People are Downloading my Work

This video is about what has been occurring on my blog since July, 2019 (Evolution4.wordpress.com). People are downloading unpublished manuscripts, a powerpoint presentation, and my entire Ph.D. dissertation. What will they find? Well, let me save you a lot of trouble here. Those manuscripts with the "ARR" in front of them refer to something I call alkali resistant RNA. I can hear crickets chirping now. Ok, let me fill in some details here. RNA ain't supposed to be alkali resistant. Quite the opposite. When reviewers read this they immediately go into rejection mode.

Ok, here are some more details. Unlike "normal" RNA, DNA is alkali resistant because of one chemical alteration in the sugar of the sugar/phosphate backbone that helps hold strands together. RNA is called ribonucleic acid for a reason. Ribose is the five carbon cyclic sugar that holds its strands together. Let me explain what cyclic means here. Envision a five beaded necklace where each bead is an atom. That is a cyclic molecule. For ribose it's a bit more complicated than this but you get the idea. DNA is called deoxyribonucleic acid and is named after its five carbon cyclic sugar called deoxyribose. The only difference between ribose and deoxyribose is at the 2' carbon atom within each respective ring. The 2' carbon atom in ribose has a hydroxyl group attached to it whereas deoxyribose is missing this group, hence its name. The presence or absence of this hydroxyl group determines whether the nucleic acid strands are alkali resistant or not.

Ok, so far so good. So how could RNA ever become alkali resistant like DNA? This can happen whenever the hydroxyl group on the ribose chemically binds with another chemical group. Within cells, likely candidates would be methyl or phosphate groups. However, it is also possible for two RNA strands to hybridize together and form a double strand like DNA. Under these conditions the sister strands could form a bridge between them by sharing a phosphate group. Such a bridge would be alkali resistant.

At this point, you have every right to ask where I am going with all of this. Well, this is where models and hypotheses come in which can be found in abundance on my blog: evolution4.wordpress.com. However, for the sake of brevity I’ll give you a “quick and dirty” here in an attempt to whet your appetite. Alkali resistant RNA (ARR) may be used as a marker to determine where origins of replication exist within DNA. Such origins of replication may be involved in differentiation of primitive cells into specialized cells which is at the very core of evolution, embryogenesis, and cancer. Nuff said for now.