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To: general_re
I seem to recall a long thread wherein a certain someone appeared to accept that the evidence shows a clear evolutionary path for the flagellum in particular ;)

Not exactly. What was established was that yersinia pestis had flagellar proteins. The question was how they got there. I don't think yersenia pestis has a flagella and it is apparently not using the proteins for secretion.

4,288 posted on 07/18/2003 7:58:03 PM PDT by AndrewC
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To: AndrewC
Not exactly. What was established was that yersinia pestis had flagellar proteins. The question was how they got there.

Well, it was accepted that there was "a relationship", based on sequence comparisons... ;)

To: AndrewC

Yes. So you demonstrated that they are very alike. Did anthrax come from Aquifex aeolicus or is it the other way? Or was the gene for MOTA transferred from a flagellar bug to Anthrax?

Anthrax and A. aeolicus have very similar proton transport systems, in the form of motA, ExdB/ExbB, and TolQ/TolR. In the absence of more information, we cannot say what the exact relationship bewteen the two is, but we cannot rule out the hypothesis that they are related somehow. What did you expect?

1,153 posted on 12/06/2002 1:01 PM EST by general_re
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To: general_re

but we cannot rule out the hypothesis that they are related somehow. What did you expect?

I would make a stronger statement, there is a relationship, presently unknown. We can rule out the no relationship verdict.

I did not expect anything until the numbers were shown. If the expectation were 1.0, I would not make my first two statements.

1,159 posted on 12/06/2002 1:53 PM EST by AndrewC
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To: AndrewC

Actually, I meant "what did you expect me to say?" rather than "what did you expect to find?" ;)

I would make a stronger statement, there is a relationship, presently unknown. We can rule out the no relationship verdict.

I would agree. As I said before, we can try to make some educated guesses about the relationship by using the degrees of difference to try and place them in a relative taxonomy. That's not conclusive, of course, but it can point us in a productive direction. And we can compare our results to morphological/cladistic taxonomies, to give us another factor in deciding the relationship.

And eventually, we can accumulate enough evidence to begin to lean in one direction or another about what the relationship is - do they share common ancestry? Did one of them just scarf up the genes from the other? Maybe they both obtained the same gene from a third source?

We'll make a materialist out of you yet.... ;)

1,160 posted on 12/06/2002 2:48 PM EST by general_re
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To: general_re

I would agree. As I said before, we can try to make some educated guesses about the relationship by using the degrees of difference to try and place them in a relative taxonomy. That's not conclusive, of course, but it can point us in a productive direction. And we can compare our results to morphological/cladistic taxonomies, to give us another factor in deciding the relationship.

Yes, some judgement can be made by taking other information into consideration. COGS has little cladistic trees for each COG.

(snip)

This must be viewed in light of the photosynthesis experience.

As for the materialism, been there, done that.

Mat 4:4 But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

1,161 posted on 12/06/2002 3:37 PM EST by AndrewC
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To: AndrewC

Materialism explains some things very well, and other things not at all. The trick is knowing which is which...

1,163 posted on 12/06/2002 4:07 PM EST by general_re
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To: general_re

The trick is knowing which is which...

That is the question.

1,164 posted on 12/06/2002 4:19 PM EST by AndrewC
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4,319 posted on 07/19/2003 6:44:16 AM PDT by general_re (ERROR IN REALITY.SYS REBOOT UNIVERSE? Y/N)
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