During replication, those nucleotides are read and translated into linear strings of amino acids (which make up enzymes and proteins) by a rule-gover… - Michael S. Gazzaniga

Evolution by natural selection requires the copying of genetic records and the construction of proteins, but these processes themselves had to originate somehow.

W.J. was a warm, affable man, and the two hemispheres of his brain seemed to be working fine together, although they were no longer in direct communication. One of them talked, one of them didn’t. Given the way the brain is wired, that meant the left, talking brain viewed the visual world to the right of a fixated point and the right, non-talking hemisphere viewed all the visual information to the left of the same point. Given this surgical state, I wondered: If I flashed a light over to the right, would W.J. say he saw it? Light should go to the left hemisphere, and the left hemisphere had speech; it should be easy. It was, and W.J. easily declared he saw it. A bit later, I flashed the same light over to the left side of space and waited to see if he would say anything. He didn’t. I pressed him and asked if he had seen anything, and he firmly said “No.” Was he blind on that side? Or was that simple spot of light no longer communicated to the half brain that talked? Did the seemingly mute right brain know it had viewed a light? Was it conscious? What was going on?

What exactly is the role of the cerebral cortex in producing consciousness? The cortex expands the number of ways in which we can experience the world, which allows for a vast variety of possible conscious experiences and responses.