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Study Explains Evolution's Molecular Advance
pnewhook writes "The New York Times is reporting that 'by reconstructing ancient genes from long-extinct animals, scientists have for the first time demonstrated the step-by-step progression of how evolution created a new piece of molecular machinery by reusing and modifying existing parts. The researchers say the findings, published today in the journal Science, offer a counterargument to doubters of evolution who question how a progression of small changes could produce the intricate mechanisms found in living cells.'"
It was only a matter of time before scientists discovered the steps and had enough knowledge to connect the dots.
Frankly, I'm glad they're finding more and more of how biology works. I don't want to get into a creationist debate, but it has always astounded me that people would argue that life is too complex for it to have been made "naturally" and that a higher being must have helped along the way. But, by saying that, they're saying that God is not powerful enough to create such a universe in which evolution can happen, that a universe created by God could not possibly work by itself.
How dare they...
"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
(Douglas Adams)
Semper en excreta sumus solum profundum
There is nothing without God.
This is a science discussion - proselytizing has no place here.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
It is amusing that religions touting a Creator God are excellent examples of Evolution in Action. The Creator God is the equivalent of the alpha male of a troop of primates. The idea of the Creator God speaks not to the present alpha male but to an idealized father founder of the tribe. The sense of history inherent in a Creator meshes with our sense of our own history. The concept of history, partially embodied in burial rites, points to the ideas of teleology and the status quo ante that underpin many religions. The idea of death as examplified in burial and a belief in a life after death are ideas that need to be examined as they define us as a species.
Religions posing an alpha male Creator Father have evolved through many generations of selective mating. Those who strongly believed in the tribe's faith were more likely to find suitable mates. Those who couldn't bring themselves to believe in a Creator God were often killed outright as heretics or were driven from the tribe. Many generations of mating based upon religious beliefs should give us a population the majority of which advocate a belief in God. Religion is Evolution in Action.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
The most common people to claim otherwise seem to be the more rabid IDers and creationists. Go figure.
And for the most rabid athiests, I would point out that lack of proof is not proof of lack -- eg: Just because you'll never find the body doesn't mean I never killed mikie (don't tell the cops). Similarly: the fact that a 'missing link' is currently missing doesn't mean that it will never be found.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
They aren't saying that God is not powerful enough to create a universe with evolution. They are saying God didn't create a universe with evolution. Significant difference there
It's truly an intellectually dishonest practice and it speaks directly to the kind of Doctor Behe is. This is the guy who testified in that 'lets put ID into the classroom' trial in Dover, PA. His testimony was an embarrassement and I'm surprised he has enough credibility left that the NY Times would include him in their article. I guess it's the whole "two sides of an argument" theme again.
Here's a great astronomy example of almost the exact same thing.
http://www.anomalist.com/commentaries/claim.html
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Carl Zimmer,who is of course, THE MAN! of parasite parables and paraphenalia, has posted a more in-depth analysis of this story at his weblog, The Loom , going into the genetic/molecular mechanism. Additionally, Zimmer responds to the creationist take on the story (the usual move-the-goalpost panic of those advocating irreduceable complexity). Of larger concern, why does this incredibly fascinating discussion about scientific sleuthing and the potential and beauty of proteomics, get automatically sidelined into a discussion on "what does creationism say about this?" I don't blame Zimmer for responding; indeed, that's the duty of science writers as gifted as he. But it diminishes the power of the story itself to have to ask, imnsho.
If the Great Creator Spaghetti Monster wanted you to read the article, he'd have provided you with a free registration.
Oh You POS
Anyway, it was pretty easy demonstrating what a moron you are. You have demonstrated an inability to think beyond what most 5 or 6 year olds can achieve.
I'd dismiss you as a troll but as I've seen so much evidence that many people do 'think' like you I'm taking you seriously.
"The White House is not an intelligence-gathering agency," -- Scott McClellan, Whitehouse spokesman.
"Near-high-school dropouts"?
From the article:
Dr. Thornton said the experiment refutes the notion of "irreducible complexity" put forward by Michael J. Behe, a professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University.
We care because these yahoos get control of school boards and muck about with the science curricula in public schools. It's 2006, and it would be inexcusable not actively oppose them, because they have no intention to stop inflicting kids with "near-high-school dropout" level of science education.
