Category: Cell biology
Are half our bodies not “human”?
| April 15, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Human evolution, Intelligent Design |
From James Gallagher at BBC: Prof Rob Knight, from University of California San Diego, told the BBC: “You’re more microbe than you are human.” Originally it was thought our cells were outnumbered 10 to one. “That’s been refined much closer to one-to-one, so the current estimate is you’re about 43% human if you’re counting up […]
If viruses can evolve in parallel in related species… ?
| April 14, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Evolution, Intelligent Design |
From ScienceDaily: Scientists from the universities of Exeter and Cambridge compared viruses that evolved in different species and found “parallel genetic changes” were more likely if two host species were closely related. … “This may explain in part why host shifts tend to occur between related species. However, we sometimes see the same mutations occurring […]
The Axe-ocalypse! It is coming!
| April 13, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Darwinism, Intelligent Design |
We told you so! Four horsemen. No waiting. From Brian Miller at ENST: One of the most significant projects for the intelligent design movement was Douglas Axe’s research testing the rarity of protein folds. Axe’s method represented the most accurate approach for addressing the problem to date, but his was actually one in a line […]
RNA molecules recognize each other
| April 13, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Information, Intelligent Design |
From ScienceDaily: In the past decade, scientists have watched protein and RNA molecules condensing into droplets, or membrane-free condensates, in many kinds of cells, from bacterial to human. They have also noted that the same proteins that form liquid droplets in healthy cells can “solidfy” in the context of disease, such as neurodegenerative disorders. But […]
Exploring the frontiers: When biological materials behave like glass
| March 9, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Darwinism, Intelligent Design |
From Suzan Mazur in a profile of and interview with computational biologist Lisa Manning at Oscillations: A half dozen or so years ago, Carl Woese and Nigel Goldenfeld characterized biology as the new condensed matter physics. More recently, Eugene Koonin advised “biology has to become the new condensed matter physics”. It’s an area of scientific […]
Günter Blobel (1936–2018), Nobelist ‘99, found cell zip codes
| February 20, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Culture, Darwinism, Design inference, Evolution, Intelligent Design |
From Robert D. McFadden at the New York Times: Günter Blobel, a molecular biologist who was awarded the 1999 Nobel Prize in Medicine for discovering that proteins in any living cell have virtual ZIP codes that guide them to where they can help regulate body tissues, organs and chemistry, died on Sunday in Manhattan. He […]
Suzan Mazur has some hard questions for NASA “astrovirology” expert Ken Stedman
| February 19, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life |
Yes, “astrovirology” is a new term, for the possibility that viruses originated in space. Suzan Mazur wonders at Oscillations: If viruses originated on Earth—which is NASA astrovirology chief Ken Stedman’s “best guess”—just why do we need a new field called astrovirology? That’s a very good question. If viruses originated elsewhere than Earth, the history of […]
Researchers: Horizontal gene transfer may have helped early microbes move out of hot springs
| January 30, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life |
The microbes are archaea, not bacteria. From ScienceDaily: The first-ever analysis of DNA of a contemporary heat-loving, ammonia-oxidizing organism, published in open-access journal Frontiers in Microbiology, reveals that evolution of the necessary adaptations may have been helped by highly mobile genetic elements and DNA exchange with a variety of other organisms. Most extremophiles are microorganisms […]
“Evolutionists don’t know a good eye when they see one”
| January 22, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design |
From molecular biologist Jonathan Wells at Salvo: In 2005, Douglas Futuyma published a textbook about evolution claiming that “no intelligent engineer would be expected to design” the “functionally nonsensical arrangement” of cells in the human retina. That same year, geneticist Jerry Coyne wrote that the human eye is “certainly not the sort of eye an engineer […]
Should NASA look for viruses in space?
