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Researchers Show How Cellular Complexity Can Evolve
ananyo writes with an excerpt from a Nature news release: "By bringing long-dead proteins back to life, researchers have worked out the process by which evolution added a component to a cellular machine. ... In a paper published in Nature, researchers recreated an 'ancestral' version of a cellular machine called the V-ATPase proton pump, which channels protons across membranes and is vital for keeping cell compartments at the right acidity. Part of this machine is a ring of six proteins that threads through the membrane. Animals and most other eukaryotes have a ring composed of two types of protein component; fungi are alone in having a ring with three. The researchers used computational methods to work backwards and find the most likely sequences of these proteins hundreds of millions of years ago. The team inserted the DNA into yeast and found that just two mutations can turn the simple 2-protein ring into the more complex 3-protein ring."
But back to reality ...
tl;dr - you can make complex machines out of simple ones. Even with biologic 'machines'. Not something anyone who has thought about molecular evolution would find surprising, but it's nice to see some reasonable experimental evidence to show that it's real.
Thorton's lab has done some interesting work in the past. Nice to see he is getting some exposure. It does bother me a bit that Nature (the journal, not the mom) is continuing to take a very politically polarized editorial stance. They're really egging on the creationists (pun intended, I guess).
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
This is just an example why you can't really 'argue' with a creationist. Anything you come up with, they can make a magic-fairy-dust argument that it's because God wanted it that way.
It isn't science.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
The research was published in PLoS Biology, not in Nature.
I'm fine with people saying evolution is the method, with a deity being the driving force. The issue is when they say that god created everything from nothing in six days around 6,000 years ago and any evidence to the contrary was put here by the devil to lure us away from the truth.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
It may have had an advantage at one time (such as viral resistance).
However it could also be a no-benefit/no-cost change, which can also happen, it isn't degeneration (a weakening of the creature), and even degeneration would be a subset of evolution, since it would involve changes over time which are influenced by natural selection, genetic drift, etc.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
I'm fine with people saying evolution is the method, with a deity being the driving force. The issue is when they say that god created everything from nothing in six days around 6,000 years ago and any evidence to the contrary was put here by the devil to lure us away from the truth.
So, you're saying, really that the Devil is in the details?
(sorry)
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Second link points to wrong paper, Nature paper is here. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature10724.html
"The researchers used computational methods to work backwards and find the most likely sequences of these proteins hundreds of millions of years ago."
So why are we just hearing about it now?
Pat Robertson: "Science perverting resurrection is an abomination, and God's wrath will strike us most likely in the form of a random earthquake or hurricane or tornado sometime within the 12 months."
I'd add the /sarcasm tag just to show I'm just making fun of him, but I actually think my prediction of what will show up on YouTube from him next is pretty accurate.
I8-D
This is just an example why you can't really 'argue' with a creationist. Anything you come up with, they can make a magic-fairy-dust argument that it's because God wanted it that way.
It isn't science.
And more importantly, it isn't rational.
But its just an arbitrary bar. Once you've stepped off the rational, any opinion is suspect. It doesn't matter if you pray to "god" when you're having a shitty day, believe in "intelligent design" or live in a compound having incestuous relations with 9 year old girls ... its all a matter of degree. The path of rationality is very narrow, and once you step off it, and aren't willing to step back onto it, the rest is just haggling over price, as they say.
Their "battle cry" against Evolution is "Irreducible Complexity" meaning some biological systems are so complex that if a single part is removed the system fails.
It's the equivalent of saying "if i remove the cam shaft from a vehicle it can't function, therefore GOD must have created vehicles"
(Crap car analogy but can't be arsed thinking like a "new earth Creationist")
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
The V-ATPase generally has more than 6 proteins that cross the membrane. Depending on the species, it is usually more around 10-12 individual subunits that work together to form a ring for useful transport.
From a biochemical perspective, it is also worthwhile to point out that the enzyme is powered by ATP hydrolysis - hence the name V-ATPase. It is a motor, and ATP is the fuel. Without ATP you get no useful work.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
This is just an example why you can't really 'argue' with a creationist. Anything you come up with, they can make a magic-fairy-dust argument that it's because God wanted it that way.
It isn't science.
And more importantly, it isn't rational.
But its just an arbitrary bar. Once you've stepped off the rational, any opinion is suspect. It doesn't matter if you pray to "god" when you're having a shitty day, believe in "intelligent design" or live in a compound having incestuous relations with 9 year old girls ... its all a matter of degree. The path of rationality is very narrow, and once you step off it, and aren't willing to step back onto it, the rest is just haggling over price, as they say.
Of course the square root of -1 isn't rational either, but we couldn't do a lot of physics without it.
Nonsense. Most models are wrong. They're still enormously useful compared to something that's more wrong. Newtonian mechanics is wrong, but it was -- and still is -- very useful for the overwhelming majority of situations.
It is very wrong to say the earth is flat. There are many, many ways of demonstrating its wrongness and assuming the earth is flat will lead you to wildly incorrect conclusions for many problems.
It is less wrong to say the earth is a sphere. However, it's harder to demonstrate that it's wrong, and you can do many useful calculations assuming a sphere for simplicity.
It's also wrong, but not very much, to say the earth is a slightly squashed sphere. It requires very careful measurement to demonstrate this, and it's such an accurate approximation to make that it's rare to see someone actually model the earth's correct shape.
