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Evolution is true if there is a job in fronting it?

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Is that the message of one biochemist’s career? Or do we misunderstand?

The diversity of enzymes that must be explained.

University of Toronto biochemist Larry Moran was quick to respond to my post of last week, “Is Evolution True? Laying Out the Logic.” He replied on his blog Sandwalk (“A creationist argument against the evolution of new enzymes”) the same day mine was published. His post was sprinkled with his own IDiosyncratic version of mockery, but he had very little to say by way of an actual argument. Moran poked fun at my description of the argument for enzyme design (no surprise there), but he left out my version of the argument for enzyme evolution.

He did post his own version of the argument for enzyme evolution. When I read it, I was amazed by what I saw. Larry Moran had made the same evolutionary argument, step-by-step, as I had. The similarities were striking. The funny thing was, he didn’t seem to see that that was what he had done. Then again, maybe he did, because he conveniently left that particular argument of mine out of his post.

More.

Here Prof. Moran responds to Vince Torley’s questions.

So what exactly is true?

Comments
Here are a few more lines of evidence that back up Dr. Gauger's, and team's, experimental results that give us very good reason to believe that proteins have an extremely difficult time changing a current function into a new function: One line of evidence strongly supporting Dr. Gauger's claim is that, for as far back as we can tell, bacteria have, molecularly and morphologically, stayed virtually the same as when they first appeared:
The Paradox of the "Ancient" (250 Million Year Old) Bacterium Which Contains "Modern" Protein-Coding Genes: “Almost without exception, bacteria isolated from ancient material have proven to closely resemble modern bacteria at both morphological and molecular levels.” Heather Maughan*, C. William Birky Jr., Wayne L. Nicholson, William D. Rosenzweig§ and Russell H. Vreeland ; http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/19/9/1637
These following study(s) by Dr. Cano on ancient bacteria preceded Dr. Vreeland's work:
“Raul J. Cano and Monica K. Borucki discovered the bacteria preserved within the abdomens of insects encased in pieces of amber. In the last 4 years, they have revived more than 1,000 types of bacteria and microorganisms — some dating back as far as 135 million years ago, during the age of the dinosaurs.,,, In October 2000, another research group used many of the techniques developed by Cano’s lab to revive 250-million-year-old bacteria from spores trapped in salt crystals. With this additional evidence, it now seems that the “impossible” is true.” http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=281961 30-Million-Year Sleep: Germ Is Declared Alive http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CEFD61439F93AA25756C0A963958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2
Dr. Cano's work on ancient bacteria came in for intense scrutiny since it did not conform to Darwinian predictions for plasticity (i.e. genetic drift), and since people found it hard to believe you could revive something that was millions of years old. Yet Dr. Cano has been vindicated:
“After the onslaught of publicity and worldwide attention (and scrutiny) after the publication of our discovery in Science, there have been, as expected, a considerable number of challenges to our claims, but in this case, the scientific method has smiled on us. There have been at least three independent verifications of the isolation of a living microorganism from amber." https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/reductionist-predictions-always-fail/comment-page-3/#comment-357693
In reply to a personal e-mail from myself, Dr. Cano commented on the 'Fitness Test' for the ancient bacteria that I had asked him about: Dr. Cano stated in reply:
"We performed such a test, a long time ago, using a panel of substrates (the old gram positive biolog panel) on B. sphaericus. From the results we surmised that the putative "ancient" B. sphaericus isolate was capable of utilizing a broader scope of substrates. Additionally, we looked at the fatty acid profile and here, again, the profiles were similar but more diverse in the amber isolate.": Fitness test which compared ancient bacteria to its modern day descendants, RJ Cano and MK Borucki
