome
Project will be announcing soon that they made an astonishing
scientific discovery: They believe so-called
non-coding sequences (97%) in human DNA is no less than
genetic code of an unknown extraterrestrial life form.
The non-coding sequences are common to all living organisms
on Earth, from molds to fish to humans. In human DNA,
they constitute larger part of the total genome, says
Prof. Sam Chang, the group
leader. Non-coding sequences, also known
as "junk DNA", were discovered years ago,
and their function remains mystery. Unlike
normal genes, which carry the information that intracellular
machinery uses to synthesize proteins, enzymes and other
chemicals produced by our bodies, non-coding sequences
are never used for any purpose. They are never expressed,
meaning that the information they carry is never read,
no substance is synthesized and they have no function
at all. We exist on only 3% of our DNA.
The junk genes merely enjoy the ride with hard working
active genes, passed from generation to generation.What are they? How come these idle genes
are in our genome? Those were the question many scientists
posed and failed to answer - until the breakthrough
discovery by Prof. Sam Chang and his group.
Trying to understand the origins and meaning of junk
DNA Prof. Chang realized that he first needs a definition
of "junk". Is junk DNA really junk, (useless
and meaningless) or it contains some information not
claimed by the rest of DNA for whatever reason? He once
mentioned the question to an acquaintance, Dr. Lipshutz,
a young theoretical physicist turned Wall Street derivative
securities specialist. "Easy," replied Lipshutz.
"We'll run your sequence through the software I
use to analyze market data, and it will show if your
sequences are total garbage, "white noise",
or there is a message in there."
Working evenings and weekends, Lipshutz
managed to show that non-coding sequences are not all
junk, they carry information".To
my surprise, the entropy of coding and non-coding DNA
sequences was not that different",
continues Lipshutz. "There was noise
in both but it was no junk at all. If
the market data were that orderly, I would have already
retired."
Eventually Prof. Chang was referred to Dr. Adnan Mussaelian,
a talented cryptographer in the former Soviet republic
of Armenia. Poor fellow barely survived on a $15 a month
salary and occasional fees for tutoring children of
Armenian nuveau riches. A $10,000 research grant was
a struck of luck, he began working like a beaver.
Adnan promptly confirmed the findings of his Wall Street
predecessor: The entropy indicated tons of information
almost in the clear, it was not too strong cryptographic
system, it didn't appear to be a tough problem. Adnan
began applying differential cryptoanalysis and similar
standard cryptographic techniques.
He was two months in the project when he noticed that
all non-coding sequences are usually preceded
by one short DNA sequence.
A very similar sequence usually followed the junk. These
segments, known to biologists as alu sequences, were
all over the whole human genome. Being
non-coding, junk sequences themselves, alu are one of
the most common genes of all.
Trained as a cryptographer and computer programmer,
and having no knowledge of microbiology, Adnan approached
the genetic code as of computer code. Just playing with
the analogy Adnan grabbed the source code of one his
programs and fed it into the program that calculates
the statistics of symbols and short sequences, a tool
often used in decoding messages. What was
the most common symbol? Of course, it was "/",
a symbol of comment! He took a Pascal code, and it were
{ and } ! Of course, the code between two slashes in
C is never executed, and is never meant to be executed;
it is not the code, it is the comment to the code!
Being unable to resist the temptation to further play
with the analogy, Adnan began comparing statistical
distributions of the comments in computer and genetic
code. There must be a striking difference. This should
show up in statistics. Nevertheless, statistically,
junk DNA was not much different from active, coding
sequences. To be sure, Adnan fed a program into the
analyzer: surprisingly, the statistics of code and comments
were almost the same. He looked into the source code
and realized why: there were very few comments in between
the slashes, it was mostly C code the author decided
to exclude from execution, a common practice among programmers.
Adnan, religiously inclined person, was
thinking about the divine hand - but after analyzing
the spaghetti code inside the sequences he convinced
himself that whoever wrote the small code was not God.
Who wrote the active, small coding part of human genetic
code was not very well organized, he was a rather sloppy
programmer. It looked like rather somebody
from Microsoft, but at the time human genetic code was
written, there was no Microsoft on Earth.
On Earth? It was like a lightning... Was
the genetic code for all life on Earth written by an
extraterrestrial programmer and then somehow deposited
here, for execution? The idea was mad
and frightening, and Adnan resisted it for days. Then
he decided to proceed. If the non-coding
sequences are parts of the program that were rejected
or abandoned by the author, there is a way to make them
work. The only thing one needs
to do is to remove the symbols of comments and if the
portion between the /*......*/ symbols is a meaningful
routine it may compile and execute! He
selected some 200 non-coding sequences that most closely
resembled real genes, stripped them of /*, //, and similar
stuff and after few days of hesitation sent e-mail to
his American boss, asking him to find a way to put them
in E-coli or whatever host and make them work.
Biologists have attempted for years to
make junk sequences express, without much success.
Sometimes nothing turned out; sometimes it was junk
again. It was not surprising. Grab an arbitrary portion
of the excluded computer code and try to compile it.
Most likely, it will fail. At best, it will produce
bizarre results. Analyze the code carefully, fish out
a whole function from the comments, and you may make
it work. Because of careful Mussaelian's
statistical analysis 4 of the 200 sequences he selected,
began working, producing tiny amounts of a chemical
compounds.
"I was anxiously awaiting the response from Chang,"
says Dr. Mussaelian. "Would it be a more or less
normal protein or something out of ordinary? The answer
was shocking: it was a substance, known
to be produced by several types of leukemia in men and
animals. Surprisingly, three other sequences also produced
cancer-related chemicals. It no longer
looked like a coincidence. When one awakens
a viable dormant gene, it produces cancer-related proteins.