Here is the Nature Article mentioned in the summary - the link in the summary goes to a PLoS Biology article.
It was just published online today, I don't see any other copies available yet. However, the primary author of the paper is supported by an NIH grant, so the paper should be released in its entirety as a non-paywalled article fairly soon to comply with the NIH funding rules.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
What could a creationist do with this?
I once pointed out to a creationist that an intelligent designer probably could have done a better job with the human sinus cavity, and he attributed the problems with it to the imperfections in creation introduced after Adam and Eve's fall (that is, eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil).
It isn't science.
No, it isn't. It's philosophy, and it shouldn't be in a science story, but somehow the athiests on this board insist on bringing it up anyway.
Logic won't convince a a religious person that there's no god any more than you can convince me that my computer doesn't exist, but no argument can sway anyone into believing, either. The religious person has percieved his god, so he doesn't need faith to believe any more than I need faith to know that this computer is real (although I could be locked in a rubber room dreaming this nonexixtant computer up). The athiest needs faith.
The only logical position is agnosticism. It's a pointless argument, why do you guys keep insisting on the argument? It['s tedious and tiresome and I wish you'd stop. It's completely offtopic.
Free Martian Whores!
I try to find a short, concise rebuttal that utterly defeats that argument.
The best I've found is, "Science is about the ability to test a claim. You cannot test the claim that God did it, therefore it is irrelevant to science and as such irrelevant to my life." If anyone wants a shot at wording this more succinctly or effectively, go for it - I'd love to hear it. (I'd also love to hear any potential counterarguments).
It is an unfortunate byproduct of being an Atheist that people generally challenge my beliefs (or rather, lack thereof) and I've had to come up with a few defense mechanisms over the years.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Agreed, though I find the complexity and mystery that unavoidably surrounds a hypothetical creator-intelligence to be significantly more baffling.
The athiest needs faith.
Technically, no, he does not. There are gnostic and agnostic atheists, just as there are gnostic and agnostic theists.
A gnostic atheist "knows" there is no god(s), an agnostic atheist does not believe in the existence of a god(s), but will claim they cannot know for certain.
Admitting the lack of certain knowledge -and- the lack of a belief in what are essentially unsubstantiated rumors don't require much faith in anything other than one's own powers of observation.
semantics are everything!
We need to have a nice sit down talk with all the folks involved. Sort of explain the basic rules for playing the game. The guys on the left. What you do is not science. It has no basis in science. Its belief... faith... it needs no foundation in science, because its about your mythos and the stories you tell about the creator. You absolutely have a right to that, and in this country the freedom to celebrated and express that faith any way you see fit, save acts that harm or risk harm to others. Stop trying to crib you faith into some psuedo-scientific theoretical framework. When you try to force facts to fit theory, you end up with something contrary to the very nature of science and anyway, its klugie, smells like feet and you've gone and dressed it funny.
You, yes, all y'all on the right. Stop poking at the folks on the left. They aren't stupid. They are practicing a perfectly natural human behavior and if it doesn't pass the muster of your process for validating truth and reality, tough, it isn't meant to, they have the right engage in magical thinking, and in some very interesting conversations, may well have things to say a human beings and metaphysics that will take the scientists among us a very long time to determine one way or the other. I mean its nonsense to mess with intangibles that way, would you try to quantify the elements of your healthy emotional life? There are parts of the human experience and behavior that are illogical, and presuppose completely unprovable assertions. Trying to logic your way through them will only irritate the natives and undermine your ability to communicate or demonstrate the amazing power of your rigorous intellectual process for determining reality when the general populace will some day most need that bright thinking.
Please, play nice and stop trying to break each others toys. Its irritating. I know some of you get your hackles up when you see Cavemen riding on the backs of Apatosaurs at the Christian Museum in Kansas City (a la Flintstones.) It wasn't so long ago you believed in St. Nick. Stop trying to screw up the others kids Christmas morning, its not your place. Maybe some day soon, somebody will squish something big at the LHC and what quirts out displays a message that says "Jesus is here too!", until then, cut each other a little slack and try to enjoy the toys you have.
Let's say a "day" is the time it takes for the earth to rotate 360 degrees. (Interesting all by itself since such a concrete measurement was unavailable before the earth was created, but whatever.) And then let's say that it took 6 such days for God to create a proto-earth, i.e., the earth the way it was 3.5 billion years ago or whatever.
And then let's say, at the end of day 6, God popped this proto-earth into his cosmic-sized Time Accelerator Machine, closed the lid, programmed the machine such that the relativity factor inside the box yields a 3.5-billion year speedup, set the timer for 1 "day", and then kicked back and cracked open a cold one, or the godly equivalent of a cold one, His work being done.
"Crude and slow, clansman. Your attack was no better than that of a clumsy child."
Is it functionally different than the "Are You Living In a Computer Simulation?" argument? Is that rationally unsupportable?
The only logical position is agnosticism.
I disagree.
The world is full of religions, none of which can offer any better supporting evidence than any of the others. Therefore the only logical positions are to set a low standard of evidence and accept them all, or set a high standard of evidence and reject them all.
However, most of them make claims that contradict the others, so accepting them all isn't logical unless you're willing to accept that reality is inherently contradictory.
Ergo, the only logical position is to reject them all... sometimes known as atheism.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade