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Stuff Doesn’t Evolve–It Just Shows Up in the Beginning

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Here’s a news article from Phys.Org on a lamprey study. Actually it’s a study concerning phylogenetics and using gene regulatory mechanisms to figure out the relationships that exist.

It turns out that in the lamprey, which is part of the Cambrian explosion, the same kind of hind brain gene regulatory mechanisms are in place as in “jawed” vertebrates, including mammals.

From the article:

The team at Stowers, collaborating with Marianne Bronner, Ph.D., professor of biology at Caltech, focused on the sea lamprey because the fossil record shows that its ancestors emerged from Cambrian silt approximately 500 million years ago, 100 million years before jawed fish ever swam onto the scene. The question was, could the hindbrain gene regulatory network that constructs the “modern” vertebrate head have originated in animals that lack those structures? . . . . . .

The paper’s startling finding came when they inserted the very same reporters into lamprey embryos using a technique developed by Hugo Parker, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in the Krumlauf lab and the study’s first author: the lamprey embryos displayed the same rainbow pattern of Hox reporters as did jawed fish, in exactly the same order along the AP axis of the hindbrain.

“We were surprised to see any reporter expression in lamprey, much less a pattern that resembles the pattern in a mouse or fish,” says Parker, who pioneered the lamprey reporter approach as a graduate student at London’s Queen Mary University. “That means that the gene regulatory network that governs segmental patterning of the hindbrain likely evolved prior to divergence of jawed vertebrates.”

This, of course, was a ‘surprise,’ and they were ‘startled,’ but eventually found some way of accommodating these “surprises” to standard evolutionary theory. (How often has this happened?!!)

What this study suggests is that so much of what we consider “modern” organisms was already there from the beginning. At UD, we would call this “front-loading,” a notion ridiculed by evolutionists—until, that is, more and more discoveries suggested that “front-loading” just might be true.

Obviously, the more “front-loading” that occurred historically, then the more there was in place in a short period of time, and the more difficult it becomes to justify the usual evolutionary mechanisms.

Sadly, as they are now being forced to do this ten times a day because of “surprising” and “startling” results, it never seems to force them to reconsider their ill-thought out paradigm. Alas.

