We recently did an episode of the Knight and Rose Show with Dr. Fazale Rana of Reasons to Believe about the origin of life. In that episode, we talked about all of the components that have to be present in the first living cell in order for it to perform the minimal functions of a living system. One component that was not specifically talked about is the DNA repair.

First we will look at an article, but don’t let complexity bother you, because there is a Discovery Institute animated video that goes with it. The article just provides scientific evidence to support the cartoon.

Here’s an article about that from Evolution News:

Damage to the “factory” of the cell occurs on two levels: damage to the stored information (either during replication or by natural degradation over time) and damage to the manufacturing machinery (either from faulty production of new machinery or damage incurred during use). Each type of damage requires specific repair mechanisms that demonstrate foresight — the expectation that damage will occur and the ability to recognize, repair and/or recycle only those components that are damaged. All known life requires these mechanisms.

So, from a Darwinist perspective, you would have to be able to show that DNA repair can evolve a little bit at a time, with each iteration providing a little more functionality. But what if science found that all the functionality has to be there right at the beginning, or there is no DNA repair? That would look more like design.

More:

The initial process of DNA replication is facilitated by a polymerase enzyme which results in approximately one error for every 10,000 to 100,000 added nucleotides.1 However, no known life can persist with such a high rate of error, if left uncorrected.2 Fortunately, DNA replication in all life includes a subsequent proofreading step — a type of damage repair — that enhances the accuracy by a factor of 100 to 1,000. T

[…]Following the replication of DNA, a daily barrage of DNA damage occurs during normal operating conditions. Life therefore requires sophisticated and highly specific DNA repair mechanisms. In humans, DNA damage response is estimated to involve a hierarchical organization of 605 proteins in 109 assemblies.4 Efforts to make the simplest possible cell by stripping out all non-essential genes has successfully reduced DNA repair to a minimal set of six genes.5 But, these six genes are encoded in thousands of base pairs of DNA, and the machinery to transcribe and translate those genes into the repair enzymes requires a minimum of 149 genes.6 Thus, the DNA code that is required to make DNA repair mechanisms easily exceeds 100,000 base pairs.

And this is the key point:

Here, we encounter a great paradox, first identified in 1971 by Manfred Eigen⁷: DNA repair is essential to maintain DNA but the genes that code for DNA repair could not have evolved unless the repair mechanisms were already present to protect the DNA.

And at the very end of the article, the most common response from Darwinian naturalists is rebutted:

Those who promote unguided abiogenesis simply brush off all of these required mechanisms, claiming that life started as simplified “proto-cells” that didn’t need repair. But there is no evidence that any form of life could persist or replicate without these repair mechanisms. And the presence of the repair mechanisms invokes several examples of circular causality — quite a conundrum for unintelligent, natural processes alone. Belief that simpler “proto-cells” didn’t require repair mechanisms requires blind faith, set against the prevailing scientific evidence.

A good article to bookmark, especially if the origin of life is one of your main arguments.

And here is the short video that they made to go with it:

If you’re looking for a good simple podcast about the need for a Designing Intelligence to explain the origin of life, check out our episode with Dr. Fazale Rana.