Ready, Steady, Evolve

Stront writes "New Scientist is reporting that plants and animals can 'bottle up' evolution until they need it. A certain protein 'hides away' mutated genes acting like a genetic valet, however in extreme environments, such as high temperature or noxious chemicals, the cleaning process breaks down and the mutations are released all at once. This goes some way to explaining examples that are considered to defy standard evolutionary theory, such as the Bombardier Beetle."

Comments

Re:"thinking"

[aug24]

It's a crappy argument anyway. The substances are unstable, not explosive (see later in the article), and the evolution order could easily be:

• Develop nasty chemical as poison
  and
  Develop inhibitor in other tissues so as not to poison self
  
• Develop squirty technique for nasty chemical
  
• Develop another nasty chemical as poison.
  
• Add second nasty chemical at squirt time which makes it nastier
  
• Develop anti-inhibitor as some of the inhibitor will leak into the nasty chemicals
  

Did I miss anything? Oh yeah, anyone who thinks postulating God is a smaller step than postulating evolution is fooling themselves big time.

My copy of NS is back at home, so I can't comment on the new stuff, just the old rubbish about 'The bombadier beetle couldn't have evolved' <sigh>

Justin.

Re:Why can't we think for ourselves?

[Eccles]

If your existence came into being based on totally random events, then your brain also was the result of a random event.

One line of thinking is to believe that God set it all up: the Big Bang, evolution, killer asteroids all to get to this point. If God is omnipotent and omniscient, there's no reason to believe God couldn't have figured out exactly the starting conditions to create humans. And in so doing, God not only demonstrates that ability, but also gives us li'l children of his a world with all sorts of clues about how it works and how it came to be how it is. And now our task, should we choose to accept it, is to create a universe where we have defeated the Four Horsemen and our own flaws because it's the Right Thing To Do.

To me, God starting with the Big Bang and getting to here is a lot more impressive than doing a little sculpting in 4004 B.C.

Re:It's a theory...

[drudd]

The real problem with discussing natural selection is it assumes we're smart enough to understand the ENTIRE picture...

If a horse evolved a saddle, no, it doesn't provide the horse with an advantage in the wild, but if it helps it be adopted by humans and through that relationship fed, protected from predetors, and allowed to breed, then the saddle was a beneficial adaptation by the horse.

Look at aphids and ants... the ability to secrete sugar is not a particularly useful ability for the aphid, but the ants then enter into a symbiotic relationship, helping protect and nurture the aphids.

Another good example is the breeding of dogs. There are many breeds which now are totally unsuited for life in the wild (short legs, terrible arthritic joints, etc). These are not traits which are inherently useful to the dog, but we seem to like them. Just because we were the ones selecting the properties we liked, and not a life/death struggle in the wild, doesn't make it any less evolution.

Nature doesn't care how (or why!) the organism survives and procreates, only that it does.

Doug