Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Horizontal Gene Transfer and the Evolution of Evolution: You Can’t Make This Up

Share
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Flipboard
Print
Email

What do bacterial resistance to antibiotic drugs and the universal genetic code have in common? They both have been explained by horizontal gene transfer, a mechanism that evolutionists are increasingly using to explain the origin of the species. And what’s wrong with that? First, it makes evolution superfluous and second, it makes evolution ridiculous.  Read more

Comments
off topic: here is a pretty cool quote: Systems biology: Untangling the protein web - July 2009 Excerpt: Vidal thinks that technological improvements — especially in nanotechnology, to generate more data, and microscopy, to explore interaction inside cells, along with increased computer power — are required to push systems biology forward. "Combine all this and you can start to think that maybe some of the information flow can be captured," he says. But when it comes to figuring out the best way to explore information flow in cells, Tyers jokes that it is like comparing different degrees of infinity. "The interesting point coming out of all these studies is how complex these systems are — the different feedback loops and how they cross-regulate each other and adapt to perturbations are only just becoming apparent," he says. "The simple pathway models are a gross oversimplification of what is actually happening." http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v460/n7253/full/460415a.htmlbornagain77
May 28, 2010
May
05
May
28
28
2010
08:06 AM
8
08
06
AM
PDT
Cabal here is a reference in peer review of evolutionists using HGT for "just so" stories: Repeated horizontal transfer of a DNA transposon in mammals and other tetrapods Excerpt: This patchy distribution, coupled with the extreme level of SPIN identity in widely divergent tetrapods and the overall lack of selective constraint acting on these elements, is incompatible with vertical inheritance, but strongly indicative of multiple horizontal introductions. http://www.pnas.org/content/105/44/17023.abstract Again cabal how do evolutionists justify extrapolating a fairly well known process for bacteria passing information amongst each other? such as this; The Virus (Bacteriophage) – Assembly Of A Molecular "Lunar Landing" Machine – video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4023122 ,,,to inferring what they did in the paper I referenced? Shoot cabal they haven't even explained how just one protein of the "lunar landing" bacteriophage itself arose, and suddenly they have are suppose to have credence to dictate how the information arose in all of life. They are far from scientifically establishing the basis they need to justify such a inference as they have made! ---------------- Further note; here is a cool paper I just found: Debunking Evolution: problems, errors, and lies exposed, in plain language for non-scientists http://www.newgeology.us/presentation32.htmlbornagain77
May 28, 2010
May
05
May
28
28
2010
07:03 AM
7
07
03
AM
PDT
Cabal here is better link for HGT being used for "just so" stories: “The tree of life is being politely buried” Excerpt: I’ve been watching this play out over the years and one thing I’ve noticed is that the overwhelming creative powers of unguided HGT are inferred from comparing sequence data: …it is becoming increasingly apparent that HGT plays an unexpectedly big role in animals too. As ever more multicellular genomes are sequenced, ever more incongruous bits of DNA are turning up. Last year, for example, a team at the University of Texas at Arlington found a peculiar chunk of DNA in the genomes of eight animals – the mouse, rat, bushbaby, little brown bat, tenrec, opossum, anole lizard and African clawed frog – but not in 25 others, including humans, elephants, chickens and fish. This patchy distribution suggests that the sequence must have entered each genome independently by horizontal transfer. Other cases of HGT in multicellular organisms are coming in thick and fast. HGT has been documented in insects, fish and plants, and a few years ago a piece of snake DNA was found in cows. The most likely agents of this genetic shuffling are viruses, which constantly cut and paste DNA from one genome into another, often across great taxonomic distances. In fact, by some reckonings, 40 to 50 per cent of the human genome consists of DNA imported horizontally by viruses, some of which has taken on vital biological functions. https://uncommondescent.com/biology/the-tree-of-life-is-being-politely-buried/#comment-302629bornagain77
May 28, 2010
May
05
May
28
28
2010
04:12 AM
4
04
12
AM
PDT
I couldn't find any reference to HGT in that article, just common descent?Cabal
May 28, 2010
May
05
May
28
28
2010
12:31 AM
12
12
31
AM
PDT
Dr. Hunter, I was wondering from what empirical basis do they infer horizontal gene transfer, to the extent that they do in evolutionary biology, and found this: Horizontal gene transfer(HGT) Excerpt: Horizontal gene transfer was first described in Japan in a 1959 publication that demonstrated the transfer of antibiotic resistance between different species of bacteria.[1][2] In the mid-1980s, Syvanen [3] predicted that lateral gene transfer existed, had biological significance, and was involved in shaping evolutionary history from the beginning of life on Earth. As Jain, Rivera and Lake (1999) put it: "Increasingly, studies of genes and genomes are indicating that considerable horizontal transfer has occurred between prokaryotes." [4] (see also Lake and Rivera, 2007).[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_gene_transfer Thus Dr. Hunter they went from hard evidence for bacteria sharing information for antibiotic resistance, To pure speculation that HGT occurs on a large scale between everything else on earth, just so as to have a way of explaining (a just so story) why the same exact genes are in completely unrelated animals and plants?,,, Shoot antibiotic resistance is not even proof of evolution in the first place: List Of Degraded Molecular Abilities Of Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria: http://www.trueorigin.org/bacteria01.asp I thought they would at least have a little something more than just shared information for antibiotic resistance (which is accomplished by a known mechanism involving plasmids and bacteriophages) to back up their claim of widespread HGT. yet they do not even have a mechanism for the extraordinary extrapolation they are making to the genomes of higher organisms. I was a bit surprised, But then again this is not science is it? Instead of science this is the religion of materialism that we are dealing with is it not? further note: Microbial genomes multiply Excerpt: Horizontal transfers are ordinarily discovered during the construction of a phylogenetic tree of an individual protein. When two sequences from otherwise distantly related organisms are found to be more similar to each other than pairs of sequences from known closer relatives, horizontal gene transfer is suspected. In the new world of genomics, however, the list of potential horizontal transfers is more often compiled during database comparisons of newly found ORFs. If a match score for a protein in a distantly related organism is higher than that for the protein from a nearer relative, transfer is automatically presumed. The method has its weaknesses, however, as detailed in ref. 9. Also of note,,,Mechanisms for horizontal exchange in the prokaryotic world are well known. Bacterial viruses (bacteriophages) can move genes from one species of bacterium to another by the process of transduction, whereas the more direct movement of naked DNA by transformation commonly involves plasmids. