Regulating the Regulators: A Single Arginine Insertion in the Glucocorticoid Receptor Changes Protein Expression

...continuing reference to "genes" does not obscure the fact that the early notion of clearly identifiable particulate units of inheritance that not only can be associated with particular traits but also can be taken as agents that "act" to produce those traits has become hopelessly confounded by what has been learned about the intricacies of genetic regulation. - Evelyn Fox Keller

Mung

Box: Great point by Talbott, thanks for pointing that out. Cornelius Hunter

OT: New Paper states atmospheric oxygen was present on Earth much earlier than Darwinists were forced to presuppose: Oxygen, the Scourge of Evolution - Oct. 10, 2013 Excerpt: The scourge of evolution has re-emerged?this time with renewed vengeance. Scientists have long known that extremely low levels of free-oxygen [< 10-5] atmosphere on early Earth is critical for any viable origin of life model of evolution.,,, Geophysicist Stephen C. Meyer of the University of Cambridge notes in Signature in the Cell that “even a small amount of atmospheric oxygen will quench the production of biologically significant building blocks and cause biomolecules otherwise present to degrade rapidly.” ,,, History of Early Earth Free-Oxygen Theory One of the first to throw the wrench into the GOE theory was geologist Harrison Brown of the University of Chicago in the 1960s, noting that stellar atmosphere vanished or never existed on Earth. By the 1970s, Philip Abelson of the Carnegie Institution gave a simple Q&A: “What is the evidence for a primitive methane-ammonia atmosphere on Earth? The answer is that there is no evidence for it, but much against it.” Later in the 1970s, Canadian geologists Erich Dimroth and Michael Kimberly issued the following finding: “In general, we find no evidence in the sedimentary distributions of carbon, sulfur, uranium, or iron, that an oxygen-free atmosphere has existed at any time during the span of geological history recorded in well-preserved sedimentary rocks.” Belgium Biochemist, Marcel Florkin, joined Dimroth and Kimberly in 1975 noting that “the concept of a reducing primitive atmosphere has been abandoned,” and the Miller–Urey experiment is “not now considered geologically adequate.” Even molecular biologists, Sidney Fox and Klaus Dose, joined the discussion in 1977 declaring, “The inference that Miller’s synthesis does not have a geological relevance has become increasingly widespread.” In 1982, British geologists Harry Clemmey and Nick Badham after examining the evidence from the rocks proclaimed, “From the time of the earliest dated rocks at 3.7 billion years, Earth had an oxygenic atmosphere.” By 1995, Jon Cohen, senior editor for Science, the flagship journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) announced, “The early atmosphere looked nothing like the Miller–Urey simulation.” With the evidence became too massive to ignore any longer, in 1998 Richard Monastersky, writing for the National Geographicfinally broadcast, “Many scientists now suspect that the early atmosphere was very different from what Miller first supposed.” (New) Scientific Evidence for Early Earth Free-Oxygen Theory An international research team led by Sean Crowe University of Southern Denmark in September (2013) published in the journal Nature a paper re-establishing the presence of atmospheric oxygen on early Earth. The team representing the nations of Denmark, South Africa, and Germany discovered oxygen to exceed 30-times beyond the critical concentration of < 10^-5. http://www.darwinthenandnow.com/2013/10/oxygen-the-scourge-of-evolution-4/ bornagain77

Bornagain77, thank you very much for your patience and fascinating information. These are interesting times. It’s very interesting to see that when we study the universe and follow a chain of events towards the big bang, or when we study the cell and follow regulators, who regulate regulators, in search of a master controller, or when we split matter into tiny bits in search for fundamental material reality the same thing happens: We are confronted with what we cannot explain with good old cause an effect: ‘Unmoved Mover’, ‘Holism’, ‘Beyond Space and Time’. Box

Well Box, as far as I can tell, Dr. Hameroff holds to a metaphysics that is based in large part on Eastern pantheism (which, IMHO, gets him in trouble on larger issues such as the origin of material reality itself). But that being said, and again as far as I can tell, and forgive me if I'm wrong, but I do believe he holds that consciousness/spiritual mind (or even 'soul') connects at the 'quantum' level. In fact, he has a fairly long history of being very antagonistic to the reductive materialist's position. Note the title of this following article by Hameroff in which he hypothesizes about what happens to the soul upon death:

Being the skunk at an atheist convention - Stuart Hameroff Excerpt: When metabolic requirements for quantum coherence in brain microtubules are lost (e.g. death, near-death), quantum information pertaining to that individual may persist and remain entangled in Planck scale geometry. http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/skunk.htm

Also of note, Hameroff's infamous Orch-Or model (microtubules) for quantum consciousness has very recently received preliminary confirmation from, as far as I know, the first direct test for it:

Evidence for Quantum Consciousness - video Excerpt: Fascinating new study. The chemical anesthetic 1-azidoanthracine was administered to tadpoles and found to work by disrupting microtubules in the nervous system. A second chemical which repaired the microtubules was found to restore consciousness. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Wxtzpp4Gts

bornagain77

Bornagain77, Does Hameroff's line of reasoning entail that the spiritual mind (soul) connects to the body at quantum level? Box

Box as to:

Searching ‘the master controller capable of dictating cellular fates’ seems similar to searching for the First Cause – Aquinas Unmoved Mover.

