From “Last Universal Common Ancestor More Complex Than Previously Thought,” ScienceDaily (Oct. 5, 2011), we learn:
Scientists call it LUCA, the Last Universal Common Ancestor, but they don’t know much about this great-grandparent of all living things. Many believe LUCA was little more than a crude assemblage of molecular parts, a chemical soup out of which evolution gradually constructed more complex forms. Some scientists still debate whether it was even a cell.
New evidence suggests that LUCA was a sophisticated organism after all, with a complex structure recognizable as a cell, researchers report. Their study appears in the journal Biology Direct.
And they still have a job? Amazing?
“You can’t assume that the whole story of life is just building and assembling things,” Whitfield said. “Some have argued that the reason that bacteria are so simple is because they have to live in extreme environments and they have to reproduce extremely quickly. So they may actually be reduced versions of what was there originally. According to this view, they’ve become streamlined genetically and structurally from what they originally were like. We may have underestimated how complex this common ancestor actually was.”
No argument here. There are many no-speculation examples of life forms
shedding complex parts for survival – the way one might abandon a grand piano in the wilderness.
We’ll leave the giant, gaping question for later.
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OT: Michael Behe has a new article up on ENV:
Yet again I’ll point out that the LUCA is not the FUCA.
Finding that the LUCA is complex tells you nothing about how complex its ancestors were.
HMMM,
Well since both LUCA and FUCA are imaginary constructs, born out of conjecture, perhaps you would care to show some ACTUAL EVIDENCE for something simpler than perhaps the parasitic mycoplasmal??? Remember Elizabeth, your belief that they must exist does not constitute ACTUAL EVIDENCE!!!
So much for ‘simple’ life!!!
music & verse:
What for the love of peer review is the FUCA? The first self replicating molecule?
Is this your camp?:
“Much about LUCA remains enigmatic — many think it was little more than a primitive assemblage of molecular parts, a chemical soup from which evolution gradually built more complex forms.”
Therefore in conflict with this camp:
“It was a dogma of microbiology that organelles weren’t present in bacteria,” said researcher Manfredo Seufferheld, a stress physiologist and cell biologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.”
“Now, after years of research into a once-neglected feature of microbes, scientists suggest the last universal common ancestor was indeed complex, and recognizable as a cell.”
“The mysterious common ancestor of all life on Earth may have been more complex than before thought — a sophisticated organism with an intricate structure, scientists now suggest.”
http://www.livescience.com/163.....mplex.html
If by FUCA you mean: it was little more than a primitive assemblage of molecular parts, then your idea is in conflict with current studies. It seems that FUCA is an illusion, the real issue being the complexity of LUCA. FUCA being an invention, a name your using to describe a less complex LUCA.
The search for FUCA:
FUCA
FUCAII
First Universal Common ancestor.
As opposed to the Last.
They aren’t the same thing. No reason why they should be, just as mitochondrial Eve needn’t be contemporaneous with Y chromosome Adam.
Anyhoo, my point is that it’s a bit silly posting these Gotcha! stories about the LUCA being complex, when there is no reason to think the LUCA had no ancestors. The last common ancestor between you and your cousin is not the same person as the second last common ancestor. Being the last common ancestor of a group doesn’t mean you have no ancestors.
Well I’m sure you will just imagine whatever you need to, so to placate any discomfort you may have felt.
BA, could you just try and write with a little bit of detachment? The childish petulant tone of your posts can be a real buzz kill.
So are you saying that you don’t want me to say stuff like ‘Liar Liar pants on fire’ to neo-Darwinists??? How about delusional dogmatists??? is that better??? more adult??? Better yet how about you give me your e-mail address and I’ll send all my posts to you so you can proof read everything I write and preapprove it??? Would that make you happy???
Kutless – Shut Me Out
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6flXRCLPS0
No.
well then Timbo, I got a solution for your dislike of my posts, since you don’t want to rewrite them to suit your tastes, how bout you not read my posts in the first place if they upset you??? I pretty sure my feelings won’t be hurt if you stopped!! 🙂
OK, ba77, explain to me why you think the Last Universal Common Ancestor must also have been the first.
Thanks.
Elizabeth:
As I already commented in the past, LUCA is a scientific concept, because we can support it with some facts: studying the existing proteome, we can make inferences (maybe right, maybe wrong, but anyway based on facts) about what proteins were present, say before the separation between bacteria and archea. That is scientific reasoning.
