What? An honest admission about the bacterial flagellum from Darwin-driven biology?

_{Denyse O'Leary

October 28, 2020

Culture, Darwinism, Intelligent Design, Irreducible Complexity

2}_{Categories
Culture
Darwinism
Intelligent Design
Irreducible Complexity}

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It’s apparently now okay to just admit this:

To build the machinery that enables bacteria to swim, over 50 proteins have to be assembled according to a logic and well-defined order to form the flagellum, the cellular equivalent of an offshore engine of a boat. To be functional, the flagellum is assembled piece by piece, ending with the helix called flagellar filament, composed of six different subunits called flagellins. Microbiologists from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) have demonstrated that adding sugar to the flagellins is crucial for the flagellum’s assembly and functionality. This glycosylation is carried out by a newly discovered enzyme FlmG, whose role was hitherto unknown. Based on this observation — which you can read all about in the journal eLife — the researchers followed up with a second discovery published in Developmental Cell. Among the six flagellins of Caulobacter crescentus, the model bacterium in the two studies, one is the special one serving a signalling role to trigger the final assembly of the flagellum.
Université de Genève, “The sweet spot of flagellar assembly” at ScienceDaily

They ADMIT this? It sounds like a Recovery Meeting. “I used to be a serious Darwinist but then my life got out of control and… “

Yes, you called us so you are on the right track. Stay real. Avoid the bad stuff. Stick with “logic,” “well-defined order …”

Paper. (paywall) JAWA at 1 (to whom much thanks is due)says the paper can be accessed free here.

Do we need a no-crap helpline for recovering Darwinists? We wanna make this easy. There’s a whole world out there.

