The Little Algae That Could

A reader writes "This NewsFactor Network article says scientists have discovered a genetic "missing link" that helps to explain how primordial pond scum evolved into the land plants that now cover the Earth. Their conclusion: A type of green algae is the closest living relative of the first land plants."

Comments

Spawn

[NiftyNews]

And the first thing to spawn from it?

Lawyers.

Non-watered down story

[ChazeFroy]

You can find the original, non-watered down story at Nature. Of course, you need a subscription :-)

Re:Leaves a lot to be desired...

[Angry Toad]

Well... the news article misses the beat on a few things, including which journal it was published in (Science, not Nature). The term "missing link" is often bandied about in the news whenever the topic turns to ancestral organisms. That wasn't really what the paper was about. The real issue was that this algae appears to be the closest living relative of the land plants. For that reason, any characteristics it has in common with the land plants are most likely ones which were present in the common ancestor of all land plants. Being able to place the ancestor of the land plants between two "frames" this way (common characters of land plants AND characters of Charales algae) gives us a window onto what kind of organism the land plants are derived from. Here's a tiny quote from the original paper:

Identification of the Charales as the sister taxon to land plants with the Coleochaetales as sister to the Charales/land plant clade suggests that the common ancestor of land plants was a branched, filamentous organism with a haplontic life cycle and oogamous reproduction... Although it is tempting to envision the origin of land plants as having been from amorphous pond scum, these data indicate that the common ancestor of land plants and their closest algal relatives was a relatively complex organism.

Re:remarkable

[dublin]

for me as an european what is remarkable here is how many people feel the need to come up with creationism in this forum. what kind of religious fundamentalism is this?

I'm not sure what being a European might have to do with it - there are lots of Creationists there, too, but they seem less willing to speak freely, possibly for fear of reprisals.

There happen to be quite a lot of us that are trained as scientists and/or engineers, have looked at the data, and come to the conclusion that Creation 1) requires orders of magnitude less faith in the unseen than does evolution, and 2) fits the available data considerably better, too.

I don't want or intend to turn this into a flame fest, but if you're at all interested in why, I'd suggest looking in one of several places:

Uber-hacker Do-While Jones' excellent site on why science is against evolution. Be sure not to miss the archives of the newsletter, Disclosure - reading through these will keep you up nights if evolution is important to your world view... (Check out the article on "Lucy" for an enlightening look at the art of passing off a total pipe dream as "science".)

There's a pretty good book out called "In Six Days" containing essays from 50 respected PhDs who explain why they find it considerably easier and more scientifically consistent to belive in Creation than evolution.

Michael Behe's excellent book, Darwin's Black Box. This outlines the irreducible complexity argument for Creation that is far better butressed by actual science than is evolution.

or is it just another incarnation of the kind of thought that makes people believe in UFOs or witchcraft?

Creationists aren't stupid, or ignorant. There are a few that are knee-jerk fundamentalists, but I find many more are thoughtful scholars. I find that many Creationists are better versed on the science and the data relating to origins than most all evolutionists. In short, the only thing science can say with certainty about origins is that we do not know. Do not be so quick to dismiss alternatives that may well be completely legitimate, even if their implications may be quite uncomfortable for you... Please read up as suggested above before flaming.