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The Chicken May Have Come Before the Egg
Muondecay writes "The age old question of which came first, the chicken or the egg, has been tentatively answered. The verdict? The chicken, or rather a key protein needed to form the shell of the egg. The protein, called ovocledidin-17, was known to be involved in binding calcite molecules that formed the shells, but the mechanism behind this was unclear until now. The protein acts as a molecular machine, binding to nanoparticles of calcite and guiding them to begin self-assembly of the shell. This gives tremendous insight for developing methods of nano-scale self-assembly based on natural processes, as well as settling heated cocktail party arguments everywhere."
Which came first, the egg or the eggshell.
Thank me when this becomes a major philosophical debating point.
I can't help but feel that the reason why the "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" debate has continued to rage, outside Texas and the other retarded US states which deny Darwin, has a lot to do with arguments like this one. Maybe everyone who can tell the difference between a-protein-now-found-in-chickens and a chicken has long ago come to the conclusion that what came first was some animal different enough from a chicken that we wouldn't call it that, which laid an egg that contained an animal similar enough to a chicken that we would call it a chicken. And only the logic deficient and the religious crazies are left arguing the options.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Ask and ye shall receive... http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/123506502/articletext?DOI=10.1002%2Fange.201000679
I dunno... dinosaurs laid eggs long before chickens roamed the earth.
All chickens come from eggs, the first chicken egg would have been laid by the ancestor to the chicken.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Perhaps the egg shell developed as a result of a cookie setting error? Did chickens really eat cookies back then?
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
No the link target actually says cookie_setting_error.html
http://michaelsmith.id.au
specializing in brining babbys
Not a typo, they are hard boiled in salt water and cooked to perfection.
FTFM
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
Most people are really bad at dealing with ambiguities and shades of gray. To them the problem is a dichotomy Since the problem isn't really a dichotomy, it doesn't have a solution as a dichotomy, hence the endless arguing.
Additionally, other animals laid eggs well before chickens ever appeared. Dinosaurs, for example.
And there were certainly dinosaur eggs before there were ever chickens.
And fish eggs. And insect eggs. So unless the chickens crossed the time barrier to get away from Colonel Sanders, eggs came before chickens.
Chickens are by definition born of an egg. EVERY chicken ever lived did. So, the egg came first. What gave birth to that egg was not 100% chicken.. So Say I.
Putting aside extremely rare mutations in DNA (usually only caused by nuclear anonmoly), whatever DNA you have when you are born, you have when you die.
Life forms do not mutate/evolve/ during their lifespan; the mutations occur at the DNA copying phase when they are creating the next generation.
As such - the egg (IE embryo) came first. It is totally fundamentally impossible for the chicken to come first, because the chicken came from an embryo.
Specifically, the Bible states fish were created first, birds of the air second, and mammals third, which may roughly line up with evolution, if you're supposing birds evolved from dinosaurs, and dinosaurs came out of the seas, and mammals came along after the dinosaurs left the scene...
Kinda lines up; weird, huh?
Oh god, I can't believe this drivel reached Slashdot. Let me explain what's happened here:
... stuff ... inside the chicken that's ... necessary for producing eggs?
<Reporter> Hi, Scientist, thanks for meeting with me today. I'd like to write a story about your work. Could you please explain a little?
<Scientist> We've definitively proven and carefully described the role that protein ovocledidin-17 plays in eggshell formation
<Reporter> Wait, so let me get this straight, you found
<Scientist> Er... yes.
<Reporter> So... that means the chicken came before the egg, right...?
[Scientist to self: Oh god, why couldn't Bob handled this damned interview]
<Scientist> Obviously, it's not really what we were trying to get out of our simulations, but it's an interesting question isn't it?
[The above is a direct quote from researcher Colin Freeman. You can see he is declining to answer by way of polite deflection.]
<Reporter> Excellent! Well, that's about all we need, it was great to meet you and we'll be in touch.
