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Scientists Discover Proteins Controlling Evolution

Posted by samzenpus on from the let-the-flamewar-begin dept.

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."

24 of 436 comments (clear)

  1. So here's the question ... by ScrewMaster · · Score: 5, Funny

    can the human race auto-evolve itself larger penises?

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    The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
    1. Re:So here's the question ... by kandela · · Score: 5, Funny

      The article says the proteins were correcting any imbalance imposed on them through artificial mutations, constantly restoring the chain to working order. If this is true I do not expect to see larger penises as the result. In fact, given the brain-penis balance displayed by your post the proteins should be working to reduce your penis size.

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      Conservation of angular momentum makes the world go round.
    2. Re:So here's the question ... by kandela · · Score: 4, Funny

      Nor even in my children since eggs are all created at a young age.

      If you are looking at increasing your penis size I'm guessing you are male. So I don't see what eggs have to do with it.

      --
      Conservation of angular momentum makes the world go round.
    3. Re:So here's the question ... by adamchou · · Score: 5, Funny

      If the only thing keeping my penis small is a feedback loop

      just a tip, you might want to check the box "Post Anonymously" next time you want to post some damning information about yourself.

    4. Re:So here's the question ... by I7D · · Score: 5, Funny

      'just a tip' is right.

      --
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    5. Re:So here's the question ... by slashnot007 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Nor even in my children since eggs are all created at a young age.

      If you are looking at increasing your penis size I'm guessing you are male. So I don't see what eggs have to do with it.

      While you may be auto-erotic, I prefer to reproduce using a female partner. Eggs are definitely required.

    6. Re:So here's the question ... by philspear · · Score: 5, Interesting

      If the only thing keeping my penis small is a feedback loop, then it should not be too hard to create a drug that interrupts that feedback loop.

      I hate to be "that guy" who talks embryology when discussing the next big breakthrough in spam ads, but pretty much everything in embryonic development seems to be controlled by several different fundamental systems. The same signaling pathways that regulate how many layers of skin you grow in utero are the same signaling pathways used to control development of your intestines and brain, to name a few.

      That becomes a more complex problem than even the ethics involved in designer babies: you mess with one thing, it usually has serious consequences elsewhere. So if you were to find the feedback loop and break it, it would likely cause severe developmental problems.

      Even if you did manage to not mess up other development, there could still be indirect issues. Brain development is one area that human evolution seems to have pushed of course. An interesting book by Carl Sagan points out that the size of babies' heads seems to be bigger than women's pelvises were designed to handle, but they're already pretty much at their limits as well: any bigger and women would have a hard time walking. It also points out that humans seem to be in the minority when it comes to pain during birth.

      In other words, the human brain is already somewhat too big for our own good. Fortunately for the species and men in particular, that's mostly an issue that women have to compensate for at very limited times.

      With the other thing, that might not be the case. The most obvious negative consequence there would be if you were so huge you were no longer physically able to mate.

  2. So... by BerntB · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Life has evolved to be good at evolving? Sounds logical, organisms that increase mutation speed depending on environment should have an advantage.

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    1. Re:So... by Cassius+Corodes · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Reading the article, my guess is that this is a lot of nonsense that is going to leave the authors with red faces.

      "What they are saying is that evolution is not entirely random, as Darwin believed"

      WTF?? Darwin was the one that explained the process FFS! This more than anything shows that the authors have no idea what they are talking about. Expect to see it in the next Discovery Institute press release.

      --
      Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
    2. Re:So... by TapeCutter · · Score: 4, Informative

      Agreed, and what's this in the summary about evolution progressing "smoothly". I belive that the late S.J. Gould demonstrated that it actually proceeds in spurts or maybe it was Dawkins. Regardless of who's idea it was it has been known for quite a while that evolution is not a nice smmoth curve.

      Besides that, the concept of "species" is just an abitrary way of cataloging life that took off when the English started cataloging everything they could find, live or dead. Today there is far more interest in figuring out how cells self-oraginse over time. Oddly enough the disipline of 'network analysis' can be used to track how various cells/molecules interact. One such analysis conducted at Harvard produced this awsome animation showing the goings on inside an immune cell as it homes in on it's target (motion slowed down 2-3 orders of magnitute).

