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Scientists Discover Proteins Controlling Evolution
Khemisty writes "Evolutionary changes are supposed to take place gradually and randomly, under pressure from natural selection. But a team of Princeton scientists investigating a group of proteins that help cells burn energy stumbled across evidence that this is not how evolution works. In fact, their discovery could revolutionize the way we understand evolutionary processes. They have evidence that organisms actually have the ability to control their own evolution."
can the human race auto-evolve itself larger penises?
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Life has evolved to be good at evolving? Sounds logical, organisms that increase mutation speed depending on environment should have an advantage.
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
Intelligent design!!! This proves it! Mice have been behind everything all along!
http://www.object404.com
RTFA and you'll see that the Princeton boys have discovered homeostasis in gene expression. The hyperbolic rhetoric surrounding their discovery would be more justified if they had actually found something that altered the haploid genetic information of gametes in a homeostatic fashion. And they're insulting to Darwin when they say that he thought that evolution was "totally random". That's like the argument some of the more idiotic creationists make when they talk about taking a bunch of watch parts, shaking them up in a bag and assembling a watch.
Seastead this.
This was found in the electron transport chain, which occurs in the mitochondria, which have their own DNA (circular DNA to be precise). The cell is repairing damaged DNA, the cell does this naturally. It is a defense mechanism and does not signal that the cell is actively controlling its evolution. This correction of the damage will NOT be passed on to the next generation of offspring unless it occurs in the egg or sperm cells (and if it is the mitochondria the sperm cells will also have nothing to do with it as all our mitochondria are inherited by our mother's egg cells). This seems to me to be a headline grabber with little to no actual relevance to the research within.
How else do you think we were able to evolve this far in just 6,000 years? It wasn't that long ago that the only humans were a gullible man and a rib-woman!
Trolling is a art,
PZ Myers had a bit of commentary on this news on his blog, pharyngula.
I'd encourage everyone here to read the post, as well as some of the comments from readers below. The press release is self-contradictory, and extremely vague in terms of details. I'm not expecting too much, but like PZ, I'll give the actual paper a read whenever I can find it.
Who knows, maybe they've found something truly revolutionary... but you can't tell from the press clipping. Ask yourself how often you've seen something science related in the paper, then found out that it bears very little resemblence to reality when you go to read the actual scientist's research papers on the subject? :P
This doesn't go against evolution at all. It simply means that a system has evolved that checks for errors in a very conserved process (the electron transport chain) because if it wasn't conserved then the species would be less fit (less offspring) and die out. It's important to note that evolution is a change in allele frequencies of a population. So this electron transport problem control system is not actively changing allele frequencies. It is simply accounting for problems that arise and letting the organism be fit when it might otherwise not because of some sort of deleterious mutation.
In other words, organisms are evolving ways to evolve better.
This is interesting because matches what I have seen my own brain doing. When I was young, I only learned by watching, listening, and feeling. Then I learned to talk, and could learn by having people explain things to me. Then I learned to read, and I could learn by going to the library, something that was unavailable before.
These are crude examples, but even now my brain continues to grow and, essentially, learn new ways to learn. Evolution and learning are recursive functions.
Qxe4
From TFA:
No, it was never "completely random".
The changes MUST result in a viable individual.
Stillbirths and miscarriages do NOT contribute mutations to the gene pool.
Please tell me that he was quoted incorrectly.
The ambiguity in the language of this report leaves so many possible interpretations that it is impossible to definitively understand what they are even talking about. For example "...proteins were correcting any imbalance imposed on them through artificial mutations, constantly restoring the chain to working order...steering organisms toward evolutionary changes that make the creature fitter."
Restore means to bring back to a former, original, or normal condition, while fitter has three meaning in the Biological sense: 1.being adapted to the prevailing conditions and producing offspring that survive to reproductive age; 2.contributing genetic information to the gene pool of the next generation; 3.(of a population) maintaining or increasing the group's numbers in the environment. The only definition that could work in context is "being adapted to the prevailing conditions." Proteins restoring the original information does not imply adaptation. I would say more of a self-preservation mechanism.
If to say, the cell is repairing itself as mutations are found, is nothing new. As far as I remember correctly, as the DNA is being copied it is also checked for irregularities. So wouldn't that mean the biological system is geared to prevent some parts of the mutation process?
To say the cell is recoding itself to make itself "stronger" or more adaptable to the environment, is that completely logical? Mutations can be caused by accidental DNA replication, or environmental affects. So what stimulus is the process receiving to create a "better" version of itself? What I'm trying to say is that without environmental effects the cell could be reorganizing itself into oblivion.
I enjoy this video. It's a very visual approach for people like me who really don't understand a whole lot about the complexity of the cell. In my opinion, for all the particle accelerators and spaceships we have, nothing comes close to this. And one last philosophical question. What determines randomness and order?
"Evolutionary changes are supposed to take place gradually and randomly, under pressure from natural selection."
WRONG. In fact, this is one of the most common fallacies regarding evolution. It has been known for a very long time now that evolution proceeds in fits and starts... long periods of nothing followed by a burst of changes. This is known as "punctuated equilibrium", and is generally accepted as the standard evolutionary model.
I almost did not even read the linked article... since the beginning of it seems to be saying that evolution works exactly the way we have long known it to work.
There are actually some interesting things, there, though. On the other hand, the person who wrote the article obviously does not understand it.
Isn't it amazing how creationism changes how we use and understand language? The "entirely random" comment shouldn't cause us to recoil. The mutations were thought to be random, but now there's (supposedly) evidence that there's some kind of rudimentary optimization going on at the mutation level.
Now add a fanatical creationist movement that attacks "randomness" and uses bad analogies to confuse people. We all know how to rebut those specious arguments, but in doing so we learn to be wary of words like "random" in the context of evolution. In fact, both articles go through pains to point out that this discovery doesn't support creationism - a fact that should be self-evident.
And now we're complaining on slashdot about how a scientist uses words that were co-opted by creationists. I look forward to the day when creationism is universally recognized as a myth, and we can discuss evolutionary science in peace.
When I went to school, we also had Lamarckism and Darwinism. The point was not to discredit Darwin. The point was to teach you to be skeptical (both do seem "logical" at first), look at the evidence, set up predictions and check the predictions.
Lamarckism was at least a scientific theory since it made predictions and was falsifiable. It was falsified, and in class we did so ourself. (Guided by the teacher, of course...)