Comments

@bobO’H Do you have anything to contribute besides, ‘Ho hum, So what?’ ?Belfast_{October 30, 2020
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What's pathetic is that Pallen, Matzke and other evos think that Pallen and Matzke solved the problem. Evos are a cluelessly desperate lot.ET_{October 29, 2020
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polistra @17: "... Normally the flagellum is compared to an ordinary electric motor" No, normally it is compared to an outboard motor. like this one: https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-v0t80e1mw/images/stencil/1280x1280/products/8943/15714/2019_HONDA_2.3_HP_BF2.3DHSCH_Outboard_Motor__75527__06725.1588791843.jpg?c=1martin_r_{October 29, 2020
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'Offshore engine' is an odd term. It doesn't have a standard definition; the engines that seem to be classified informally as offshore engines are giant house-sized multi-cylinder diesels used in freighters. Normally the flagellum is compared to an ordinary electric motor; a stepping motor as used in printers is even closer and more familiar to moderns.polistra_{October 29, 2020
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corrected link:
A short history of Matzke’s literature bluffing – Nov. 2015 https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/darwins-view-of-the-fossil-record/#comment-589458
bornagain77_{October 29, 2020
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ET @13 "Neither Pallen nor Matzke understand how blind and mindless processes could have produced any bacterial flagellum." what is worse, most lay Darwinian clowns (e.g. Seversky or BobOH) don't even know, that a flagellum allegedly arose/evolved at least 3 times independently :))))) Yes, this miracle allegedly happened 3 times !!! Darwinian clowns do really believe in miracles.... (actually, Darwinian clowns like Seversky or BobOH don't even know what they believe in) Here you go: Bacterial flagellum Eubacterial flagellum Archaeal flagellum These three flagellum are NOT EVOLUTIONARY RELATED !!!! These three flagellum allegedly 'evolved' INDEPENDENTLY !!! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_flagella So, who believes in miracles ? Darwinians do ...martin_r_{October 29, 2020
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And it isn't just that 50 or more proteins are required. Those subunits are required in varying quantities. It isn't enough to have one of each.ET_{October 29, 2020
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Neither Pallen nor Matzke understand how blind and mindless processes could have produced any bacterial flagellum. Their paper was pure speculation and imagination. It should never have made it into a scientific journal. It just exposes the desperation of mainstream science that it was.ET_{October 29, 2020
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What is evolution? What is a fact? Well, the fact is that hereditary changes happen and that their frequencies fluctuate based on environmental factors. The fact is also that wind, rain, fog or radiation happen. People often fail to understand that the fact that a process happens has nothing to do with imagining what this process can or cannot do. And this is exactly what the theory of evolution does. It imagines that process of evolution can lead to rapid functional changes that are observed in the fossil record or inferred from it. Functional changes are de novo appearances of organs, organ systems or body planes (for e.g. Cambrian explosion) or transformations of pre-existing organs into functionally distinct ones (for e.g. imagined whale evolution where forelimbs supposedly transformed into flippers, tail into flukes, nostrils into blowholes, teeth into baleen, etc.). But that what is imagined in the theory never happens in reality. Namely, from their last divergence point until today, all the existing species have continuously been under the evolution process. That is, they have undergone hereditary changes whose frequencies have fluctuated based on environmental factors. So basically, what we have had is a live experiment that tested whether the evolution process can lead to functional changes. And today, we can observe its results. Without an exception, the results show that not a single species has even started transforming organs into functionally distinct ones, let alone created de novo organs, organ systems or body planes. Take humans for example. We and chimps share the DNA of a species that lived 5 myr ago. At that time, the divergence between us and chimps happened.[1] Since then, we have undergone a lot of evolution. Yet today, all humans are functionally the same. Meaning, not a single human population or subspecies has been observed that would have some novel organ, like the Cambrian species had. Nor the changes lead to transformation of pre-existing organs into functionally distinct ones, like in the imagined whale evolution. Specifically, even when change, such as webbed fingers happened in an individual - which the theory imagines is the first step towards the flipper-like organ, this never got speciated into a separate human subspecies and became the norm, that is, the fixed trait. Rather, it always ended up being just an abnormality that lead to an evolutionary dead-end. The same is true for all other species, regardless of their last divergence point. For lemurs, this point was 40 myr ago. For fig wasps, rats, crocodiles, coelacanths and nautiluses this point was 60, 100, 200, 350 and 500 myr ago respectively. But again, all the individual changes lead to evolutionary dead-ends instead of becoming traits. That is why not a single population or subspecies within said species has been observed that would have de novo organs or functional transformations of the existing ones. So the live experiment has shown that regardless of time, the evolution process literally never leads to functional changes. That means, first, that the evolution process is not the cause of rapid functional changes that