Okay, this is one of the strangest alien contact theories I've ever read, but it seems to be based on SOME logic. It is an idea by Paul Davies, of the Australian Centre for Astrobiology at Macquarie University in Sydney. He has suggested that aliens may have placed a message in human DNA a long time ago so that we may discover it when we become technologically advaced enough to find it. The story from Mail & Guardian Online:

Alien message 'may be in our DNA'

Sydney

09 August 2004 09:03

Forget waiting for ET to call -- the most likely place to find an alien message is in our DNA, according to an expert in Australia.

Professor Paul Davies, from the Australian Centre for Astrobiology at Macquarie University in Sydney, believes a cosmic greeting card could have been left in every human cell....

See the full story.

...and THIS was a Star Trek TNG episode. ;)

> ...and THIS was a Star Trek TNG episode. ;)
>

That is right :)

Greetings from Germany NRW
Ulli S@h Berkeley's Staff Friends Club m7 ©

Okay guys, but it's a little interesting (although strange).

> ...and THIS was a Star Trek TNG episode. ;)
>
and then they re-used the same actress/character as a changling in DS9

It's an interesting hypothesis, but there are variables that seem difficult to overcome. For this to have occurred, ET would have had to gather all the samples of that which was evolving into humans and recode or add dormant portions. Either that or distribute the message in a retrovirus, which seems to me difficult because it would attach to DNA in locations that would be prone to mutation.

[EDIT]I suppose with sufficient nanotechnology, recoding billions of cells in each of hundreds or thousands of proto-humans isn't impossible.[/EDIT]

Perhaps someone here who has more than just high-school biology like I do could weigh in on this?

> It's an interesting hypothesis, but there are variables that seem difficult to
> overcome. For this to have occurred, ET would have had to gather all the
> samples of that which was evolving into humans and recode or add dormant
> portions. Either that or distribute the message in a retrovirus, which seems
> to me difficult because it would attach to DNA in locations that would be
> prone to mutation.
>
> [EDIT]I suppose with sufficient nanotechnology, recoding billions of cells in
> each of hundreds or thousands of proto-humans isn't impossible.[/EDIT]
>
> Perhaps someone here who has more than just high-school biology like I do
> could weigh in on this?
>

I guess that with a hypothesis like this one, almost anything is possible. If Professor Davies is suggesting something like this, then why not even say that those same aliens actually designed us as well.

> I guess that with a hypothesis like this one, almost anything is possible. If
> Professor Davies is sugesting something like this, then why not even say that
> those same aliens actually designed us as well.

That was the basis of the book 2001: A Space Oddyssey, actually. The old ones came across life in countless places in the universe, but found precious little Mind. So they cultivated, and sometimes, regrettably, had to weed...

In any case, my original thought was too broad, I'm thinking now that the best way to go about such an endeavor is not to alter an organism, but to alter the organism's offspring. Target the reproductive cells only, or the undifferentiated embryo cells "en vivo", and you don't run as much risk of killing the message's hosts.

The real trick is now to take the data from the human genome project and run it through algorithms that look for sequences that simply can't be random. The message would have to be somewhat obvious and likely would have a "key" sequence.

> > I guess that with a hypothesis like this one, almost anything is
> possible. If
> > Professor Davies is sugesting something like this, then why not even say
> that
> > those same aliens actually designed us as well.
>
> That was the basis of the book 2001: A Space Oddyssey, actually. The
> old ones came across life in countless places in the universe, but found
> precious little Mind. So they cultivated, and sometimes, regrettably, had to
> weed...
>
> In any case, my original thought was too broad, I'm thinking now that the best
> way to go about such an endeavor is not to alter an organism, but to alter the
> organism's offspring. Target the reproductive cells only, or the
> undifferentiated embryo cells "en vivo", and you don't run as much risk of
> killing the message's hosts.
>
> The real trick is now to take the data from the human genome project and run
> it through algorithms that look for sequences that simply can't be random.
> The message would have to be somewhat obvious and likely would have a "key"
> sequence.
>

But do you think it's possible that an alien civilization that is capable of intersteller space travel may be able to plant these "message genes" wherever they wanted to without causing harm to the host? This may be tricky for us, but maybe not for a very technologically advanced alien civilization.

Hmm, it would be tricky to get data from the human genome I guess, but perhaps the search for sequences that do not look random could be done on a much smaller scale. Since the article says that scientists have discovered large sequences of "junk" DNA that contain no genes and are very stable, wouldn't DNA be in all or most of humanity, considering of course that this was supposed to have been done a very long time ago? I think what is missing from this hypothesis is an explanation of the precentage that these scientists think this "junk" DNA is distributed amongst the human population.

If in the near future we were indeed to find some attention-grabbing patterns, then this statement says it all:

A computer could be used to find obvious attention-grabbing patterns within these stretches of DNA, he said. If a sequence of junk units of DNA were displayed as an array of pixels on a screen and produced a simple image "the presumption of tampering would be inescapable".

> But do you think it's possible that an alien civilization that is capable of
> intersteller space travel may be able to plant these "message genes" wherever
> they wanted to without causing harm to the host? This may be tricky for us,
> but maybe not for a very technologically advanced alien civilization.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say anyone being able to mount a scientific expedition at interstellar distances would HAVE to have a firm grasp of biochemistry, quantum chemistry, nanotechnology, quantum mechanics, etc. to build a sustainable vessel, sublight or otherwise. Assuming a live ET or a very smart robotic probe that can loiter for years and be bursted with complex instructions, it isn't too much of a stretch to imagine they could unravel the mystery that is DNA and protein sequencing even if it was foreign to them, notice areas that weren't being used, and be able to build nanobots that can cut and paste.

It also may be that only a few could be affected, so not everyone has the message.