It's worth noting that most mathematicians already think ideas like Irreducible Complexity and Complex Specified Information are a load of hooey, despite the appeals people like Dembski and Behe make to having made innovative breakthroughs in these areas:
b -at-dembski-vacuousness.html
- irreducible-complexity.html
w een-ic-and-it-arguments.html
One good blog on this subject I've found is Good Math, Bad Math, and some posts relevant to this topic are:
-CSI is basically incoherent: if you translate the definition of CSI into non-obscure words, it essentially boils down to either "something that contains a lot of information, but doesn't contain a lot of information" or a definition for which EVERY piece of information is specified:
http://goodmath.blogspot.com/2006/04/one-last-sta
-IC, when translated into math, makes no sense. We can actually PROVE in math that there is no general proof that some system is the simplest possible (which IC requires), much like we can prove that we can never solve the halting problem.
http://goodmath.blogspot.com/2006/03/problem-with
-Even if they did make sense, CSI and IC basically conflict with each other, arguing contradictory things:
http://goodmath.blogspot.com/2006/03/conflict-bet
I don't know that we have as of yet been able so show a living cell bootstrap from basic inert materials (I'm using non-living as the definition of inert in this context. There may be a better word, but I didn't think "dead" would be appropriate, as it has an implication of "once was living".)
However, it has been shown that many organic materials can be created in an environment similar to primordial earth. It has also been shown that many of these materials do tend to self-organize in a way that would be compatible with a cell possibly forming given enough organic material and time.
Cell wall: phospholipids, mostly being hydrophobic with one or two ends being hydrophilic tend to organize in sheets or water filled bubbles, and so could naturally form a cell wall. Amino acids do self aggragate to some extent, and a random aggregation could form a useful protein, ditto for RNA (which I believe preceded DNA evolutionarilly for a number of reasons.)
There is only one protein that would have to aggregate naturally before life as we know it could arise... ribosomes (or some suitable analog.) From there RNA could be transcribed into protein. At first most of the protein would pretty much be useless globs, untill a protein arises that can create copies of RNA. This protein could either aggregate naturally or be encoded by random chance into a strand or RNA. From there Darwinian evolution kicks in and as more beneficial RNA sequences come about that improve the transcription process and copying mechanism as well as the defense mechanisms, cellular life would not be too wild of an outcome. The progression of life would seem to be fairly slow at first, but the copying mechanism in RNA would probably be so imperfect that new variations arise very frequently, but most of those variations would likely be detrimental. Eventually better copying mechanisms arise, and eventually use of a more stable genetic material (DNA) make life blossom, expanding at a decent pace. Once some organism figured out a way to systematically capture and store energy from sunlight (or any energy source, really... thermal vents, gradiants across a thermo/chemocline etc) and a way to release that energy, then evolution can start proceeding at an exponential rate.
So, if it can be proven that a ribosome or some other RNA-Protein copying method could eventually arise from a random mix of amino acids it would greatly support the possibility of some method of abiogenesis. It does not have to be likely that this ribosome would arise in a human time scale... it could take millions or billions of years. It just has to happen eventually.
Complex hemes, carbohydrates and many other materials that are necessary for life at a complexity of ours would not be necessary to bootstrap the system from inert materials. Just some strands of RNA and something like a ribosome. Once you have those, something as complex as an RNA transcriptase could eventually arise from random permutations of RNA strands. And once you have RNA that has RNA -> RNA transcriptase encoded somewhere inside of itself and has some ribosome analogue working on it, then you have the bare bones beginning of organic life.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
The solution is that the original precursor gained the ability to bind a new hormone by a single point mutation, and this did not disrupt the ability of it to bind its old hormone. The new receptor then diverged and through a well known process of gene duplication, begat multiple and independently evolving molecules. One retained the function of binding the old hormone, whereas another mutated further to lose the ability to bind the old hormone and could now only bind the new hormone. Viola -- two seemingly "designed" systems out of one precursor -- evolution at its finest, and IMHO, damning evidence against the basic principle of Intelligent Design.
On a personal note, it never fails to amaze me how much people deny the intelligence of humans to figure things out... the old "just because we can't explain it now, it must have be an unexplicable force, like God." I'm sure lightning and earthquakes seemed supernatural too. Evolution is no different -- it can be dissected and explained.
God cannot be
Omnipotent
Omniscient
and Good
all at the same time
Fact: the world contains evil.