Thus, the most solid evidence available for the most ancient DNA scientists are able to find does not support evolution happening on the molecular level of bacteria. In fact, according to the fitness test of Dr. Cano, the change witnessed in bacteria conforms to the exact opposite, Genetic Entropy; a loss of functional information/complexity, since fewer substrates and fatty acids are utilized by the modern strains. Considering the intricate level of protein machinery it takes to utilize individual molecules within a substrate, we are talking an impressive loss of protein complexity, and thus loss of functional information, from the ancient amber sealed bacteria. Moreover, the conservation of morphology in ancient bacteria is 'more extreme than in other organisms'
AMBER: THE LOOKING GLASS INTO THE PAST: Excerpt: These (fossilized bacteria) cells are actually very similar to present day cyanobacteria. This is not only true for an isolated case but many living genera of cyanobacteria can be linked to fossil cyanobacteria. The detail noted in the fossils of this group gives indication of extreme conservation of morphology, more extreme than in other organisms. http://bcb705.blogspot.com/2007/03/amber-looking-glass-into-past_23.html Static evolution: is pond scum the same now as billions of years ago? Excerpt: But what intrigues (paleo-biologist) J. William Schopf most is lack of change. Schopf was struck 30 years ago by the apparent similarities between some 1-billion-year-old fossils of blue-green bacteria and their modern microbial counterparts. "They surprisingly looked exactly like modern species," Schopf recalls. Now, after comparing data from throughout the world, Schopf and others have concluded that modern pond scum differs little from the ancient blue-greens. "This similarity in morphology is widespread among fossils of [varying] times," says Schopf. As evidence, he cites the 3,000 such fossils found; http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Static+evolution%3A+is+pond+scum+the+same+now+as+billions+of+years+ago%3F-a014909330
As well, it also appears that colonies of bacteria have been doing pretty much the exact same bio-geo-chemical reactions as they have always been doing had as far back in time as can be measured:
Geobiologist Noffke Reports Signs of Life that Are 3.48 Billion Years Old - 11/11/13 Excerpt: the mats woven of tiny microbes we see today covering tidal flats were also present as life was beginning on Earth. The mats, which are colonies of cyanobacteria, can cause unusual textures and formations in the sand beneath them. Noffke has identified 17 main groups of such textures caused by present-day microbial mats, and has found corresponding structures in geological formations dating back through the ages. http://www.odu.edu/about/odu-publications/insideodu/2013/11/11/topstory1
Another line of evidence that strongly supports Dr. Gauger's claim is what is termed 'context dependency' of proteins:
(A Reply To PZ Myers) Estimating the Probability of Functional Biological Proteins? Kirk Durston , Ph.D. Biophysics - 2012 Excerpt (Page 4): The Probabilities Get Worse This measure of functional information (for the RecA protein) is good as a first pass estimate, but the situation is actually far worse for an evolutionary search. In the method described above and as noted in our paper, each site in an amino acid protein sequence is assumed to be independent of all other sites in the sequence. In reality, we know that this is not the case. There are numerous sites in the sequence that are mutually interdependent, (i.e. context dependent), with other sites somewhere else in the sequence. A more recent paper shows how these interdependencies can be located within multiple sequence alignments.[6] These interdependencies greatly reduce the number of possible functional protein sequences by many orders of magnitude which, in turn, reduce the probabilities by many orders of magnitude as well. In other words, the numbers we obtained for RecA above are exceedingly generous; the actual situation is far worse for an evolutionary search. http://powertochange.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Devious-Distortions-Durston-or-Myers_.pdf
Moreover, this mutual interdependence, (i.e. context dependency), is found not only in protein sequences but on every level of the protein structure:
Why Proteins Aren't Easily Recombined, Part 2" - Ann Gauger - May 2012 Excerpt: "So we have context-dependent effects on protein function at the level of primary sequence, secondary structure, and tertiary (domain-level) structure. This does not bode well for successful, random recombination of bits of sequence into functional, stable protein folds, or even for domain-level recombinations where significant interaction is required." http://www.biologicinstitute.org/post/23170843182/why-proteins-arent-easily-recombined-part-2
bornagain77
December 8, 2014
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