So far as I can tell, the only real "flight of fancy" in this scenario, according to our grasp of science, is the actual "fancy flight" from there to here.

> A computer could be used to find obvious attention-grabbing patterns within
> these stretches of DNA, he said. If a sequence of junk units of DNA were
> displayed as an array of pixels on a screen and produced a simple image "the
> presumption of tampering would be inescapable".

Me, I'd look for probability anomalies first. If I were to perform this project, I'd encode in binary 2,3,5,7,11,13 etc all the way up to the largest prime I can represent in my selected "word size". That would be reason enough to examine the entire sequence ad infinitum, because even in something so simple the probability becomes on the order of the "monkeys pounding out Beethoven's fifth" that the sequence could possibly occur naturally with no natural selection reinforcing the pattern. And the pattern could not possibly be found until humans had sufficient technology to map the entire genome on the level of each nucleic acid.

> Me, I'd look for probability anomalies first. If I were to perform this
> project, I'd encode in binary 2,3,5,7,11,13 etc all the way up to the largest
> prime I can represent in my selected "word size". That would be reason enough
> to examine the entire sequence ad infinitum, because even in something so
> simple the probability becomes on the order of the "monkeys pounding out
> Beethoven's fifth" that the sequence could possibly occur naturally with no
> natural selection reinforcing the pattern. And the pattern could not possibly
> be found until humans had sufficient technology to map the entire genome on
> the level of each nucleic acid.

Gosh it's spooky how similarly you think to me.. I've found the good twin!!! :)

This thread (so it's clear I'm not picking on your post) is starting to sound eerily similar to the Bible Code .

One point though is that I believe it's called "junk" DNA because no-one has yet discovered its purpose. Doesn't mean it doesn't have one, just means that we don't know why it's there.

I've been comeing back to this thread over and over reading the posts. No body has brought up the question that keeps coming to my mind. Call me sick...Call me perverted but if this was true I keep wondering HOW they put it there!
Did they slap one of us humans on a table and inject it into us of did they do it the old fashioned way and insiminate it.
some have said that they think we humans were put here by an alien race. maybey we are the offspring.

> I've been comeing back to this thread over and over reading the posts. No body
> has brought up the question that keeps coming to my mind. Call me sick...Call
> me perverted but if this was true I keep wondering HOW they put it there!
> Did they slap one of us humans on a table and inject it into us of did they
> do it the old fashioned way and insiminate it.
> some have said that they think we humans were put here by an alien race.
> maybey we are the offspring.

Or the first attempt at GMO. Didn't Erich von Danniken (sp) cover these bases in his books, starting with Chariots of the Gods?

Omigosh, I could be starting to show my age now. :)

> Gosh it's spooky how similarly you think to me.. I've found the good twin!!!
> :)

Betcha didn't realize we have something else in common, sorta. "Murasaki" means "purple" in Japanese.

> I've been comeing back to this thread over and over reading the posts. No body
> has brought up the question that keeps coming to my mind. Call me sick...Call
> me perverted but if this was true I keep wondering HOW they put it there!
> Did they slap one of us humans on a table and inject it into us of did they
> do it the old fashioned way and insiminate it.
> some have said that they think we humans were put here by an alien race.
> maybey we are the offspring.

Well, all the alleged UFO abductions talk of bizarre experiments on humans, after all. Still if they were going to be that overt and ongoing with their manipulations, what would be the point of a hidden message?

> Forget waiting for ET to call -- the most likely place to find an alien
> message is in our DNA, according to an expert in Australia.

Actually, I think this idea was first put forth by Timothy Leary, of LSD fame, way back in the 1970s. In a book called "Starseed," if I remember right.

I do think the idea is farfetched, in that if ET visitors had tinkered with our DNA at all, they would have done more with it. As it is, there's every sign that we inherited our DNA completely from natural apes. Artificially inserted code would have been noticed by now unless it's really subtle -- and if you're doing it at all, why be subtle?

Some of the "junk DNA" segments are turning out not to be so junky after all. Partly-overlapping strings of code are turning out to have multiple uses for generating entirely different proteins and structures. Evolution is amazing in the way it finds to do things.

Alan MacRobert

> Some of the "junk DNA" segments are turning out not to be so junky after all.
> Partly-overlapping strings of code are turning out to have multiple uses for
> generating entirely different proteins and structures. Evolution is amazing in
> the way it finds to do things.

Are any of the telomore (sp?) portions considered junk DNA?

I heard some report or documentary a few months ago that said our understanding of the mechanics of DNA has to be far from complete. It said there are an estimated 30,000 protein coding sites in human DNA, but an estimated 100,000 protein chains used in the human body. Can't be a 1 for 1 correspondence. Anyone know anything more about this?

> I heard some report or documentary a few months ago that said our
> understanding of the mechanics of DNA has to be far from complete. It said
> there are an estimated 30,000 protein coding sites in human DNA, but an
> estimated 100,000 protein chains used in the human body. Can't be a 1 for 1
> correspondence. Anyone know anything more about this?

I recall something in the New Scientist where scientists had found DNA coding for some type of RNA directly - which is weird, because the classical RNA teaching is that it feeds from the unravelling DNA. Apparently this system they have found bypasses the normal(?) process.

Just goes to show that there are lots of things to still find out in this area.

Another related point/question - don't mice or rats or worms or something similarly small have more DNA/genes than humans? Which suggests that the amount of DNA is only tentatively related to the complexity of the organism.

I'm just wondering if some of the "junk" DNA has a moderating effect on genes. I think we've found all the chromosomal problems that are caused by "errors" in single genes, so maybe the "junk" actually has an important purpose of trying to influence the expression of the coding DNA?

is anyone else thinking 42?

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