Pardon my elementary knowledge of philosophy, but, as far as what is ‘the master controller capable of dictating cellular fates’ is, I, as far as the empirical evidence would allow me, arrived at the 'soul' for describing ‘the master controller capable of dictating cellular fates’: A few notes along the line of 'oneness' arising from an almost countless myriad of molecular parts and cells:

Da Vinci Vitruve Luc Viatour – interactive image http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/22/Da_Vinci_Vitruve_Luc_Viatour.jpg One Body - animation - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDMLq6eqEM4 HOW BIOLOGISTS LOST SIGHT OF THE MEANING OF LIFE — AND ARE NOW STARING IT IN THE FACE - Stephen L. Talbott - May 2012 Excerpt: “If you think air traffic controllers have a tough job guiding planes into major airports or across a crowded continental airspace, consider the challenge facing a human cell trying to position its proteins”. A given cell, he notes, may make more than 10,000 different proteins, and typically contains more than a billion protein molecules at any one time. “Somehow a cell must get all its proteins to their correct destinations — and equally important, keep these molecules out of the wrong places”. And further: “It’s almost as if every mRNA [an intermediate between a gene and a corresponding protein] coming out of the nucleus knows where it’s going” (Travis 2011),,, Further, the billion protein molecules in a cell are virtually all capable of interacting with each other to one degree or another; they are subject to getting misfolded or “all balled up with one another”; they are critically modified through the attachment or detachment of molecular subunits, often in rapid order and with immediate implications for changing function; they can wind up inside large-capacity “transport vehicles” headed in any number of directions; they can be sidetracked by diverse processes of degradation and recycling . . . and so on without end. Yet the coherence of the whole is maintained. The question is indeed, then, “How does the organism meaningfully dispose of all its molecules, getting them to the right places and into the right interactions?” The same sort of question can be asked of cells, for example in the growing embryo, where literal streams of cells are flowing to their appointed places, differentiating themselves into different types as they go, and adjusting themselves to all sorts of unpredictable perturbations — even to the degree of responding appropriately when a lab technician excises a clump of them from one location in a young embryo and puts them in another, where they may proceed to adapt themselves in an entirely different and proper way to the new environment. It is hard to quibble with the immediate impression that form (which is more idea-like than thing-like) is primary, and the material particulars subsidiary. http://www.netfuture.org/2012/May1012_184.html#2 The 'Top Down' Theistic Structure Of The Universe and Of The Human Body Excerpt: 1. The lowest level of our bodies are the material atoms of our body. 2. The next higher level of our bodies is the energy of our bodies (biophotons). 3. The next higher level of our bodies is the 'non-local', beyond space and time, quantum entanglement/information of our bodies (of which the classical information that is encoded on our DNA is found to be a subset of). 4. The highest level of our bodies is the consciousness of our mind. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NhA4hiQnYiyCTiqG5GelcSJjy69e1DT3OHpqlx6rACs/edit Does Quantum Biology Support A Quantum Soul? – Stuart Hameroff – video (notes in description) http://vimeo.com/29895068 Quantum Entangled Consciousness (Permanence/Conservation of Quantum Information) – Life After Death – Stuart Hameroff – video https://vimeo.com/39982578

Verse and Music:

Deuteronomy 6:4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord: John Michael Talbot & Michard Card - "One Faith" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQXiLOLw5-o

bornagain77

//Follow up: Searching 'the master controller capable of dictating cellular fates' seems similar to searching for the First Cause - Aquinas Unmoved Mover. Box

Bornagain77, Talbott is very convincing when he addresses the 'elephant', isn't he? Maybe dr.Hunter would care to comment on Talbott's holism? Box

Box, timely quote from Talbott! Talbott has a gift for focusing on the 'elephant in the living room' that is constantly ignored in molecular biology. Namely regulation and control must be a 'top down' holistic process. A 'top down' process that takes the whole of the cell or organism into consideration. It is impossible in principle, contrary to what the central dogma of Darwinism may maintain, for an organism or cell to be regulated or controlled solely in a 'bottom up' fashion. Empirical evidence is finally catching up as Denis Nobel has recently noted:

“The genome is an ‘organ of the cell’, not its dictator” - Denis Nobel – President of the International Union of Physiological Sciences http://musicoflife.co.uk/ Modern Synthesis Of Neo-Darwinism Is False – Denis Nobel – video http://www.metacafe.com/w/10395212

bornagain77

Stephen L Talbott: "When regulators are in turn regulated, what do we mean by “regulate” — and where within the web of regulation can we single out a master controller capable of dictating cellular fates? And if we can’t, what are reputable scientists doing when they claim to have identified such a controller, or, rather, various such controllers? If they really mean something like “influencers,” then that’s fine. But influence is not about mechanism and control; the things at issue just don’t have controlling powers. What we see, rather, is a continual mutual adaptation, interaction, and coordination that occurs from above. What we see, that is — once we start following out all the interactions at a molecular level — is not some mechanism dictating the fate or controlling an activity of the organism, but simply an organism-wide coherence — a living, metamorphosing form of activity — within which the more or less distinct partial activities find their proper place. The misrepresentation of this organic coherence in favor of supposed controlling mechanisms is not an innocent inattention to language; it’s a fundamental misrepresentation of reality at the central point where we are challenged to understand the character of living things." Box

Thanks for this post and you other post Dr. Hunter. bornagain77