Fact:Creation of evil is an evil act
Conclusions:Either God performs evil acts and cannot be trusted, God is bound by some greater force requiring balance, or God cannot accurately predict the consequences of it's own actions.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Can you believe it's 2006 and we still care about the near-high-school drop-outs who continue to question evolution?
For those of you who don't read science, I would like to add that the paper itself made no mention of ID at all. Of course, biologists are interested in evlotution of complex mechanisms for its own sake, not for the sake of convincing some young earth creationists.
However, Dr Christoph Adami, who wrote in Perspecives (basically, giving an opinion of the significance of a new finding and providing the non-specialist with a context of the paper) made the point of how fatal this finding is for the ID argument. Here we have parts that have exactly the "irreducable complexity" that ID proponents love to talk about, and now someone has managed to reconstruct their evolutionary history.
Tor
Indeed. Most scientists roll their eyes at the use of "missing link" because it obviously misleads far more than it informs. The basic idea is that we have a family tree of life. There are millions upon millions of branches (species), and billions upon billions of twigs (individual creatures) alive over time, but only a very very tiny proportion are still alive today. That means that there is a far far vaster space of animals that died that are NOT the ancestors of any living creature than there are.
Hence, since fossilization is basically a rare and random crapshoot, the chances of finding THE common ancestor are always unlikely, and we can't even reliably tell if we had. But, fortunately, it's also irrelevant. That's because we can learn more than enough simply by finding a fossil that's past a particular branching point about the creatures that led to those we see today. We are trying to learn the general, overall shape of the tree, and since features all tend to be unique to any given lineage, we can still always tell everything we need about the prior branchings from the random sampling of fossils we have.
Currently we have so many that all the basic connections are pretty clear. And when you add in genetic studies that confirm these relations, the conclusion becomes about as rock solid as can possibly be. Creationists often try to confuse the debate over how particular twigs branch with a debate over whether there even is a tree of life pattern and branching at all.
Wasn't sympathy from Sir Mick Jagger enough?
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Speaking of sheltered lives...
I'm a high school dropout and I'm both an athiest and I subscribe to evolution. I know a lot of college graduates who are very sharp and intelligent and yet don't accept evolution and believe in god.
Really, I think that the choice on this matter is often dicated by emotion, which overrides any intellectual consideration or presentation of facts. Some people are afraid of there not being a god, or don't like the feeling of not knowing the purpose of life, or just like sharing beliefs with their friends and families, or don't like to admit they've been wrong for the past forty years, etc.
And these people are important: they make up more than half of the voting population in my estimation so they have a profound effect on you and I. So don't dismiss them. And don't bother trying to convert them. But find a way to live with them. You may even find some of them make good friends.
Cheers.
The reason the NYT is giving this the "doubters of evolution" spin is that there's this guy, Michael Behe, who wrote a book around 1995 somewhere called "Darwin's Black Box". The central idea of that book was the allegation that evolutionary science treats the cell like a "black box" that nobody attempts to look inside or explain. Evolutionary science, said Behe, only concerns itself with larger structures, and only assumes the stuff inside the cell "just works". Because evolution can't explain, subcellular structures, evolution lacks a foundation, is built on nothing, and is wrong.
This is, of course, silly if you're actually familiar with the science, because to whatever extent scienists ever treated the cell like a "black box", it was because we didn't know how to look inside yet. Viewing machinery the size of a molecule is really hard. Scientists could analyze things, but have only relatively recently gained the ability to view the full picture of things, much as they might have wanted to.
Once the technology for understanding the molecular structures that make up cells really started to take off (say, at the beginning of the 80s-ish), a revolution of sorts started in microbiology and genetics. And as this happened, Behe managed to exploit a neat trick of timing; he wrote his book just as a lot of fascinating questions were appearing through this revolution in microbiology, but before (since the questions had only just been asked) we really knew what the answers were. Behe was able to craft the illusion, since we didn't know the answers to some of those questions yet, that the questions didn't have answers or would never be answered and thus evolution was flawed-- not mentioning that work was underway or even partially completed to find answers to all of these questions. In the time since Behe wrote his book, cell microbiology has progressed by leaps and bounds, but the book itself is able to do a neat little job of making it seem like the cell really is just an inexplicable black box, because he wrote it just as science totally finished picking the lock.
