PaV

The argument against Behe’s characterization of the bacterial flagella as demonstrating “irreducible complexity” has been attacked by Nick Matzke and others on the grounds that the flagellar proteins have simply been “coopted” from already existing flagellar proteins. A recently discovered organism found in “a little lake 30 kilometer south of Oslo in Norway” has caused a stir. An analysis of its genome has found that it has almost, if not completely, nothing in common with any known organisms. It is seen as a new ‘branch’ on the putative “Tree of Life.” Quoting from the article: When researchers from the University of Oslo, Norway compared its genes with all other known species in the world, they saw that the protozoan did Read More ›

A new article in Science magazine claims evidence that Alan Turing’s 1952 “biological model in which two chemicals — an activator and an inhibitor — could interact to form the basis for everything from the color patterns of a butterfly’s wings to the black and white stripes of a zebra” has been demonstrated to be correct. From the PhysOrg item: Harvard research now shows that Nodal and Lefty — two proteins linked to the regulation of asymmetry in vertebrates and the development of precursor cells for internal organs — fit the model described by Turing six decades ago. [Notice that this was BEFORE DNA had been decoded by Watson and Crick in 1956] From the April 12 issue of Science: Read More ›

This is like the junkiest of junk, and it turns out to be so critical: From a PhysOrg article: To find out what was going on, the researchers began testing the DNA of several families that showed a proclivity for harboring the disease. Some actually had it, while some did not. Comparing the two allowed the team to track down which differences in their genes might be accounting for the presence of the disease. Much to their surprise, they found it lay within gene SLC7A2, which is known to be used by the brain during its development stage. But what was most remarkable was the fact that it was a single letter change, from an A to a G, found Read More ›

At PhysOrg a new article review puts the kabash on the RNA-world hypothesis. “I’m convinced that the RNA world (hypothesis) is not correct,” Caetano-Anollés said. “That world of nucleic acids could not have existed if not tethered to proteins.” Also “This is a very engaging and provocative article by one of the most innovative and productive researchers in the field of protein evolution,” said University of California at San Diego research professor Russell Doolittle, who was not involved in the study. Doolittle remains puzzled, however, by “the notion that some early proteins were made before the evolution of the ribosome as a protein-manufacturing system.” He wondered how – if proteins were more ancient than the ribosomal machinery that today produces Read More ›

Over at PhysOrg.com, a new summary discusses a paper on the newly published finding that different protein subunits of RNA polymerases exist side-by-side within the Arabidopsis thaliana’s genes, and that dependent on which protein sub-unit is used, the morphology of the organism changes. Here’s a quote: When you remove both proteins, the plants die as embryos; but if they lack just one of the proteins, they still survive, which is evidence that the two alternative forms of the protein are redundant for survival, . . . But despite this, plants missing either 9a or 9b have different physical characteristics, such as leaf shape, suggesting that Pol II built using 9a does not function exactly the same as Pol II assembled Read More ›

At PhysOrg.com, they have an article dealing with the CTCF protein and its binding sites. It turns out that the CTCF has both binding sites that are common to all mammalian lineages, and thus “conserved” and “ancient”, as well as binding sites found only in particular lineages. The binding sites found only in particular lineages are embedded inside “retro-transposons”, which “use a copy-paste mechanism to spread copies of themselves throughout the genome.” However: The retro-transposon’s copy-and-paste behaviour has long been considered totally self-serving. However, the study showed that when a retro-transposon containing a CTCF-binding sequence spreads around a mammal’s genome, it can deposit functional CTCF binding sites in novel locations, altering the activity of distant genes. Further: We looked at Read More ›

A rather comprehensive study of the European vole has concluded that it is hard to know how “fit” genes gain predominance in a population because of what they term “sexual antagonism.” It turns out that when dominant males mate with females, the females that pass on the dominant gene have smaller litter sizes, while the females not passing on the dominant gene have larger litter size. Here’s what one of the authors had to say: “With sexual antagonism such as this, it’s sometimes hard to understand how different genes are maintained in the reproductive process, because if the beneficial effect is much stronger in one sex, one would assume that only the gene with best overall success should be maintained,” Read More ›

Science has gone mad. Or, so it seems. The materialist urge seems to be so great that every branch of science now appears to be lurching toward the Darwinian paradigm, which, as I indicate in the title of this OP, is, basically, the “mother of materialism”! Here’s why I say this. We’ve just finished (or, are beginning, or, something) with Chaitin’s search for “evolving software”. He wants to prove the Darwinian paradigm true by building a software that can maintain its evolving ways. In the course of doing this, he reaches the conclusion that mathematics is “more biological than biology itself, which merely contains extremely large finite complexity” (and not the “infinite” complexity the software program requires). So, mathematics is Read More ›