| January 18, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Extraterrestrial life, Genetics, Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life |
From Alex Barash at Slate: The not-quite life forms have a bad rap. But they’re a reliable sign of life, and it would be exciting to find them in space. For one thing, viruses are an excellent indicator for life itself: Wherever there’s life on Earth, there are viruses, too, and almost invariably in far […]
Evolution News: Don’t be fooled by protein design claim
| January 13, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Evolution, Intelligent Design |
From Andrew Jones at Evolution News & Science Today,: After many thousands of man-hours of research, and zillions of CPU-hours on borrowed computers, biochemist David Baker of the University of Washington claims we have basically nailed it. “There are subtleties going on in naturally occurring proteins that we still don’t understand,” Dr. Baker said. “But […]
This parody of evo devo makes it sound a lot like ID
| December 19, 2017 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Evolution, Evolutionary biology |
“This is how we go from single cells to people.” Hmmm. See also: From Biology Direct: Darwinism, now thoroughly detached from its historical roots as a falsifiable theory, “must be abandoned”
Guest Post — Template-Assisted Ligation: A New OOL Model
| December 15, 2017 | Posted by kairosfocus under biosemiotics, Cell biology, Chemistry, Food for thought, Functionally Specified Complex Information & Organization, ID Foundations, Information, Origin Of Life, Self-Org. Theory |
Dr E. Selensky occasionally requests that UD posts an article on his behalf. What follows is his latest: ______________ Arguably, the RNA world model is excessively complex: it operates too complex structures and involves too complex interactions. The origin of life, some researchers believe, must have been simpler.In an attempt to close the gap between […]
Human brain cells live long but acquire thousands of mutations along the way
| December 9, 2017 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Human evolution, Intelligent Design, Mind |
From Ruth Williams at The Scientist: Two studies in Science today (December 7)—one that focuses on prenatal development in humans, the other on infancy to old age—provide insights into the extent of DNA sequence errors that the average human brain cell accumulates over a lifetime. Together, they reveal that mutations become more common as fetuses […]
More news from the decline: Revealing responses to creationist’s wrongful dismissal over soft dinosaur tissue discovery
| December 3, 2017 | Posted by News under academic freedom, Cell biology, Culture, Darwinism, Intelligent Design |
From Colleen Flaherty at Inside Higher Education: California State University at Northridge has settled a lawsuit brought by a former employee who said he was fired for sharing news of an archaeological discovery that supported his young-Earth creationist beliefs. The university says it settled for $399,500 to avoid a protracted legal battle, but some scientists […]
Who controls Whom in science and what it means for new thinking and new discoveries – a lawyer talks
| December 2, 2017 | Posted by News under academic freedom, Cell biology, Culture, Darwinism, Evolution, Science |
Reader Edward Sisson writes to tell us of his encounter with the Who–Whom of science, in connection with the recent Armitage soft dinosaur tissue case: It reminds me of an idea I had in about 2003, when I was at Arnold & Porter representing (pro bono, with firm authorization) ID organizations and people, for a […]
Rethinking biology: What role does physical structure play in the development of cells?
| November 10, 2017 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Evolution, Intelligent Design |
That’s structuralism, in part. Further to Evelyn Fox Keller’s comment that the landscape of biological thought is being “radically reconfigured,” a cancer geneticist writes to say that a tumor’s physical environment fuels its growth and causes treatment resistance: The forces of cancer In vitro experiments showing that cancer cells actively migrate in response to fluid […]
Flagellum gives bacteria a sense of touch. Behe is right.
| October 27, 2017 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Intelligent Design, Irreducible Complexity |
Irreducible complexity. From ScienceDaily: Although bacteria have no sensory organs in the classical sense, they are still masters in perceiving their environment. … Swimming Caulobacter bacteria have a rotating motor in their cell envelope with a long protrusion, the flagellum. The rotation of the flagellum enables the bacteria to move in liquids. Much to the […]
From The Scientist: How first and “very, very complex” trees got to be so big 420 million to 359 mya
| October 26, 2017 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Plants |
From Shawna Williams at The Scientist: Ancient fossils reveal how woodless trees got so big: by continuously ripping apart their xylem and knitting it back together. The trees’ woody fibers—namely, xylem, which carries water up the trunk—formed rings in the outer part of the trunk and connected to one another by horizontal strands, says Berry. […]
Long term evolution experiments (LTEE) reveal too much complexity to be “disentangled”
| October 25, 2017 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Darwinism, Ecology, Evolution, Intelligent Design |
So much for Darwinism. Joshua B. Plotkin writes at Nature: Ecological interactions emerge spontaneously in an experimental study of bacterial populations cultured for 60,000 generations, and sustain rapid evolution by natural selection. (paywall) Yes, that’s the abstract. It’s a model of economy. This is from the article: The authors’ most profound discovery is the spontaneous […]
