On the complexity of the cell

_{Denyse O'Leary

October 18, 2011

News, Origin Of Life}

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From Expelled:

David Berlinski, philosopher and mathematician, interview by Ben Stein in 2008 documentary Expelled

Stein: Darwin . . . had an idea of the cell as being quite simple, correct?

Berlinski: Yes, everybody did.

Stein: If he thought of the cell as being a Buick, what is the cell now in terms of its complexity by comparison?

Berlinski: A galaxy.

Richard Sternberg, evolutionary biologist, interview by Ben Stein in 2008 documentary Expelled:

Stein: If Darwin thought a cell was, say, a mud hut, what do we now know that a cell is?

Sternberg: More complicated than a Saturn V.

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Wm Dembski wrote about this in 2010Joseph_{October 19, 2011
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Nick, you are very confused. Compared to what we know today Darwin thought the cell was very simple. Geez just look at his drawings of the cell What part of that don't you understand?Joseph_{October 19, 2011
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From Expelled: David Berlinski, philosopher and mathematician, interview by Ben Stein in 2008 documentary Expelled Stein: Darwin . . . had an idea of the cell as being quite simple, correct? Berlinski: Yes, everybody did. Stein: If he thought of the cell as being a Buick, what is the cell now in terms of its complexity by comparison? Berlinski: A galaxy. Richard Sternberg, evolutionary biologist, interview by Ben Stein in 2008 documentary Expelled: Stein: If Darwin thought a cell was, say, a mud hut, what do we now know that a cell is? Sternberg: More complicated than a Saturn V.
Um, we've dealt with the falsity of Expelled's statement before. Creationists/IDists repeating false talking points again and again does not magically make them true. Actual Darwin:
[Darwin, 1868, The variation of animals and plants under domestication, page 404. ] Finally, the power of propagation possessed by each separate cell, using the term in its largest sense, determines the reproduction, the variability, the development and renovation of each living organism. No other attempt, as far as I am aware, has been made, imperfect as this confessedly is, to connect under one point of view these several grand classes of facts. We cannot fathom the marvellous complexity of an organic being; but on the hypothesis here advanced this complexity is much increased. Each living creature must be looked at as a microcosm – a little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars in heaven.
This kind of thing, and the refusal to correct such mistakes when pointed out, is why ID gets no respect from academics, and deserves none.NickMatzke_UD_{October 19, 2011
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Here is a neat little video clip that I wish was a bit longer (they say a longer one is in the works):
The Flow - Resonance Film - video http://vimeo.com/groups/7286/videos/25430131
Description: The Flow, from inside a cell, looks at the supervening layers of reality that we can observe, from quarks to nucleons to atoms and beyond. The deeper we go into the foundations of reality the more it loses its form, eventually becoming a pure mathematical conception.bornagain77_{October 19, 2011
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Here's the clip:
Ben Stein - EXPELLED - The Staggering Complexity Of The Cell - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4227700
further notes:
"The manuals needed for building the entire space shuttle and all its components and all its support systems would be truly enormous! Yet the specified complexity (information) of even the simplest form of life - a bacterium - is arguably as great as that of the space shuttle." J.C. Sanford - Geneticist - Genetic Entropy and the Mystery Of the Genome “Although the tiniest living things known to science, bacterial cells, are incredibly small (10^-12 grams), each is a veritable micro-miniaturized factory containing thousands of elegantly designed pieces of intricate molecular machinery, made up altogether of one hundred thousand million atoms, far more complicated than any machine built by man and absolutely without parallel in the non-living world”. Michael Denton, "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis," 1986, p. 250. The Cell as a Collection of Protein Machines "We have always underestimated cells. Undoubtedly we still do today,,, Indeed, the entire cell can be viewed as a factory that contains an elaborate network of interlocking assembly lines, each which is composed of a set of large protein machines." Bruce Alberts: Former President, National Academy of Sciences; Building a Cell: Staggering Complexity: - Feb. 2010 Excerpt: “All organisms, from bacteria to humans, face the daunting task of replicating, packaging and segregating up to two metres (about 6 x 10^9 base pairs) of DNA when each cell divides,” “,,,the segregation machinery must function with far greater accuracy than man-made