FUCA, instead, is only myth. There are absolutely no facts supporting the existence of your “simpler precursors”, least of all about what they could have been, if they ever existed. There is no evidence, either in nature (fossils or other) or in the lab, that your FUCA simply can exist.
There is nothing wrong in pure hypothesizing, but unless and until hypotheses are supported by at least some trace of facts, they cannot be called scientific reasoning, or constructively used in a discussion confronting dofferent scientific theories about OOL.
For all we know, LUCA and FUCA may well be the same thing. I believe, based on evodence, that LUCA existed, and that we can have some idea of what it was and how it worked, and which proteins were already presebt at that level.
What about FUCA? What can you realistically say about it? Beyond myth and fairy tales?
Why should LUCA and FUCA be the same thing?
Agreed, they could but why should they be? Even creationists agree that Chromosomal Adam (the last common human paternal ancestor) was Noah, not Adam.
Knowing (or inferring) who the last common ancestor doesn’t tell you anything about who the first was.
If the LUCA could exist, so could its parent.
Elizabeth, as gpuccio has clearly asked:
i.e. Elizabeth, where is your ACTUAL EVIDENCE instead of merely your belief that is must have existed?,,, As far as hard evidence goes, this is the picture that is coming out:
The evidence scientists have discovered in the geologic record is stunning in its support of the anthropic hypothesis and is very ‘surprising’ to neo-Darwinists. The oldest sedimentary rocks on earth, known to science, originated underwater (and thus in relatively cool environs) 3.86 billion years ago. Those sediments, which are exposed at Isua in southwestern Greenland, also contain the earliest chemical evidence (fingerprint) of ‘photosynthetic’ life [Nov. 7, 1996, Nature]. This evidence had been fought by materialists since it is totally contrary to their evolutionary theory. Yet, Danish scientists were able to bring forth another line of geological evidence to substantiate the primary line of geological evidence for photo-synthetic life in the earth’s earliest sedimentary rocks.
Moreover, evidence for ‘sulfate reducing’ bacteria has been discovered alongside the evidence for photosynthetic bacteria:
Thus we now have mounting evidence for ‘interdependent’ bacterial life in the oldest sedimentary rocks ever found by scientists on earth. Which gives strong empirical indication, not merely imagination, that life appeared on Earth as soon as water appeared on Earth!
And contrary to popular belief, ‘just add water’ does not make life inevitable:
Moreover, as Fuz Rana indicated in the paper I referenced, we have evidence of sulfate reducing bacteria as well as photosynthetic bacteria in the most ancient sedimentary rocks. This is another ‘surprising’ empirical finding!!,,, On the third page of this following site there is a illustration that shows some of the interdependent, ‘life-enabling’, biogeochemical complexity of different types of bacterial life on Earth.,,,
,,,Please note, that if even one type of bacteria group did not exist in this complex cycle of biogeochemical interdependence, that was illustrated on the third page of the preceding site, then all of the different bacteria would soon die out. This essential biogeochemical interdependence, of the most primitive different types of bacteria that we have evidence of on ancient earth, makes the origin of life ‘problem’ for neo-Darwinists that much worse. For now not only do neo-Darwinists have to explain how the ‘miracle of life’ happened once with the origin of photosynthetic bacteria, but they must now also explain how all these different types bacteria, that photosynthetic bacteria are dependent on, in this complex biogeochemical web, miraculously arose just in time to supply the necessary nutrients, in their biogeochemical link in the chain, for photosynthetic bacteria to continue to survive. As well, though not clearly illustrated in the illustration on the preceding site, please note that a long term tectonic cycle, of the turnover the Earth’s crustal rocks, must also be fine-tuned to a certain degree with the bacteria and thus plays a important ‘foundational’ role in the overall ecology of the biogeochemical system that must be accounted for as well.
continued later,,,
ba77: assuming that the LUCA existed, then it is very unlikely not to have been one individual organism, but a population of similar individuals.
Are you proposing that that population was created, ex nihilo, on planet earth?
Why should that members of that ancestral population not themselves have had ancestors?
That seems like a faith position to me.