<Scientist> Er... nice... you too...
[Reporter goes back to HQ to write the article]
<Reporter> Okay, I've got this material about a chicken protein... um... ovocledidin-17... it's in chickens and it helps makes eggs and MAN is this stuff boring. Hey I know! What was it he said about the chicken and egg thing I asked him? [Looks at notes.] Well, alright! He didn't deny my proposition that the chicken came first! He must be agreeing with me! Alright! I'll just title my story "Scientists answer ages-old Chicken or Egg question." That oughta grab some eyes.
[Every news outlet in America proceeds to run story]
[Smart people everywhere cringe and sigh]
The bit. This is all a simulation.
Unless you believe in Lamarkian evolution, the egg had to come first.
It doesn't help that the question is vague. Dinosaurs were laying eggs long before chickens were around. However if you make the question "which came first, the chicken or the chicken egg," you then need to define if a chicken egg is an egg laid by a chicken or an egg that would hatch a chicken (if it was fertilized.) After the question is properly defined the answer is easy. (Personally i think it makes more sense to define a chicken egg as an egg laid by a chicken, since you can make that determination before the egg hatches, so i think my answer differs from yours.)
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Ask and ye shall receive, from an Evolutionary Biologist, no less: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/07/chickens_eggs_this_is_no_way_t.php
(PS, the research says not what the article promotes)
On a genetic scale the egg formed long before the chicken -- like dinosaur egg long ago.
But even on a more "recent" time scale the egg came first. For clearly a not-chicken laid an egg and from it was hatched a chicken. Of course this was unbeknown to the not-chicken, which simply thought, "you are one ugly not-chicken".
To think otherwise would argue the the not-chicken did not lay eggs but rather gave live birth --which would not even be a bird. I'm pretty sure the Chicken isn't the missing link between Viviparous and Oviporous.
:T:R:A:N:S:
We're missing the bit about Evolution. Chickens and Eggs didn't appear, they evolved. What eventually became a chicken, was laying eggs long before a chicken walked the earth. In describing what defines a chicken, one attribute we can mention is that it "lays eggs". When doing the same with an egg, we cannot argue that a requirement is that it contains or came from a chicken. So, an egg is necessary for a chicken.
What came first? The molecule or the cell? The prion or the virus?
Not sure if you want real answers to those or not, but obviously the molecule, and evidence suggests the prion. However, with prions your question doesn't quite make sense because it's not like viruses descended from prions. Prions are simply "rogue" proteins which force proteins that they come in contact with to conform to the same secondary structure (usually beta folded sheets). It is thought that amino acid chains probably formed (perhaps without any necessary "function") early during the origin of life, and were quite possibly prion-like. Here's an interesting paper about it:
Milner-White, E.J. & Russell, M.J., 2008. Predicting the conformations of peptides and proteins in early evolution. Biology direct, 3, 3. Available at: http://biology-direct.com/content/3/1/3.
And, obviously, since molecules are required to make cells (as cells are made up of molecules), the molecule would have to come first. There are some hypotheses about the origins of life suggesting that it is possible that most or all of of the biochemistry of early cells were in place before they even became cells. Here's a good starting point read about that:
Martin, W. & Russell, M.J., 2003. On the origins of cells: a hypothesis for the evolutionary transitions from abiotic geochemistry to chemoautotrophic prokaryotes, and from prokaryotes to nucleated cells. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 358(1429), 59-83; discussion 83-5. Available at: http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/358/1429/59.abstract.
Anyway, like I said, don't know if you were looking for possible answers to those questions, but I'm bored, and these papers are pretty interesting. ;)
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
Turtles all the way down.
Deleted
Dinosaurs laid eggs - we've found lots of them.
Chickens evolved from dinosaurs, i.e. came after them.
The rest is left as an exercise for the reader.
No sig today...
I went to a restaurant for dinner and ordered eggs benedict and coq au vin. The eggs came first.
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