Comments
gpuccio: Adesso no ho il tempo per ricercare le cose in questo campo, e, alloro, non faccio tanti "post". Spero che per te ci sta il tempo. E sempre una piaccere di legere i toi "posts".PaV
September 20, 2014
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The simple fact that whole new engineering plans appear rather suddenly in natural history, and that they are then refined and implemented gradually in different species, is a very strong evidence of intelligent design. All that has a name: top down engineering. without tons of new information, you can explain absolutely nothing of any relevance.
:)Dionisio
September 16, 2014
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Evolve: As usual, you miss the point and "move goalposts". The simple fact that whole new engineering plans appear rather suddenly in natural history, and that they are then refined and implemented gradually in different species, is a very strong evidence of intelligent design. How can you not understand that? There are many points in natural history where rather suddenly whole new plans of functionality and organization appear, including complex premises for further developments. That is exactly how design works, especially good design. The Ediacara and Cambrian explosions are obviously very good examples of that. But the prokaryote-eukaryote transition is equally amazing, and so is the development of plants, the flowering plants explosion, and the appearance of vertebrates and then of mammals. Each of those events is a new complex idea, a new complex plan, full of new implementations just from the beginning, but also full of premises for future implementations. All that has a name: top down engineering. Obviously, in no way that means that each successive refinement and implementation does not need further engineering, further intelligence and complexity to be added to what has been already prepared. There is absolutely no contradiction in that. The simple truth is that neo darwinists cannot explain anything: not the origin of prokaryotes, not the transition to eukaryotes, not the appearance of metazoa and the Ediacara and Cambrian explosions, not the evolution of regulatory complexity in vertebrates and mammals. Least of all, the appearance of amazing complexity in the nervous system of humans, whose wonders you try to attribute to trivial tweakings simply because you cannot understand how those wonders are implemented. It is perfectly true that studies like these prove that "widely different organisms arise from a common precursor, a common theme". And it is perfectly true that biological design works on "what’s already present". But, at each step, it does require "tons of new information". Absolutely it does require them! Sometimes tons are enough (new proteins). Many other times, tons of tons are required (OOL, Cambrian explosion, regulatory networks, and so on). But, without tons of new information, you can explain absolutely nothing of any relevance.gpuccio
September 16, 2014
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PaV: Very good work, as usual! :)gpuccio
September 16, 2014
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Evolve:
Now it is as clear as daylight that, despite all the externally apparent differences, humans are fundamentally the same as lowly animals.
For you and all other evos, I accept that statement. :razz:Joe
September 16, 2014
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Evolve- evolutionism can't even account for simple single-celled eukaryotes, so forget about metazoans.Joe
September 16, 2014
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#10 Mung
Now if only that pesky data would stop changing!
Sorry, but that won't happen soon. :) Check this out:
A Systematic Analysis of Biosynthetic Gene Clusters in the Human Microbiome Reveals a Common Family of Antibiotics DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2014.08.032 In complex biological systems, small molecules often mediate microbe-microbe and microbe-host interactions. Using a systematic approach, we identified 3,118 small-molecule biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) in genomes of human-associated bacteria and studied their representation in 752 metagenomic samples from the NIH Human Microbiome Project. Remarkably, we discovered that BGCs for a class of antibiotics in clinical trials, thiopeptides, are widely distributed in genomes and metagenomes of the human microbiota. We purified and solved the structure of a thiopeptide antibiotic, lactocillin, from a prominent member of the vaginal microbiota. We demonstrate that lactocillin has potent antibacterial activity against a range of Gram-positive vaginal pathogens, and we show that lactocillin and other thiopeptide BGCs are expressed in vivo by analyzing human metatranscriptomic sequencing data. Our findings illustrate the widespread distribution of small-molecule-encoding BGCs in the human microbiome, and they demonstrate the bacterial production of drug-like molecules in humans.
Dionisio
September 15, 2014
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Evolve:
Typical creationist strategy of moving goalposts depending on the data.
Now if only that pesky data would stop changing!Mung
September 15, 2014
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The link is now fixed.PaV
September 15, 2014
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It should be no surprise, because what good are new genes without a matching gene regulatory network?
I was waiting to see how long it would take for a Darwinist to tell us that this is no surprise at all. It's in full conformity with what we would expect, etc. First one, right out of the chute. So, let's recap: the scientists studying this are both "surprised" and "startled"; the evidence they find is in conformity with ID possibilities; it creates problems for Darwinism because there is even more now to explain in what was already in overwhelmingly insufficient amount of time to explain the rise of these systems, and the Darwinist response is: no problem here. What a great theory. It doesn't even force you to think hard. "Just-so" stories abound.PaV
September 15, 2014
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/// What this study suggests is that so much of what we consider “modern” organisms was already there from the beginning. /// Typical creationist strategy of moving goalposts depending on the data. If it turned out that “modern” organisms had completely new genes and regulatory elements, you would have claimed victory then too! You’d say “see, modern organisms require so much novel information compared to primitive ones, where did all that information come from?” The truth is that creationists always considered humans special, made in the image of god etc. Nobody was expecting parallels to be drawn between humans and lowly creatures. Now it is as clear as daylight that, despite all the externally apparent differences, humans are fundamentally the same as lowly animals. It is clear that complexity does not require tons of new information, but just tweaks of what’s already present. Studies like this prove that widely different organisms arise from a common precursor, a common theme. In other words, it confirms evolution and rejects special creation.Evolve
September 15, 2014
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JS: When they believed ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, they called it proof of evolution. Now they don’t believe it.
If by Now you mean at the beginning of the twentieth century, I guess you are correct.Acartia_bogart
September 15, 2014
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“That means that the gene regulatory network that governs segmental patterning of the hindbrain likely evolved prior to divergence of jawed vertebrates.”
Another possible interpretation is that they were created that way in the beginning.tjguy
September 15, 2014
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Does it not appear the Cambrian era has become overly "crowded" from a molecular feasibility perspective? Given what is known regarding the capabilities of "random" molecular changes leading to biologically meaningful combinations of chemicals? Given the empirical work of Axe, Behe, Gauger etc. and the scientific reporting of Stephen Meyer, why aren't the pertinent issues being discussed seriously in "mainstream" scientific disciplines and filtered through as such to the general social media? Perhaps this IS occurring and I am just oblivious. NEWS. Can you or any on with the traditional NDE perspective please comment? Thank you.bpragmatic
September 14, 2014
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"biologists no longer think that an animal's "ontogeny", that is, its embryonic development, replays its entire evolutionary history" Is this evidence that evolution by natural selection is false? When they believed ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, they called it proof of evolution. Now they don't believe it. Since cleavage patterns and cell movements in early embryos are different between insects and vertebrates is that evidence that they had no multicellular common ancestor?Jim Smith
September 14, 2014
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There is a typo in the link: http://http//phys.org/news/2014-09-ancient-vertebrate-familiar-tools-strange-looking.html http// is in there an extra time...Jim Smith
September 14, 2014
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“That means that the gene regulatory network that governs segmental patterning of the hindbrain likely evolved prior to divergence of jawed vertebrates.”
It should be no surprise, because what good are new genes without a matching gene regulatory network?Box
September 14, 2014
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