But perhaps the most damaging thing to the materialistic belief that life ’emerged’ from some prebiotic chemical broth (a ‘prebiotic broth’ for which they have no evidence),
is this finding:
The reason that this ‘quantum photosynthesis’ finding is absolutely crushing to the atheists’s materialistic belief that life simply ’emerged’ from some prebiotic chemical broth, is that this reductive materialism, which atheists hold, is falsified as to being the ’cause’ for quantum entanglement!:
i.e. a ‘non-local’, beyond space and time, cause must be supplied to explain photosynthesis!!! This is more than a slight problem for materialistic atheists! The following video gives a hint of just how ‘spooky’, to use Einstein’s infamous word, it is to find quantum action to be necessary for photosynthetic life:
To solidify my basis for inferring the necessity of a ‘non-local’, beyond space and time, cause to explain photosynthesis, I would like to refer to the quantum wave collapse of a photon;
It is important to note that the following experiment actually encoded information into a photon while it was in its quantum wave state, thus destroying the notion, held by many, that the wave function was not ‘physically real’ but was merely ‘abstract’. i.e. How can information possibly be encoded into something that is not physically real but merely abstract?
Now, I find this to be absolutely fascinating, a photon, in its quantum wave state, is found to be mathematically defined as a ‘infinite-dimensional’ state, which ‘requires an infinite amount of information’ to describe it properly, and this ‘infinite dimensional’ photon collapses, instantaneously, and thus ‘non-locally’, to just a ‘1 or 0′ state, out of a infinite number of possibilities it could have collapsed to!! Now my question to atheists is this, exactly what ’cause’ has been postulated throughout history to be completely independent of any space-time constraints, as well as possessing infinite knowledge, so as to be the ‘sufficient cause’ to explain explain quantum wave collapse of a photon???
verse and music:
further notes:
etc.. etc..
Elizabeth, I hear crickets from you in response to quantum photosynthesis?
http://www.uncommondescent.com.....ent-402189
Elizabeth are you feeling well? I have never seen you at a loss for shallow excuse, ahem, I mean loss for words to explain away, ahem, I mean explain evidence against neo-Darwinism.
I’m afraid I do not follow your argument ba77.
I find your quantum arguments baffling, possibly because I am not a quantum physicist, and possibly because you are not.
Perhaps a quantum physicist could help us both out.
Elizabeth, glad to see you are not sick and are ready to lie for Darwin, you state:
So you did not like the Alain Aspect video on the falsification of local realism. Well perhaps these papers will help:
The falsification for local realism (materialism) was recently greatly strengthened:
It is really not that hard Elizabeth, basically Aspect has shown that it is IMPOSSIBLE for a ‘local’, within space and time, ’cause’ to explain quantum entanglement, and thus since quantum entanglement is found to be necessary for photosynthesis, then it is logically follows that it is impossible for the ‘within space and time material causes’ of neo-Darwinism to explain the origination of photosynthesis in the first life on earth!!! Perhaps Richard Conn Henry, who is Professor of Physics at John Hopkins University, can help us work out the implications of all this quantum stuff???
it appears “hidden variables” has lost some thunder
You have a point. But I think that whatever shows more complexity, earlier in time, lends support to ID, even if only slightly.
Elizabeth,
You are the one who is positing a FUCA. What evidence do you have?
All I am suggesting is that the LUCA was one of a population of organisms that had ancestors. What is so revolutionary about that?
The alternative is that they were created, ex nihilo, intact. What evidence do you have for that much more extraordinary claim?
ba77: I don’t lie.
I’m going to ignore you again. I am a tolerant woman, but for some reason I have an aversion to being called a liar.
I expect I’ll relent, as I’m also fairly forgiving, but for now you are on the naughty step.
See you around.
Not quite sure what you mean. Could you rephrase?
Elizabeth, in case you don’t find Alain Aspect and Physics Professor Richard Conn Henry up to your demanding tastes for solid empirical evidence, (biting tongue in sarcasm), that local realism is falsified, perhaps Anton Zeilinger’s work in quantum mechanics will meet your tastes?
etc.. etc.. etc..
Elizabeth, ‘I don’t lie.,’, and yet I’ve seen you repeatedly misrepresent the evidence, though corrected over and over by many people here on UD, and if that is not lying then you are intellectually dishonest to the point of self-deception!!
Alternatively, I am correct.
Depends where you are standing I guess. Whatever. I post in good faith, and if I am persuaded I am wrong, I change my view.
If I am not persuaded, I do not.
I hope that is true of everyone here.
liz, what is considered extraordinary is a subjective claim.
What “subjective claim”?