are observed in the fossil record. Second, that the evolution theory imagines the opposite to what is observed in reality. Imagining the opposite to what is observed in reality is called pseudoscience. --------- 1. Given the experiment presented here - which shows the complete creative powerlessness of evolution, it logically follows that the divergence was designed. Namely, the designer used the DNA of a species that lived 5 myr ago to produce two separate species - chimps and humans. This is how design operates. New things are not created from scratch but are rather just updated with new functional information. That is why we observe, for e.g., shared ERVs among human and chimps. Or the progression from a land animal to whales in the fossil record. In the creation of whales the designer simply decided to use the DNA of some pre-existing land animal to see what kind of aquatic animal will turn out. So both the fossil record and patterns observed in the DNA are in line with the Intelligent Design view of biological development.forexhr_{October 29, 2020
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OK, so nobody wants to dispute that everyone thinks that bacterial flagella are complicated. That's progress, I suppose.Bob O'H_{October 29, 2020
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A few related notes,
Michael Behe's Challenge -- Past, Present, and Future - September 22, 2016 Excerpt: Did the Western nations solve Michael Behe's challenge? If so, they have a strange way of claiming success: “The proteins that form the bacterial flagellar system have no known homologs in eukaryotic cells. The eukaryotic flagellar [sic], based on a microtubule-containing axoneme, is vastly more complicated. In fact, the current estimate for the number of different proteins in the axoneme is ?425. In contrast, the archaeal flagellar system appears simpler than the bacterial one and can contain as few as 13 different proteins. As with the eukaryotic flagellar system, the archaeal one does not have homology with the bacterial one and must have arisen by means of convergent evolution.” Ah yes, convergent evolution again. But think about what they say here. The "vastly more complicated" eukaryotic flagellum has no known commonalities with the bacterial flagellum, and the bacterial flagellum has no homolog in the archaeal flagellum: "In archaeal flagellins, however, no homology has yet been found outside of the N-terminal domain with any bacterial or eukaryotic proteins." Do they show any common ancestry between these motors? None. Are we to believe, then, that blind processes happened upon three naturalistic miracles independently? http://www.evolutionnews.org/2016/09/michael_behes_c103159.html The Flagellar Filament Cap: Up close micro-photograph and animations of cap - Jonathan M. - August 2013 Excerpt: We are so used to thinking about biological machines at a macroscopic level that it is all too easy to overlook the molecular structure of their individual components. The closer we inspect biochemical systems, such as flagella, the more the elegant design -- as well as the magnitude of the challenge to Darwinism -- becomes apparent. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/08/the_flagellar_f075101.html Engineering at Its Finest: Bacterial Chemotaxis and Signal Transduction - JonathanM - September 2011 Excerpt: The bacterial flagellum represents not just a problem of irreducible complexity. Rather, the problem extends far deeper than that. What we are now observing is the existence of irreducibly complex systems within irreducibly complex systems. How random mutations, coupled with natural selection, could have assembled such a finely set-up system is a question to which I defy any Darwinist to give a sensible answer. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/09/engineering_at_its_finest_bact050911.html Biologist Howard Berg at Harvard has called the Bacterial Flagellum “the most efficient machine in the universe." Amazing Flagellum - Scott Minnich & Stephen Meyer – 2016 video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNR48hUd-Hw
bornagain77_{October 29, 2020
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Bob O'H, who has his own problems with letting the evidence speak for itself, (instead of trying to force the evidence to say what he wants it to say),,,
Bob O’Hara Professor at NTNU “I torture data until it confesses. Sometimes I have to resort to Bayesianism” – 2016 “I tortured data, mainly in ecology and evolutionary biology.” – 2009 https://de.linkedin.com/in/bob-o-hara-93b0a210
Bob O'H, who has his own problems, has appealed to Nick Matxke and company to try to support his belief that the flagellum was the product of unguided Darwinian processes. To put it bluntly, that is like one criminal who is on trial appealing to another criminal who is on trial as a character witness at a trial.
A short history of Matzke's literature bluffing – Nov. 2015 https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/darwins-view-of-the-fossil-record/#comment-589458
Contrary to what Bob O'H personally believes, Nick Matzke has not even gotten close to 'scientifically' explaining the origin of the flagellum. (FYI Bob, 'just so stories' do not count as scientific explanations.)
