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Congratulations Jonathan Wells

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Of all my colleagues in the ID movement, the one evolutionists slime the most is Jonathan Wells. It is therefore gratifying to see his article on centrioles and their design characteristics (“Do Centrioles Generate a Polar Ejection Force?”) appear in the latest issue of a peer-reviewed biology journal. Here is the abstract to his article:

A microtubule-dependent polar ejection force that pushes chromosomes away from spindle poles during prometaphase is observed in animal cells but not in the cells of higher plants. Elongating microtubules and kinesin-like motor molecules have been proposed as possible causes, but neither accounts for all the data. In the hypothesis proposed here a polar ejection force is generated by centrioles, which are found in animals but not in higher plants. Centrioles consist of nine microtubule triplets arranged like the blades of a tiny turbine. Instead of viewing centrioles through the spectacles of molecular reductionism and neo-Darwinism, this hypothesis assumes that they are holistically designed to be turbines. Orthogonally oriented centriolar turbines could generate oscillations in spindle microtubules that resemble the motion produced by a laboratory vortexer. The result would be a microtubule-mediated ejection force tending to move chromosomes away from the spindle axis and the poles. A rise in intracellular calcium at the onset of anaphase could regulate the polar ejection force by shutting down the centriolar turbines, but defective regulation could result in an excessive force that contributes to the chromosomal instability characteristic of most cancer cells.

Go here to obtain the full article.

Comments
And the origin of defective regulation? Are you all open to the possibility that design can be defective? If it were found that a few simple modifications would greatly improve the operation of the turbines, what would the theological implications be? dankd
May 11, 2005
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How radical of Jonathan to suggest that organic turbine blades share a feature of all the other turbine blades in the known universe - engineered solutions. What a sad state of affairs when merely insinuating the obvious is so controversial. Did I mention already that God must be an engineer? Therefore when I say that engineers rule the universe I'm not exaggerating or indulging in self aggrandizement. :-) DaveScot
May 6, 2005
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