I’m not “claiming” anything. I’m just pointing out that the last common ancestor of a population is not necessarily the first. Mitochondrial Eve was one of a population of human beings, and while being our last common maternal ancestor, was certainly not our first, and had a human mother
So the Last Common Universal Ancestor could only have been also the first if it had been created ex nihilo, and even even if you think that the First Common Ancestor was created ex nihilo, there is no logical reason to assume that it was the same organism as the Last. As I said, even Creationists accept that while they insist that the Last Common maternal ancestor is Eve, that the last common paternal ancesstor is Noah, the first being, of course Adam.
That means that any inferences you make about the properties of the LUCA are not necessarily those of the FUCA, and so touting the properties of the LUCA as though they are necessarily properties of the FUCA is simple error.
And again, as asked here,,,
http://www.uncommondescent.com.....ent-402134
,,,besides your imagination, where is your empirical evidence that such a creature ever actually existed???
Well, read the OP.
Well again as gpuccio asked:
What about FUCA? What can you realistically say about it? Beyond myth and fairy tales?
http://www.uncommondescent.com.....ent-402177
your belief that FUCA must have existed does not in any way, shape or form, constitute ACTUAL EVIDENCE that it did exist. Just because you can imagine something might be real does not make it real!!! You MUST show that your belief is at least scientifically feasible as far as reality itself is concerned, and, seeing the jaw dropping complexity of the ‘simplest life’ on earth, micoplasmal, good luck with all that!!!
Well, if LUCA existed, ba77, and had no forebears, then it was also the FUCA.
So if you think the LUCA existed, you also think the FUCA existed.
What I’m pointing out, is that one is not necessarily the same as the other, and any inference based on that assumption is based on an unsupported premise.
Elizabeth,
Please do not say anything like that in relation to Adam and Eve. I strongly object. Would you like to be called that yourself? Away with LUCA/FUCA, Adam and Eve are my real ancestors. Please don’t.
And what I, and others, are repeatedly pointing out to you, and that you refuse to accept, is that you have ZERO empirical evidence to support your contention that either FUCA and/or LUCA ACTUALLY existed. All you have is merely wishful materialistic/Darwinian speculation that life arose naturalistically and that therefore these creatures MUST have existed, because you simply cannot imagine that life was created suddenly by a intelligent agent! This reminds me very much of the dogmatic stance against the ex-nihilo creation of the universe even though all indications pointed to it!!! Moreover, The finding, in the paper in the OP, that the imaginary LUCA must have been more complex than previously envisioned/imagined is in fact a very funny turn of events, for it points out that where actual empirical evidence is allowed to somewhat inform these materialistic speculations, on what the first life should be like according to Darwinism, it turns Darwinian thinking for a ‘simple’ first life on its head!! But the bottom line is that basically the whole thing LUCA and FUCA matter has been a romp through unsupported conjecture that is supported with nothing but the imaginary belief that these creatures must have existed prior to what we have actual evidence for in biogeochemical markers in the oldest sedimentary rocks on earth.
Oh right. I didn’t realise you were actually disputing universal common ancestry.
I think I had the idea that that wasn’t disputed by most ID proponents.
Sorry Eugene, but I don’t understand your objection. Could you rephrase your request? I don’t know what it is you are objecting to.
My point is an extremely simple mathematical one.
Elizabeth,
This is simply not nice, to me. Adam and Eve were real people, like your or my parents, not scientific or religious concepts. Would that be okay for you to be addressed as mitochondrial Liz? I don’t think so.
Apologies, then, Eugene. I have often read (indeed I’ve read it here), that Mitochondrial Eve (as identified by geneticists) was Eve, wife of Adam, and that Y-chromosome Adam (ditto) must have been Noah. Indeed, someone here, I think it may have been ba77, was actually arguing that the fact that geneticists think that Y-chromosome Adam lived later than Mitochondrial Eve, is supportive evidence for the Flood bottleneck.
So, apologies for any inadvertent offence I caused you.
I should say that my own view is that Adam and Eve are mythical, not real people, and that the woman geneticists call “mitochondrial Eve” was one of many similar women, probably living in Africa.
Interesting, rather than honestly admitting that you are dealing with ‘myth and fairy tale’, as gpuccio put it, and that you have ZERO evidence to back up your claim for FUCA, you allude to a supposed ‘consensus’ of belief of others??? And exactly why should empirical science care one iota about unsubstantiated beliefs if, and when, they disagree with the empirical evidence, whether they are held by one individual or even when they are held by a ‘consensus’ of individuals??? Science could care less about what is popularly believed and only cares about what you can verify to be true!!!
Non-Local Quantum Entanglement In Photosynthesis – video with notes in description
http://vimeo.com/30235178