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v416/n6882/pdf/416697a.pdf Maybe evolutionists would like to explain this little wonder: The Virus (Bacteriophage) - Assembly Of A Molecular Machine - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4023122 ------------- But how do they get from a bacteriophage transferring information in bacteria to this? Kangaroo genes close to humans Excerpt: Australia's kangaroos are genetically similar to humans,,, "There are a few differences, we have a few more of this, a few less of that, but they are the same genes and a lot of them are in the same order," ,,,"We thought they'd be completely scrambled, but they're not. There is great chunks of the human genome which is sitting right there in the kangaroo genome," http://www.reuters.com/article/science%20News/idUSTRE4AH1P020081118bornagain77
May 27, 2010
May
05
May
27
27
2010
12:54 PM
12
12
54
PM
PDT
Horizontal code transfer between different operating systems or compilers also happens, as developers share their codes. But code sharing will not by itself result in much progress. At some point someone has to be creative.Granville Sewell
May 27, 2010
May
05
May
27
27
2010
05:37 AM
5
05
37
AM
PDT
They found this in their "virtual" world: (by the way doesn't "virtual world" apply to the whole neo-Darwinian mindset?):
"First, the code never became shared among all organisms - a number of distinct codes remained in use no matter how long the team ran their simulations. Second, in none of their runs did any of the codes evolve to reach the optimal structure of the actual code. “With vertical, Darwinian evolution,” says Goldenfeld, “we found that the code evolution gets stuck and does not find the true optimum.”
Which proves this already established fact; ,,, “Because of Shannon channel capacity that previous (first) codon alphabet had to be at least as complex as the current codon alphabet (DNA code), otherwise transferring the information from the simpler alphabet into the current alphabet would have been mathematically impossible” Donald E. Johnson – Bioinformatics: The Information in Life ,,,and the current code is indeed optimal: DNA - The Genetic Code - Optimal Error Minimization & Parallel Codes - Dr. Fazale Rana - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4491422 Deciphering Design in the Genetic Code Excerpt: When researchers calculated the error-minimization capacity of one million randomly generated genetic codes, they discovered that the error-minimization values formed a distribution where the naturally occurring genetic code's capacity occurred outside the distribution. Researchers estimate the existence of 10 possible genetic codes possessing the same type and degree of redundancy as the universal genetic code. All of these codes fall within the error-minimization distribution. This finding means that of the 10 possible genetic codes, few, if any, have an error-minimization capacity that approaches the code found universally in nature. http://www.reasons.org/biology/biochemical-design/fyi-id-dna-deciphering-design-genetic-code So since Darwinian evolution can't accomplish finding the optimal code,,, what do they do?
Now, with advantageous genetic innovations able to flow horizontally across the entire system the code readily discovered the overall optimal structure and came to be universal among all organisms.
So now what random mutations can't accomplish (generate functional information) they solve by breaking the Optimal code into "bite size" chunks of the functional information of the optimal Genetic Code (nothing up my sleeves), switch the chunks around until WAA LAA,,, the universal code (Instead of "Hey buddy can you spare me some change?" it's "hey buddy can you spare me more money than the world has ever seen?") I wonder did evolution stumble upon this optimality to light also? DNA Optimized for Photostability Excerpt: These nucleobases maximally absorb UV-radiation at the same wavelengths that are most effectively shielded by ozone. Moreover, the chemical structures of the nucleobases of DNA allow the UV-radiation to be efficiently radiated away after it has been absorbed, restricting the opportunity for damage. http://www.reasons.org/dna-soaks-suns-rays Perhaps mindless evolution is also an engineer? The coding system used for living beings is optimal from an engineering standpoint. Werner Gitt, - In The Beginning Was Information - p. 95 and all this begs the question; Why did evolution "decide" to stop trying to horizontally evolve the DNA code? How in the world does evolution know that it has found the optimal one? Collective evolution and the genetic code - 2006: Excerpt: The genetic code could well be optimized to a greater extent than anything else in biology and yet is generally regarded as the biological element least capable of evolving. http://www.pnas.org/content/103/28/10696.full further note; perhaps Darwinists need this repair crew to fix the holes in their theory: Quantum Dots Spotlight DNA-Repair Proteins in Motion - March 2010 Excerpt: "How this system works is an important unanswered question in this field," he said. "It has to be able to identify very small mistakes in a 3-dimensional morass of gene strands. It's akin to spotting potholes on every street all over the country and getting them fixed before the next rush hour." Dr. Bennett Van Houten - of note: A bacterium has about 40 team members on its pothole crew. That allows its entire genome to be scanned for errors in 20 minutes, the typical doubling time.,, These smart machines can apparently also interact with other damage control teams if they cannot fix the problem on the spot. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100311123522.htmbornagain77
May 27, 2010
May
05
May
27
27
2010
04:09 AM
4
04
09
AM
PDT

Leave a Reply