Transcription Factors: More Species-Specific Biology

"Once again the evolutionary textbooks are wrong, but no matter, evolution is a fact. Religion drives science and it matters. " Oh, please. Which evolutionary textbook does this contradict? “The text books tell us that transcription factors recognise the genes that they regulate by binding to short, sequence-specific lengths of DNA upstream or downstream of their target genes.” The text books are right. The support to evolution that molecular biology offers is in the strong signal of common descent in the genes - many ID advocates agree that this signal exists. "Darwinism" makes no predictions regarding any particular piece of DNA - DNA was, after all, unknown in Darwin's day. neo-Darwinism may have a little more to say regarding the progress of allele variants through a population, and the source of differences between populations. But the observation that sequences vary between species is an evolutionary puzzle? Come on!Chas D

October 21, 2011

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It is rather obvious that the main modifications in the last stages of evolution are at the regulation level. A re-wiring of transciption factor binding sites is certainly part of that, but probably not all. I have said often, here, that the regulation procedures are certainly the most complex level of biological information. They have to determine the individual transcriptomes of each cell, and the general plan of multicellular organisms, and coordinate the responses to a constantly changing environment, both outer and inner. Nothing of that can be achieved only by a static information about the final effectors (the proteins). The map of transcription factors binding sites is certainly an important level, but IMO still does not explain the complex regulation of the intricate transcription factor network, which really defies our understanding. A lot of others "actors" have been investigated, form DNA methilation to regulator RNA and short peptides, and so on. The simple truth is: we are still missing the procedures. The real software defies us. The only reason why we often discuss the complexity of proteins here, and not the complexity of regulation, is that we don't really understand how regulation is regulated. Darwinists, as always, rely on our ignorance to defend their wrong theories. While they cannot even explain the information in a single protein, they are certainly happy that they have not to explain higher level information, simply because it is difficult to say where it is stored and how. But maybe it is time to apply a little combinatorics and quantitative analysis at least to the aspects we are beginning to understand. So, we could start asking how many functional modifications with reproductive advantage can emerge form random variation of the transcription factor binding sites, or by random reshuffling of existing protein domains, an argument that is dear to some darwinists, and that will certainly be in the future a strong argument for ID.gpuccio

October 21, 2011

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