machines and with an exquisitely soft touch to prevent the DNA strands from breaking.” Bloom and Joglekar talked “machine language” over and over. The cell has specialized machines for all kinds of tasks: segregation machines, packaging machines, elaborate machines, streamlined machines, protein translocation machines, DNA-processing machines, DNA-translocation machines, robust macromolecular machines, accurate machines, ratchets, translocation pumps, mitotic spindles, DNA springs, coupling devices, and more. The authors struggle to “understand how these remarkable machines function with such exquisite accuracy.” http://www.creationsafaris.com/crev201002.htm#20100202a "To grasp the reality of life as it has been revealed by molecular biology, we must first magnify a cell a thousand million times until it is 20 kilometers in diameter and resembles a giant airship large enough to cover a great city like London or New York. What we would see then would be an object of unparalleled complexity,...we would find ourselves in a world of supreme technology and bewildering complexity." Geneticist Michael Denton PhD., Evolution: A Theory In Crisis, pg.328 Molecular Biology Animations - Demo Reel video http://www.metacafe.com/w/5915291/ The Cell - A World Of Complexity Darwin Never Dreamed Of - Donald E. Johnson - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4139390 Cells Are Like Robust Computational Systems, - June 2009 Excerpt: Gene regulatory networks in cell nuclei are similar to cloud computing networks, such as Google or Yahoo!, researchers report today in the online journal Molecular Systems Biology. The similarity is that each system keeps working despite the failure of individual components, whether they are master genes or computer processors. ,,,,"We now have reason to think of cells as robust computational devices, employing redundancy in the same way that enables large computing systems, such as Amazon, to keep operating despite the fact that servers routinely fail." http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090616103205.htm 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.html 'The information content of a simple cell has been estimated as around 10^12 bits, comparable to about a hundred million pages of the Encyclopedia Britannica." Carl Sagan, "Life" in Encyclopedia Britannica: Macropaedia (1974 ed.), pp. 893-894
of note: The 10^12 bits of information number, for a bacterium, is derived from entropic considerations, which is, due to the tightly integrated relationship between information and entropy, considered the most accurate measure of the transcendent 'Quantum' information being expressed in a 'simple' life form. For calculations please see the following site:
Molecular Biophysics – Information theory. Relation between information and entropy: https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=18hO1bteXTPOqQtd2H12PI5wFFoTjwg8uBAU5N0nEQIE “Is there a real connection between entropy in physics and the entropy of information? ….The equations of information theory and the second law are the same, suggesting that the idea of entropy is something fundamental…” Tom Siegfried, Dallas Morning News, 5/14/90 – Quotes attributed to Robert W. Lucky, Ex. Director of Research, AT&T, Bell Laboratories & John A. Wheeler, of Princeton & Univ. of TX, Austin
Notes on efficiency
Life Leads the Way to Invention - Feb. 2010 Excerpt: a cell is 10,000 times more energy-efficient than a transistor. “ In one second, a cell performs about 10 million energy-consuming chemical reactions, which altogether require about one picowatt (one millionth millionth of a watt) of power.” This and other amazing facts lead to an obvious conclusion: inventors ought to look to life for ideas.,,, Essentially, cells may be viewed as circuits that use molecules, ions, proteins and DNA instead of electrons and transistors. That analogy suggests that it should be possible to build electronic chips – what Sarpeshkar calls “cellular chemical computers” – that mimic chemical reactions very efficiently and on a very fast timescale. http://creationsafaris.com/crev201002.htm#20100226a
A cell apparently seems to be successfully designed along the very stringent guidelines laid out by Landauer's principle of 'reversible computation' in order to achieve such amazing energy efficiency, something man has yet to accomplish in any meaningful way for computers:
Notes on Landauer’s principle, reversible computation, and Maxwell’s Demon - Charles H. Bennett Excerpt: Of course, in practice, almost all data processing is done on macroscopic apparatus, dissipating macroscopic amounts of energy far in excess of what would be required by Landauer’s principle. Nevertheless, some stages of biomolecular information processing, such as transcription of DNA to RNA, appear to be accomplished by chemical reactions that are reversible not only in principle but in practice.,,,, http://www.hep.princeton.edu/~mcdonald/examples/QM/bennett_shpmp_34_501_03.pdf
etc.. etc.. etc..bornagain77_{October 19, 2011
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