Calling Nick Matzke's literature bluff on molecular machines - DonaldM UD blogger - April 2013 Excerpt: So now, 10 years later in 2006 Matzke and Pallen come along with this review article. The interesting thing about this article is that, despite all the hand waving claims about all these dozens if not hundreds of peer reviewed research studies showing how evolution built a flagellum, Matzke and Pallen didn’t have a single such reference in their bibliography. Nor did they reference any such study in the article. Rather, the article went into great lengths to explain how a researcher might go about conducting a study to show how evolution could have produced the system. Well, if all those articles and studies were already there, why not just point them all out? In shorty, the entire article was a tacit admission that Behe had been right all along.?Fast forward to now and Andre’s question directed to Matzke. We’re now some 17 years after Behe’s book came out where he made that famous claim. And, no surprise, there still is not a single peer reviewed research study that provides the Darwinian explanation for a bacterial flagellum (or any of the other irreducibly complex biological systems Behe mentioned in the book). We’re almost 7 years after the Matzke & Pallen article. So where are all these research studies? There’s been ample time for someone to do something in this regard.?Matzke will not answer the question because there is no answer he can give…no peer reviewed research study he can reference, other than the usual literature bluffing he’s done in the past. https://uncommondescent.com/irreducible-complexity/andre-asks-an-excellent-question-regarding-dna-as-a-part-of-an-in-cell-irreducibly-complex-communication-system/#comment-453291 Matzke Is Back On The Flagellum Horse - November 11, 2019 Excerpt: I won’t go into a lengthy discussion of this latest article. Suffice it to say that in the 13 years since the ’06 review article, apparently there still are no peer reviewed research studies that provide the Darwinian model of how a bacterial flagellum came to be. There’s really nothing to review in this article because there just isn’t anything new here. Its more a bunch of assertions without evidence. ,,, The real take away here, of course, is that 23 years after Behe’s book was published, it is still the case that there simply are no peer reviewed research studies that provide an evolutionary model to explain the origin of the bacterial flagellum. If there was, then all Matke et.al. would have to do is reference all those studies. Yet that remains the one thing missing in all of the articles and comments. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/matzke-is-back-on-the-flagellum-horse/
In fact, as the article in the OP makes clear, the 'problem' that the flagellum presents for Darwinists has only gotten worse, not better, as more scientific evidence has come along since Matzke first wrote that article back in 2006. For instance, Behe's 1 in 10^20 'prediction' for the rarity of protein-protein binding sites, a 'prediction' that he made in his book 'The Edge of Evolution',,,,
Waiting Longer for Two Mutations - Michael J. Behe Excerpt: Citing malaria literature sources (White 2004) I had noted that the de novo appearance of chloroquine resistance in Plasmodium falciparum was an event of probability of 1 in 10^20. I then wrote that 'for humans to achieve a mutation like this by chance, we would have to wait 100 million times 10 million years' (1 quadrillion years)(Behe 2007) (because that is the extrapolated time that it would take to produce 10^20 humans). Durrett and Schmidt (2008, p. 1507) retort that my number ‘is 5 million times larger than the calculation we have just given’ using their model (which nonetheless "using their model" gives a prohibitively long waiting time of 216 million years). Their criticism compares apples to oranges. My figure of 10^20 is an empirical statistic from the literature; it is not, as their calculation is, a theoretical estimate from a population genetics model. Generally, when the results of a simple model disagree with observational data, it is an indication that the model is inadequate.,,, The difficulty with models such as Durrett and Schmidt’s is that their biological relevance is often uncertain, and unknown factors that are quite important to cellular evolution may be unintentionally left out of the model. That is why experimental or observational data on the evolution of microbes such as P. falciparum are invaluable,, http://www.discovery.org/a/9461
Behe's 1 in 10^20 'prediction' for the rarity of protein-protein binding sites, has now been empirically confirmed to be a true limit:
Michael Behe - Observed (1 in 10^20) Edge of Evolution - video - Lecture delivered in April 2015 at Colorado School of Mines 25:56 minute quote - "This is not an argument anymore that Darwinism cannot make complex functional systems; it is an observation that it does not." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9svV8wNUqvA
bornagain77_{October 29, 2020
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Does anyone seriously doubt that the bacterial flagellum is a clear evidence of ID? :)jawa_{October 29, 2020
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Does anyone seriously doubt that the bacterial flagellum is irreducibly complex? ;)jawa_{October 29, 2020
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Specificity in glycosylation of multiple flagellins by the modular and cell cycle regulated glycosyltransferase FlmG https://elifesciences.org/articles/60488jawa_{October 29, 2020
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Does anyone seriously doubt that the bacterial flagellum is complicated? Even when discussing its evolution, Mark Pallen & Nick Matzke describe it as complicated, and Liu & Ochman called it "a primary example of a complex apparatus".Bob O'H_{October 29, 2020
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BobRyan, That’s an interesting observation. Hmm...jawa_{October 29, 2020
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Considering how many times Darwin has been proven wrong, Darwinists are incapable of accepting the error of their beliefs.BobRyan_{October 29, 2020
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They ain’t seen nothin’ yet. As biology research continues to make discoveries that increasingly confirm the ID paradigm, many scientists will realize how wrong they were getting intoxicated with the macroevolutionary elixir. It’s just a matter of time. And it will happen sooner than many expect.jawa_{October 28, 2020
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See if you can open this PDF copy of the paper: https://www.cell.com/developmental-cell/pdf/S1534-5807(20)30795-4.pdfjawa_{October 28, 2020
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