In the beginning, we were once told, the ancestors of the first animals were simple blobs of identical cells.
But then someone said, “Let there be research.” Anyway…
But now, painstaking genomic analyses and comparisons between the most ancient animals alive today and their closest non-animal relatives are starting to overturn that theory.
The recent work paints a picture of ancestral single-celled organisms that were already amazingly complex. They possessed the plasticity and versatility to slip back and forth between several states — to differentiate as today’s stem cells do and then dedifferentiate back to a less specialized form. The research implies that mechanisms of cellular differentiation predated the gradual rise of multicellular animals.
Now, scientists are reporting the most compelling evidence yet for the new narrative
.Jordana Cepelewicz, “Scientists Debate the Origin of Cell Types in the First Animals” at Quanta
How did they just happen to get to be amazingly complex if there is no design in nature?
See also: Before you go: DNA uses “climbers’ ropes method” to keep tangles at bay It all just swished into place among unthinking cells billions of yours ago. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here. Righrt? Now shuddup!
DNA as a master of resource recycling
The amazing energy efficiency of cells: A science writer compares the cell to human inventions and finds that it is indeed amazingly energy-efficient.
In addition to DNA, our cells have an instruction language written in sugar Of course it all just tumbled into existence and “natural selection” somehow organized everything. As if.
Cells find optimal solutions. Not just good ones.
Researchers build “public library” to help understand photosynthesis
Wait. “The part of the plant responsible for photosynthesis is like a complex machine made up of many parts, … ” And machines just happen all by themselves, right? There is no information load to account for; it just evolved by natural selection acting on random mutation the way your Android did!
In Nature: Cells have “secret conversations” We say this a lot: That’s a lot of information to have simply come into being by natural selection acting on random mutation (Darwinism). It’s getting not only ridiculous but obviously ridiculous.
Researchers: Helpful gut microbes send messages to their hosts If the strategy is clearly identified, they should look for non-helpful microbes that have found a way to copy it (horizontal gene transfer?)
Cells and proteins use sugars to talk to one another Cells are like Neanderthal man. They get smarter every time we run into them. And just think, it all just tumbled into existence by natural selection acting on random mutations (Darwinism) too…
Researchers: First animal cell was not simple; it could “transdifferentiate” From the paper: “… these analyses offer no support for the homology of sponge choanocytes and choanoflagellates, nor for the view that the first multicellular animals were simple balls of cells with limited capacity to differentiate.”
“Interspecies communication” strategy between gut bacteria and mammalian hosts’ genes described
Researchers: Cells Have A Repair Crew That Fixes Local Leaks
Researchers: How The Immune System “Thinks”
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Researcher: Mathematics Sheds Light On “Unfathomably Complex” Cellular Thinking
How do cells in the body know where they are supposed to be?
Researchers A Kill Cancer Code Is Embedded in Every Cell
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Pluripotency and the origin of animal multicellularity
Shunsuke Sogabe, William L. Hatleberg, Kevin M. Kocot, Tahsha E. Say, Daniel Stoupin, Kathrein E. Roper, Selene L. Fernandez-Valverde, Sandie M. Degnan & Bernard M. Degnan
Nature volume 570, pages519–522 (2019)
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1290-4
Emergence of diverse life cycles and life histories at the origin of multicellularity
Merlijn Staps, Jordi van Gestel & Corina E. Tarnita
Nature Ecology & Evolution (2019)
DOI: 10.1038/s41559-019-0940-0
Looking at the abstract of the Nature article that prompted this Quanta article, one would have to say this: Darwnism is dead!
What were looking at, plain and simple, is what has been called “front-loading” for the 15 years I’ve been here at UD. We’re vindicated. Darwinism is defeated. There’s no other way of understanding these results—only rationalizations (or should we call them “epicycles”!?)
This suggests pre-planning, preadaptation or some kind of genetic pre-programming. In other words, a guided, directed, teleological form of evolution. That’s not exactly what Darwin had in mind.
You can’t salvage Darwinian evolution by arbitrarily smuggling in teleology where ever and whenever you need it. “Pre-adaptation” is evidence of intelligent design.
Single cell Choanoflagellates for some reason are protozoa which have signaling proteins that are necessary in higher multicellular animals including human beings.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080701165050.htm
Frankly this undermines neo-Darwinism. What is the Darwinian explanation for a single celled organism evolving a function that they do not need? From an ID perspective, on the other hand, this looks like a case of pre-planning or pre-adaptation. NS + RV is non-teleological it cannot anticipate or look ahead. Darwinism has to rely on lucky accidents that sometimes happened millions of years in the past. How do you prove that these lucky accidents (and there has to be a long series of them) ever occurred?
They never seem to ask that kind of question. Reading the article and the few comments, nobody questions the Darwinian narrative as a result of this. They use the new finding as a means of explaining what comes after, not as a means of wondering about how the new finding originated.
Baluška F, Witzany G. At the dawn of a new revolution in life sciences. World J Biol Chem 2013; 4(2): 13-15
Article
Key Levels of Biocommunication
PDF
DOI: 10.1142/Q0013
In book: BIOCOMMUNICATION: SIGN-MEDIATED INTERACTIONS BETWEEN CELLS AND ORGANISMS, Chapter: 2, Publisher: World Scientific, Editors: Richard Gordon, Joseph Seckbach, pp.37-61