On a blog discussing recent comments about a somewhat significant event at LHC, the blog’s author talks what another SUSY enthusiast has written. SUSY, for those who don’t already know, is short for Super-Symmetry, a theory allied to “string” theory, or, better yet, “superstring” theory. The LHC was supposed to turn up the elusive Higg’s boson (the so-called “God-particle”), and to detect, as well, supersymmetric particles, which are particles sharing certain properties with other known particles, but existing in different quantum states (spin and charge, e.g.). Well, they haven’t shown up. So what is a good SUSY enthusiast to do? Well, interestingly enough for the ID/UD community, it’s to rationalize away the results. We, thought it was just Darwinists. But Read More ›

Just in at PhysOrg.com. Non-dividing brain cells quickly undergo epigenetic changes. “It was mind-boggling to see that so many methylation sites — thousands of sites — had changed in status as a result of brain activity,” Song says. “We used to think that the brain’s epigenetic DNA methylation landscape was as stable as mountains and more recently realized that maybe it was a bit more subject to change, perhaps like trees occasionally bent in a storm. But now we show it is most of all like a river that reacts to storms of activity by moving and changing fast.” So much for the view that the genome is rather static, and that the major dynamical changes to it involve random Read More ›

As readers of UD know, Elizabeth Liddle is convinced that in any population there are neutral versions of the genome that have every needed variation an organism must have. Change the environment, and, lo and behold, the organism changes. But what has happened here? Let’s quote the article: H5N1 evolved in poultry in east Asia and has spread across Eurasia since 2004. In that time 565 people are known to have caught it; 331 died. No strain that spreads readily among mammals has emerged in that time, despite millions of infected birds, and infections in people, cats and pigs. Efforts to create such a virus in the lab have failed, and some virologists think H5N1 simply cannot do it. Where Read More ›

Here’s an article from New Scientist that will be open for the next seven days to registered viewers. It’s about the “metamorphosis” of species from larval to adult stages, and brings in the views of Donald Williamson. Here’s a link to his 2006 paper, and the entire abstract (it’s worth it!): Examples of animal development that pose problems for Darwinian evolution by ‘descent with modification’ but are consistent with ‘larval transfer’ are discussed. Larval transfer claims that genes that prescribe larval forms originated in adults in other taxa, and have been transferred by hybridization. I now suggest that not only larvae but also components of animals have been transferred by hybridization. The ontogeny of some Cambrian metazoans without true larvae Read More ›

I’ll just let the scientists speak for themselves. “In the last two decades there have been dramatic changes in our understanding of how evolution works,” said Gunter Wagner, the Alison Richard Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB) and senior author of the paper. “We used to believe that changes only took place through small mutations in our DNA that accumulated over time. But in this case we found a huge cut-and-paste operation that altered wide areas of the genome to create large-scale morphological change.” Liz Liddle certainly continues to believe in “cummulative selection”, but some scientists have a differing view. Indeed, “These transposons are not genes that underwent small changes over long periods of time and eventually grew into Read More ›

There’s an article in Discover Magazine about how gamers have been able to solve a problem in HIV research in only three weeks (!) that had remained outside of researcher’s powerful computer tools for years. This, until now, unsolvable problem gets solved because: They used a wide range of strategies, they could pick the best places to begin, and they were better at long-term planning. Human intuition trumped mechanical number-crunching. Oh,my! Teleology raises its ugly head! But, now, let’s hear it for Intelligent Design. Here’s what intelligent agents were able to do within the search space of possible solutions: . . . until now, scientists have only been able to discern the structure of the two halves together. They have Read More ›

At the turn of the 19th century, Darwinism was dealt a harsh blow due to the discovery of Mendel’s work on genetics. The Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium, among other such consequences, flowing from this newly minted science, dramatically pointed to the limitations that Mendel’s theory represented vis-a-vis Darwinism.

Darwinists, ever religiously motivated to come up with rationalizations, found a cudgel—through the work of neo-Darwinists—with which to fight back against the discovery of genes.

A new century. New discoveries. New challenges.

In a paper just published in Science, the authors present the findings of their work on the ‘lab-rat’ of plant studies, Arabidopsis thaliana which show the profound, if not defining, influence that epigenetics can have on “evolution”.

Here’s the link.

One quote that I love:

Ecker said the results of the study provide some of the first evidence that the epigenetic code can be rewritten quickly and to dramatic effect. “This means that genes are not destiny,” he said. “If we are anything like these plants, our epigenome may also undergo relatively rapid spontaneous change that could have a powerful influence on our biological traits.”

I have been arguing here for years that the environment has to be involved in some kind of triggering event for gene ‘turn-ons/turn-offs’. How else to explain “cecal valves” developing in a lizard living alone on an island in the Adriatic in only thirty or so years. (Here’s the link)

But there’s more.
Read More ›