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Some of these minerals from living environments can persist unchanged for billions of years, providing a way to detect very ancient life. We wonder, are any life-influenced minerals to be found in meteorites? We hope this question is not overlooked.

These biologists believe that this example is noteworthy because the identity of the transfered genes and their source are unusually well established. This establishment was easier because the events were relatively recent. And that the transferred genes are regulatory ones is well worth knowing. But documented examples of horizontal gene transfers (HGT) — of all sorts, by a variety of means, conferring new traits among eukaryotes — are not rare. These examples sustain a fundamental prediction of cosmic ancestry. The analysis of British groundsel flower petals only adds to this growing body of evidence.

As many do, Miller exploits the ambiguous meaning of "evolution." He cites (a) the history of life on Earth [which virtually everyone accepts] and (b) examples of adaptation [or microevolution, which proponents of ID accept] in support of (c) the Darwinian mechanism behind macroevolutionary innovation [which is the main issue, for which a & b are irrelevant]. Fortunately, he also looks more closely at a few examples of Michael Behe's "irreducible complexity."

One of those examples is the evolution of the immune system in jawed vertebrates. For Behe it is too complex to have been composed by Darwinian mutation-and-natural-selection. Miller rebuts Behe by citing studies which ...reached their climax in 2005 when the exact transposon from which the immune system evolved was conclusively identified (p 73). Miller's reference for this climactic identification is an article by a pair of geneticists at the Genetic Research Information Institute in Mountain View CA, published online by PLoS Biology in June 2005. We have now studied that paper. Its abstract states:

Miller thinks the perception of this scenario has elucidated the evolution of this key part of the immune system. (Here again, Miller's "evolution" is ambiguous.) Actually, the scenario affirms that the critical parts of the system were encoded by transposon-related genes that must have already existed in more primitive species lacking this kind of immune system. By some means of gene transfer, the jawed vertebrates acquired the genes. After acquisition, some assembly and optimization followed. But most of these facts have been known since 1998.

In no way does this evidence show that the needed genes incrementally "evolved" by darwinian mutation-and-natural-selection. Instead, the scenario presents a jarring puzzle for darwinism: How could the essence of this genetic program come into being before it could be affected by natural selection? But darwinians ignore these logical gaps, hoping the rest of us will grow weary and welcome a change of subject.

Eventually Miller argues that creationism/ID's alternative for explaining complex genetic programs is not clear. We agree. We think both programs, darwinism and creationism/ID, are flawed. We wish a third alternative such as cosmic ancestry would get consideration.

• "The only plausible scenario is that active and nearly identical SPIN elements were introduced horizontally, and relatively recently, into several tetrapod species and subsequently spawned different waves of SPIN amplification along these species lineages.
• "There is little doubt that SPIN amplification not only added megabases of DNA to the genomes, but it also promoted lineage-specific changes in chromosomal architecture and fueled evolutionary innovation.
• "Despite ...outstanding questions, our data provide evidence that HT has contributed significantly to diversifying and shaping the genomes of mammals and other tetrapods.
• "These findings are startling given the barriers apparently opposing the entry of exogenous DNA into the sequestered germline of animals."

This is a remarkable and unexpected finding, because it suggests that the ancestors of these species, some of which occupied different continents, were infiltrated by the same transposon at roughly the same time — Damon Lisch

Elsewhere we have written, "If a new genetic program arrives by the strong panspermia process, intervening species should possess either nearly identical versions of it ...or nothing similar." The data in this study are consistent with that supposition.

The analysis of the short-lived plumes comes from a team led by Michael Mumma (pictured), of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. It was presented at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Ithaca, New York, 11 October.

• Horizontal gene transfer between bacteria and diatoms is pervasive....
• Bacterial genes in diatoms do not appear to be derived from any one specific source, but from a range of origins....
• Many of the genes shared between diatoms and bacteria encode components that are likely to provide novel metabolic capacities, ...novel cell wall components, and to provide unorthodox mechanisms of DNA replication, repair and recombination for a eukaryotic cell.
• We therefore propose that gene transfer from bacteria to diatoms, and perhaps vice versa, has been a common event in marine environments and has been a major driving force during diatom evolution.

Chris Bowler et al., "The Phaeodactylum genome reveals the evolutionary history of diatom genomes" [

A: Volcanic plume with lightning. B: The experimental setup that might simulate this environment. C: Amino acids and concentrations detected.

Miller originally used three different setups for his experiments. The famous classic setup used a spark discharge aparatus. Another setup (see diagram) added a steam aspirator to increase the gas flow rate through the system. None of the three setups produced detectable quantities of more than half of life's 20 amino acids. But with today's state-of-the-art instruments, analysts at the Goddard Astrobiology Analytical lab could detect much lower concentrations than Miller could. In residue from the spark discharge setup with a steam aspirator, all 20 are detectable today.

Miller's origin-of-life experiments were staged in a highly reducing atmosphere, as the early Earth was assumed to possess. That assumption is no longer accepted, a reversal that reduces the impact of the original experiments. But the spark discharge setup with a steam aspirator "possibly simulates the spark discharge synthesis by lightning in a steam-rich volcanic eruption." Such an environment might produce, locally and briefly, the assumed reducing atmosphere. This possibility has led to the new suggestion that life may have gotten its starter ingredients in a lightning-riddled volcanic plume.

Even if life's 20 amino acids could be created in volcanic plumes, tremendous problems would remain for the hardware aspect of the origin-of-life problem. And the seldom-mentioned software aspect of the problem is even more difficult. But speculation continues unabated.