Researchers began searching Human Genome Project databases
for the four genes they isolated from junk DNA. Eventually,
three of the four were found there, listed as active,
non-junk genes. This was not a big surprise: since cancer
tissues produce the protein, there must be somewhere
a gene, which codes it! The surprise came later: In
the active, non-junk portion of the code the gene in
question (the researchers called it "jhlg1",
for junk human leukemia gene) was not preceded by the
alu sequence, i.e. the /* symbol was missing.However, the closing */ symbol at the end
of "jhlg1" was there. This explained
why "jhlg1" was not expressed in the depth
of the junk DNA but worked fine in the normal, active
part of the genome. The one who wrote the basic genetic
code for humans excluded portion of the big code by
embracing them in /*... */ but missed some of the opening
/* symbol. His compiler seems to be garbage, too: a
good compiler, even from terrestrial Microsoft, would
most likely refuse to compile such program at all.
Prof. Sam Chang with his students began searching for
genes associated with various cancers, and almost
in all instances they discovered that those genes are
followed by the alu sequence (i.e. protein as a comment
closing symbol */), but never preceded by the comment
opening /* gene! "This explains why
diseases result in cell damage and their death, whereas
cancers lead to cell reproduction and growth. Because
only few fragments from the big code are expressed,
they never lead to coherent growth. What
we get with cancer, is expression of only few of genes
alien to humans and symbiosis with some genes of bacterial
parasites that lead to illogical, bizarre and apparently
meaningless chunks of living cells. The
chunks have its own veins, arteries, and its own immune
system that vigorously resists all our anti-cancer drugs.
"Our hypothesis is that a higher extraterrestrial
life form was engaged in creating new life and planting
it on various planets. Earth is just one
of them. Perhaps, after programming, our creators grow
us the same way we grow bacteria in Petri dishes. We
can't know their motives - whether it was a scientific
experiment, or a way of preparing new planets for colonization,
or is it long time ongoing business of seedling life
in the universe. If we think about it in our human terms,
the extraterrestrial programmers were most probably
working on one big code consisting of several projects,
and the projects should have produced various life forms
for various planets. Very likely in a rush, the programmers
cut down drastically the big code and delivered basic
program intended for Earth. However, at that time they
were (perhaps) not quite certain which functions of
the big code may be needed later and which not, so they
kept them all there. Instead of cleaning
the basic program by deleting all the lines of the big
code, they converted them into comments, and in the
rush they missed few /* symbols in the comments here
or there; thus presenting mankind with illogical growth
of mass of cells we know as cancer."
There are three options to the problem. Either delete
all the /* symbols and comments and clean this way the
basic code, or add all the missing */ and avoid illogical
mixing of the basic code with the big code. Alternatively,
in the third option, remove all the / symbols and let
work the basic code with the big code as a complete
program. Unfortunately, none of these options are within
our capacity. If we were able to efficiently insert
genes into the chromosomes of living men,
our breakthrough discovery would mean instant cure for
all future cancer cases; at least from the programmer
point of view. Theoretically, we can do
it in a laboratory, but we have no practical means to
implant the repaired DNA into living subjects. The mystery
of "junk DNA" and cancer seems to be solved,
but no quick cure shall be expected. The best thing
we can do now is to try nourishing new, cancer-free
line of humans with gradually debugged basic genetic
code. That will take a long time. For us and our children,
there is no hope on the horizon.
"However, from the programmer's point of view,
there is also positive outlook in it. What we see in
our DNA is a program consisting of two versions, a big
code and basic code. First fact is, the
complete program was positively not written on Earth;
that is now a verified fact. The second fact is, that
genes by themselves are not enough to explain evolution;
there must be something more in the game. What
it is or where it is, we don't kow. The
third fact is, no creator of a new work, be it a composer,
engineer or programmer, from Mars or Microsoft, will
ever leave his work without the option for improvement
or upgrade. Ingenious here is, that the
upgrade is already enclosed - the "junk
DNA" is nothing more than hidden and dormant upgrade
of our basic code! We know for some time
that certain cosmic rays have power to modify DNA. With
this in mind, plausible solution is available. The
extraterrestrial programmers may use just one flash
of the right energy from somewhere in the Universe to
instruct the basic code to remove all the /*…*/
symbols, fuse itself with the big code ("junk DNA")
and jumpstart working of our whole DNA.
That would change us forever, some of us within months,
some of us within generations. The change would be not
too much physical, (except no more cancers, diseases
and short life), but it will catapult us intellectually.
Suddenly, we will be in time comparable to coexistence
of Neanderthals with Cromagnons. The old will be replaced
giving birth to a new cycle. The complete program is
elegant, very clever self-organizing, auto-executing,
auto-developing and auto-correcting software for a highly
advanced biological computer with build-in connection
to the ageless energy and wisdom of the Universe. Software
wise, within us is either short and diseased life, or
potential for a super-intelligent super-being with a
long and healthy life. This triggers puzzling
questions - was the reduction to the basic code done
by sloppy programmers in a rush (as it appears to us),
or was the disabling of the big code purposeful act
which can be cancelled by a "remote control"
whenever desired?"
Soon or later, we have to come to grips
with the unbelievable notion that every life on Earth
carries genetic code for his extraterrestrial cousin
and that evolution is not what we think it is.This discovery may well shake the very roots
of humanity - our beliefs in our concept of God and
in our own power over our destiny. With
the right paradigm, we may discover one day that all
forms of life and the whole Universe is just one huge
intellectual exercise in thoughts expressed mathematically,
by Design, by Creator.