Which brings us to this story: The one scientific "big idea" in Darwin's Black Box was what Behe calls "Irreducible Complexity", and the publication of Darwin's Black Box was the main way this idea was popularized. The idea behind irreducible complexity is that there exist structures that contain one or more parts, and that if you remove one of the parts, the entire thing stops working. But one would expect that evolutionary mutation can only change "one thing" at a time; the idea that a single new allele that could simultaneously create two separable and interlocking structures seems wholly unbelievable. So how did irreducibly complex structures evolve?
This is an extremely reasonable question, and one evolutionary science is obligated to answer. The problem is that Behe, and the rest of the ID crowd:
The answer to how irreducibly complex structures could evolve is pretty simple: all that would have to happen is for a structure to change its purpose over time. That is to say, it doesn't matter that irreducibly complex structures can only evolve one part at a time, because it is simple to imagine each of the small structures in an irreducibly complex system independently evolving for some other purpose than the big IC system performs, then being adapted into a bigger IC system with rube goldberg style ingenuity, then gradually losing the ability to function for their original purpose indepen
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Scientific American gives 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense.
Memorize them for your next party
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
"Dismissing the existence of God in no way advances the human condition."
You mean other than removing the need for some to kill the non-believers and heretics in "his" name?
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Using genetic algorithms, if I randomly write bytes at 10M/sec to a hard disk long enough, I will eventually produce Windows Vista
You have no idea what you are talking about.
Genetic Algorithms are *NOT* about a million monkeys typing random garbage until you stumble upon the complete works of Shakespeare. You reveal a complete ignorance of what Genetic Algorithms are and how they work when you suggest such a thing.
I am a programmer and I have personally used Gentic Algorithms in the past. I have personally witnessed just how FAST they spontaneously generate information. How FAST they generate complex structured information. Sometimes they demonstrate slow steady improvements, and sometimes they generate huge leaps and bounds in solving problems.
The process by which evolution creates information is well understood, and has been the subject of many mathematical papers. The FACT that the evolution process can be harnessed to create information and solve problems has been extensively observed, documented, and USED in real industrial applications. In fact the Genetic Algorithms evolution process has been used to create new better more efficient jet engine designs, designs better and more efficent than any human expert has ever been able to design.
Genetic Algorithms are a powerful tool in the programmer's bag of tricks, and I highly reccommend that any and all programmers learn and explore them. Any programmer can easily witness ad understand for himself exactly how evolution is an information processessing system, and an information creation system. Can witess for themselves exactly how evolution can and does create information. Just pick up any book on Genetic Algorithms, or use Google to find any of the excellent websites on the subject.
And anyone who claims that evolution does not or cannot create information, well they are flat out Wrong and Ignorant. It's as silly as someone claiming that man can never build a heavier-than-air fling machine AFTER scientsists have understood and built and witnessed such machines working.
I've built it. I've witnessed it. And anyone who doubts it is absolutely invited to study Genetic Algorithms and understand it themselves and built it themselves and witness it themselves.
People who say evolution cannot create complex information and cannot produce the complexity of life we see today, those people warrant as much respect as someone claiming flying machines are impossible.
A sun-centered solar system explains the mechanism that divides the light from the darkness. It is absurd for anyone to suggest that a sun centered solar system in any way says or means that God does not exist. Nuclear fusion explains the mechanism that creates light for the earth. It is absurd for anyone to suggest that nuclear fusion in any way says or means that God does not exist. Optics explains the mechanism that creates rainbows. It is absurd for anyone to suggest that optics in any way says or means that God does not exist. And evolution explains the mechanism that creates the diversity of life on earth. It is absurd for anyone to suggest that evolution in any way says or means that God does not exist.
Anyone who suggests that evolution and God are in any sort of conflict is as bad as the crackpot fundamentalist idiots who had Galileo imprisoned for life when he said that the earth moves around the sun. The fact that so many people are replaying this exact same nonsense today is an absolute embarrassment.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Personally, I feel like events such as hurricane Katrina, the tsunami in the indian ocean, and September 11th offer a much stronger proof of the lack of a personal god.
Either that, or at least strong proof that if there IS a god, he/she's a sadistic bastard without anything resembling our idea of morality, justice, or fairness. In other words, any god that regularly lets shit like this happen deserves our scorn, not our adoration.
Either way, religion is shit.