What the Evolution of Vitamins Means For Human Health
by Carl Zimmer
“Today, in my “Matter” column for the Times, I look at the lessons that history can teach us for improving human health. My favorite one is learning how to use vitamins as weapons against our invisible enemies.”
My comment: Carl Zimmer’s perspectives continue to amaze me, but not amuse me. No matter what I write about nutrient-dependent de novo creation of olfactory receptor genes, de novo creation of species-specific blends of pheromones, and de novo creation of novel physical structures like teeth, Zimmer is determined to portray such things only in the context of evolutionary theory.
Zimmer has now decided to tell others that vitamins evolve — as if there were no such thing as biophysical constraints on their evolution or the evolution of anything else. Clearly, at some point he will need to address the laws of physics or simply reaffirm what he wrote in The Surprising Origins of Evolutionary Complexity about the opinion of other evolutionary theorists.
Q. How did evolutionary complexity arise, Carl?
“Others maintain that as random mutations arise, complexity emerges as a side effect, even without natural selection to help it along. Complexity, they say, is not purely the result of millions of years of fine-tuning through natural selection—the process that Richard Dawkins famously dubbed “the blind watchmaker.” To some extent, it just happens.”
Did evolutionary complexity arise before or after vitamins evolved? Does the evolution of vitamins and organismal complexity defy the laws of physics? Is that why the laws of physics have been abandoned by evolutionary biologists? Is it because they don’t fit into the context of mutation-initiated natural selection?
James V. Kohl detailedl how quantized energy-dependent microRNA biogenesis links the pheromone-controlled physiology of reproduction to biophysically constrained viral latency and healthy longevity. Links from what organisms eat to the enzyme-dependent metabolism of food also link metabolic networks to microRNA-mediated genetic networks in the context of RNA interference. Drug therapies alter RNA interference by altering cell type differentiation in all cells of all individuals of all species. For comparison, during the past 26 years, Kohl has detailed how the chemistry of protein folding is biophysically constrained at every level of biological organization by conserved molecular mechanisms.