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DNA Production and Repair
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DNA cannot function without at least 75 preexisting proteins (a) but proteins are produced only at the direction of DNA (b). Because each needs the other, a satisfactory explanation for the origin of one must also explain the origin of the other (c). The components of these manufacturing systems must have come into existence simultaneously. This implies creation.

Nor can DNA function without a system to decode it, without a system to transcribe it into messenger RNA, and without preexisting ribosomes and enzymes. Again, creation.

When a cell divides, its DNA is copied, sometimes with errors. Each animal and plant has machinery that identifies and corrects most errors (d); if it did not, the organism would deteriorate and become extinct. If evolution happened, which evolved first, DNA or its repair mechanism? Each requires the other.

(a). Ribosomes, complex structures that assemble proteins, have about 55 different proteins. More than twenty additional proteins are required to attach the 20 different types of amino acids to transfer RNA. DNA binding proteins and other proteins, specifically enzymes, also participate in the process.

(b). Richard E. Dickerson, ??Chemical Evolution and the Origin of Life,? Scientific American, Vol. 239, September 1978, p. 73.

??The amino acids must link together to form proteins, and the other chemicals must join up to make nucleic acids, including the vital DNA. The seemingly insurmountable obstacle is the way the two reactions are inseparably linked??one can??t happen without the other. Proteins depend on DNA for their formation. But DNA cannot form without pre-existing protein.? Hitching, p. 66.

(c). ??The origin of the genetic code presents formidable unsolved problems. The coded information in the nucleotide sequence is meaningless without the translation machinery, but the specification for this machinery is itself coded in the DNA. Thus without the machinery the information is meaningless, but without the coded information the machinery cannot be produced! This presents a paradox of the ??chicken and egg?? variety, and attempts to solve it have so far been sterile.? John C. Walton, (Lecturer in Chemistry, University of St. Andrews, Fife, Scotland), ??Organization and the Origin of Life,? Origins, Vol. 4, No. 1, 1977, pp. 30??31.

??Genes and enzymes are linked together in a living cell??two interlocked systems, each supporting the other. It is difficult to see how either could manage alone. Yet if we are to avoid invoking either a Creator or a very large improbability, we must accept that one occurred before the other in the origin of life. But which one was it? We are left with the ancient riddle: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?? Shapiro, p. 135.

??Because DNA and proteins depend so intimately on each other for their survival, it??s hard to imagine one of them having evolved first. But it??s just as implausible for them to have emerged simultaneously out of a prebiotic soup.? Carl Zimmer, ??How and Where Did Life on Earth Arise?? Science, Vol. 309, 1 July 2005, p. 89.

(d). Tomas Lindahl and Richard D. Wood, ??Quality Control by DNA Repair,? Science, Vol. 286, 3 December 1999, pp. 1897-1905.

In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood - 34. DNA Production and Repair