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To: exDemMom; Mr. Silverback
Evolutionary theory tells me that the pathway will be highly similar in closely related species, and more divergent in distantly related species.

You do see, don't you, that you're begging the question? I know that in my graduate level work in the biological sciences (neurobio/pharm/phys) the appeal to phylogenetic similarities is more of a genuflection than anything. Only in the Department of Evolution/Ecology is it of any real importance. Read through Alberts Molecular Biology of the Cell. Evolution is scarcely mentioned. Why? It's not necessary for understanding the molecular biology of the cell. Someone may want along the way to invent ad hoc stories to explain why this or that is like this or that or not like this or that or the other. Molecular biology has become a powerful field in science because of the techniques developed to investigate the workings of the cell. There is nothing about cellular metabolism or architecture that is inexplicable without an appeal to a theory of evolution. Most of what passes for an evolutionary explanation in most of actual experimental biology amounts to a form of parasitism by which a philosophical predisposition hitches a ride with successful experimental technique and then claims credit for its success.
153 posted on 08/21/2011 4:14:50 PM PDT by aruanan
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To: aruanan
You do see, don't you, that you're begging the question? I know that in my graduate level work in the biological sciences (neurobio/pharm/phys) the appeal to phylogenetic similarities is more of a genuflection than anything. Only in the Department of Evolution/Ecology is it of any real importance. Read through Alberts Molecular Biology of the Cell. Evolution is scarcely mentioned. Why? It's not necessary for understanding the molecular biology of the cell. Someone may want along the way to invent ad hoc stories to explain why this or that is like this or that or not like this or that or the other. Molecular biology has become a powerful field in science because of the techniques developed to investigate the workings of the cell. There is nothing about cellular metabolism or architecture that is inexplicable without an appeal to a theory of evolution. Most of what passes for an evolutionary explanation in most of actual experimental biology amounts to a form of parasitism by which a philosophical predisposition hitches a ride with successful experimental technique and then claims credit for its success.

I believe I've read Alberts Molecular Biology of the Cell from cover to cover, but it's been a long time since I picked it or any other text book up. If one were studying cell biology, without trying to answer questions about species similarities--say, one's work is to define a specific metabolic pathway using a single system--then I suppose one could conduct such work without consideration of evolutionary theory.

My graduate work, however, was dedicating both to dissecting the pathway (the toxin response pathway that I mentioned in my previous post) and to trying to understand why it behaves so differently in different species (or in different human sub-populations). Others in the lab were trying to find the key players in other species. I'm not sure how we could even approach that work if we were to reject all of the tenets of the theory of evolution. It was through looking at homologies--which are both predictable by, and supportive of, evolutionary theory--that we were able to design PCR primers to use to successfully look for this protein (well, the gene for it anyway) in a species where it had not yet been found.

In the more recent past, I was assisting a gynecologist with papillomavirus research. Different strains of the virus hitchhiked with different migrating populations of humans; one of her favorite stories was to tell about how human migration can be traced through viral evolution. The idea that a virus--which can evolve much faster than an animal--would develop into different strains in geographically separate locations of its host is completely consistent with evolutionary theory.

My whole point is not that we're sitting around talking about how this or that evidence fits into or supports evolution; it's about how most of what some of us do does fit quite nicely within the theoretical framework--and so far, nothing yet has shown up that would falsify the theory.

155 posted on 08/21/2011 4:56:10 PM PDT by exDemMom (Now that I've finally accepted that I'm living a bad hair life, I'm more at peace with the world.)
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