Discussion on the lengthy Remarkable Nucleotides thread has become unwieldy, as well as not much about remarkable nucleotides anymore. This thread serves for continuing sidelines off-topic there - OoL and ET scenarios primarily, as well as physical diversions.
"The success of Darwin's theory…stems from the manner in which Darwin's theory has been successfully used to guide research and generate insights into biology. Such research and insights have, in turn, generated much circumstancial evidence that supports the Darwinian thesis." (Mike Gene in his book, The Design Matrix; a Consilience of Clues, p.26). Read the rest of this entry »
In their PLOS One paper titled Stylus: A System for Evolutionary Experimentation Based on a Protein/Proteome Model with Non-Arbitrary Functional Constraints, Douglas D. Axe, Brendan W. Dixon and Philip Lu of the Biologic Institute, introduced new software known as Stylus. Stylus is intended to more realistically model proteins and evolutionary constraints with more accurate linkage of protein structure to function. The nature of some current models, compromises accurate assessments of protein transition possibilities and the mapping of sequences to changes in function.
It's not Yasgur's Farm, but what happens at the Konrad Lorenz Institute in Altenberg, Austria this July promises to be far more transforming for the world than Woodstock. What it amounts to is a gathering of 16 biologists and philosophers of rock star stature – let's call them "the Altenberg 16" – who recognize that the theory of evolution which most practicing biologists accept and which is taught in classrooms today, is inadequate in explaining our existence. It's pre the discovery of DNA, lacks a theory for body form and does not accomodate "other" new phenomena. So the theory Charles Darwin gave us, which was dusted off and repackaged 70 years ago, seems about to be reborn as the "Extended Evolutionary Synthesis".
You've heard of a Flea Circus… now get ready for the Germ Circus!
Thinking Ahead: Bacteria Anticipate Coming Changes In Their Environment
LOL!!! Something a bit more than Shapiro's "cellular intelligence," researchers at Princeton have demonstrated some interesting intelligence in e.coli per anticipating future conditions and turning genes on or off based on that acquired knowledge.
In addition to shedding light on deep questions in biology, the findings could have many practical implications. They could help scientists understand how bacteria mutate to develop resistance to antibiotics. They may also help in developing specialized bacteria to perform useful tasks such as cleaning up environmental contamination.
Huh. An understanding of evolution as endogenous adaptive mutagenesis looks to "have many practical implications?" Who'd a thunk?
The researchers say that their findings open up many exciting avenues of research. They are planning to use similar methods to study how bacteria exchange genes with one another (horizontal gene transfer), how tissues and organs develop (morphogenesis), how viral infections spread, and other core problems in biology.
By golly, here we have actual biological scientists at an Ivy League institution and publishing in Science reporting that life anticipates the future at the most rudimentary level and adapts itself accordingly. Who was it who predicted years ago that science would eventually come to accept an EAM-ish version of intelligent design in biological evolution because it offers better solutions to 'problems' the RM-NS paradigm simply cannot explain?
Very cool.
Piattelli-Palmarini: Ostracism W/out Nat Selection, is the title of an article featuring an interview of Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini by Suzan Mazur. It is rich in notable quotes. Although Piattelli-Palmarini has some counter-mainstream ideas he establshes his bonafides with mainstreamers with this comment:
I think that abandoning Darwinism (or explicitly relegating it where it belongs, in the refinement and tuning of existing forms) sounds anti-scientific. They fear that the tenants of intelligent design and the creationists (people I hate as much as they do) will rejoice and quote them as being on their side. They really fear that, so they are prudent, some in good faith, some for calculated fear of being cast out of the scientific community.
Here. Since there is very little evidence the blind watchmaker can do that much without help from proteins, the next question to ask is: why are proteins so incredibly helpful to the blind watchmaker?
Guts posted this video before, but I thought I would repost it. I especially enjoyed the comments from Sean Carroll (according to Michael Ruse, "Of all the scientists in the world today, there is no one with whom Charles Darwin would rather spend an evening than Sean Carroll."):
So what this means is in some ways, some sense, evolution is a simpler process than we first thought. When you think about all of the diversity of forms out there, we first believed this would involve all sorts of novel creations, starting from scratch, again and again and again. We now understand that, no, that evolution works with packets of information and uses them in a new and different ways, and new and different combinations, without necessarily having to invent anything fundamentally new, but new combinations.
My, that's a pretty radical change in the way we view evolution. The old way was far more friendly to non-teleology and also failed to prepare scientists for the more accurate understanding of evolution, an understanding that is now much more friendly to teleology.
After reading The Design Matrix
But let me start with three points.
Earth's first animal was the ocean-drifting comb jelly, not the simple sponge, according to a new find that has shocked scientists who didn't imagine the earliest critter could be so complex.
[...]
"This was a complete shocker," said study team member Casey Dunn of Brown University in Rhode Island. "So shocking that we initially thought something had gone very wrong."
Dunn's team checked and re-checked their results and came up with the same result every time: the comb jelly came first. The results are detailed in the April 10 issue of the journal Nature, a journal that, like most respected journals, requires other scientists review a paper prior to publication.
[...]
The finding was unexpected because evolutionary biologists had thought that less complex animals split off and evolved separately first. Dunn says that two evolutionary scenarios can explain why the comb jellies would actually have been first among animals. The first is that the comb jelly evolved its complexity independent of other animals after branching off to forge its own path.
The second is that the sponge evolved its simpler form from the more complex form. This second possibility underscores the fact that "evolution is not necessarily just a march towards increased complexity," Dunn said.
Read the rest here.
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