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    3. Re:So... by beelsebob · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That's right, science never changes after someone "invents" it. As we all know, Newton (who invented gravity -- we all floated around before then), was dead right about the laws of physics, and that Einstein bloke who came along later didn't manage to refine his position, but instead talked utter crap.

  3. AHA! by naz404 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Intelligent design!!! This proves it! Mice have been behind everything all along!

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    http://www.object404.com
  4. Homeostasis by Baldrson · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

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  5. Uummmmmm, no. by Taibhsear · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  6. Big duh by grub · · Score: 5, Funny


    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!

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    1. Re:Big duh by lysergic.acid · · Score: 5, Insightful

      making fun of a stupid idea isn't bigotry. you can choose not to believe in irrational backward beliefs/myths. if they sound stupid and don't make a whole lot of sense, then how do you expect people to react to them? bigotry is discriminating against people for things they cannot change. for instance, persecuting someone because of their sexual orientation--that is bigotry.

      being intolerant of ignorance, or criticizing/refuting specious beliefs, isn't cruel or unethical. in fact, it's societally beneficial. it's because our society is too tolerant of ignorance and blatant stupidity that the religious right has gained so much power in the U.S., which has allowed the ID movement to gain so much traction, and to cause religion to impede scientific research. it's also the reason why the U.S. is still "debating" on whether global warming is happening while the governments of other countries are already working hard to attenuate climate change.

    2. Re:Big duh by Weaselmancer · · Score: 5, Interesting

      If so, you should probably get it right. Not all creationist think that the earth is 6,000 years old. For that matter, very few do. Just like all stereotypes, what very few do gets the entire group labeled.

      But the earth being 6000 years old is a possible conclusion of creationism. That's why it attracts ridicule as a theory. If it leads you down that road, it just might be the road that's silly, not just the house at the end of the road that says "6000 years and not one day more."

      FWIW, creationism could still be exactly true and it still would never be science. It makes no predictions, and is not falsifiable. It may be a theory, but it's not a scientific theory. A scientific theory has certain criteria that creationism does not meet.

      And that is why it attracts scorn here. This is a place for science-types. You'd probably have better luck on some board devoted to theology rather than Slashdot.

      It's not racism or bigotry. It's exasperation with people who believe in creationism and insist it be taught alongside other scientific theories, even though it simply doesn't belong there.

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      Weaselmancer
      rediculous.
    3. Re:Big duh by SteveWoz · · Score: 4, Insightful

      One problem is that a lot of people try to hang on the 'scientific' label and follow what they hear, the same as those in a church. Thus those governments working hard to attenuate climate change may be enhancing it, by directing resources in wrong directions. If we really understand global warming enough to believe in our models, they should be able to tell us whether a trillion dollars of effort would affect the global temperature by a tenth of a degree. If not, it's a wasteful effort with no observable impact. Look how a corporation makes important expenditure decisions. How much benefit does a certain expenditure result in. Politics is a fun game but is a lot like religion. We pick a side and follow it, right or wrong.

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    4. Re:Big duh by lysergic.acid · · Score: 4, Interesting

      well, ignoring the fact those are not sexual orientations , if someone is attracted to children but doesn't act on it, then why should they be discriminated against or punished? likewise with someone who has incestuous feelings. heck, if two consensual adults engage in incestuous acts, that's their own business. as long as they aren't hurting anyone, why should they be persecuted for the way they are mentally wired?

      and just because it's wrong to discriminate against people based on their innate or inborn disposition doesn't mean people can't be held responsible for their actions which are conscious decisions. you can't choose who/what you're attracted to. but you can choose what beliefs you espouse and personally believe in.

  7. old news and a link by Kandenshi · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

  8. This doesn't go against evolution at all by bcn17 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  9. I'm still hoping that he was quoted wrong. by khasim · · Score: 4, Interesting

    From TFA:

    "The discovery answers an age-old question that has puzzled biologists since the time of Darwin: How can organisms be so exquisitely complex, if evolution is completely random, operating like a 'blind watchmaker'?" said Chakrabarti, an associate research scholar in the Department of Chemistry at Princeton.

    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.

    1. Re:I'm still hoping that he was quoted wrong. by holloway · · Score: 4, Funny

      The changes MUST result in a viable individual.

      Exactly, which is why Crocoducks roam our streets, eating bananas dipped in peanut butter made by witches and ergo God is a white guy in white robes with gold piping.

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  10. Even the very first sentence is WRONG! by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "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.