Why did you think I'd be interested in the same old flawed defense of Behe that we've all discussed numerous times before, simply repackaged by the usual Behe cheerleaders as a "paper" to be read at a conference?
From the paper: Behe argues that natural selection and random mutation cannot produce the irreducibly complex bacterial flagellar motor with its ca. forty separate protein parts, since the motor confers no functional advantage on the cell unless all the parts are present.
As usual, Minnich et al "forget" to mention that flagella exist which *do* still work without "all the parts" as the one Behe uses as an example...
Natural select can preserve the motor once it has been assembled, but it cannot detect anything to preserve until the motor has been assembled and performs a function.
Yet *again*, the Behe-ites are *presuming* that which they are attempting to *prove*. In this passage they are *presuming* that the "motor" had no function or selective advantage until it was fully "assembled" in its current form.
Given that the flagellum requires ca. 50 genes to function,
Unsupported assertion. The fact that Behe and other IDers simply keep repeating it doesn't make it any more true.
Contrary to popular belief, we have no detailed account for the evolution of any molecular machine.
If this had been an *actual* scientific paper, the authors would have actually supported this empty claim with citations, or else the paper would have been rejected by the journal editors. The editors also would have bounced the paper for using the obvious weasel-word "detailed" in this sentence in a vague and undefined way. "But what about the work of Doolittle, and others?", the reasonable reader would ask. "Well, you see, those aren't 'detailed' as much as we'd like to see, so sorry, so we pretended they don't exist", the authors would waffle...
But the really funny part here is the phrase, "Contrary to popular belief"... This is a tacit admission by the authors that the consensus view ("popular belief") in the scientific community is that there *are* valid "accounts for the evolution of molecular machine".
The data from Y. pestis presented here seems to indicate that loss of one constituent in the system leads to the gradual loss of others.
"Seems to" indicate? "Indicates" is a good enough word, but the addition of "seems to" onto an already tentative word really raises some red flags.
But the main problem here is that Minnich et al are repeating Behe's fundamental flaw -- they're only investigating *additive* evolutionary processes, then pretending they've ruled out all others as well. Sorry, wrong answer.
(Here is where your argument comes in)
Actually, that was just one small part of my long list of problems in Behe's thesis -- you make it sound as if it was my whole "argument".
To counter this argument, particularly as it applies to the flagellum, others have used the TTSS. Since the secretory system that forms part of the flagellar mechanism can also function separately, Miller [18, 19] has argued that natural selection could have “co-opted” the functional parts from the TTTS and other earlier simple systems to produce the flagellar motor.
The authors have misspelled "or". Oddly enough, this "mistake" erroneously validates their argument. Curious.
And, indeed, the TTSS contains eighteen proteins that are also found in the forty protein bacterial flagellar motor. Miller thus regards the virulence secretory pump of the Yersinia Yop system as a Darwinian intermediate, case closed.
This greatly oversimplifies Miller's actual position, and is another reason this "paper" would have been booted from a peer-reviewed journal, but then we've come to expect that from IDers/creationists.
What Miller actually says on that topic is:
By treating the flagellum as a "discrete combinatorial object" he has shown only that it is unlikely that the parts flagellum could assemble spontaneously. Unfortunately for his argument, no scientist has ever proposed that the flagellum or any other complex object evolved that way. Dembski, therefore, has constructed a classic "straw man" and blown it away with an irrelevant calculation.This argument seems only superficially plausible in light of some of the findings presented in this paper.By treating the flagellum as a discrete combinatorial object he has assumed in his calculation that no subset of the 30 or so proteins of the flagellum could have biological activity. As we have already seen, this is wrong. Nearly a third of those proteins are closely related to components of the TTSS, which does indeed have biological activity. A calculation that ignores that fact has no scientific validity.
...which are just repetitions of the same old defenses of Behe which have already been refuted.
First, if anything, TTSSs generate more complications than solutions to this question. As shown here, possessing multiple TTSSs causes interference. If not segregated one or both systems are lost.
...the authors then go on to contradict themselves by admitting that while they do interfere with each other, the systems are not "lost", it's just that "Efficiency of both systems would suffer". Yeah, so? This still doesn't help Behe's claim or invalidate an evolutionary origin for either or both.
Additionally, the other thirty proteins in the flagellar motor (that are not present in the TTSS) are unique to the motor and are not found in any other living system.
WOW! I didn't know what all other living systems have been cataloged! I mean, how *else* could these authors make such a claim? And without even a token citation in support! Idiots... Unicellular biology is still a vast unexplored frontier, outside of the work done on a few "favorite" organisms (E. coli, a few human pathogens, etc.)
Futhermore, exactly how "unique" are they? Biochemical proteins are seldom "exactly alike" each other or "completely unique" from each other. Are the authors truly claiming that these flagellar proteins are NOTHING LIKE any other biochemical protein, period? Or are they waffling again, trying to cover up the similarity (and thus potential evolutionary relationship) between those proteins and other sufficiently *similar* proteins in other biochemical systems, by coyly labeling "close but not *exactly* the same" with the term "unique"?
Without a citation (ooh, big surprise!), there's no way to tell. How... convenient.
From whence, then, were these protein parts co-opted?
Fascinating question, of course, but the authors have it backwards -- in order to rescue Behe, they have to demonstrate that those proteins absolutely were *not* co-opted from anywhere. And good luck with proving *that* negative...
Also, even if all the protein parts were somehow available to make a flagellar motor during the evolution of life, the parts would need to be assembled in the correct temporal sequence similar to the way an automobile is assembled in factory. Yet, to choreograph the assembly of the parts of the flagellar motor, present-day bacteria need an elaborate system of genetic instructions as well as many other protein machines to time the expression of those assembly instructions. Arguably, this system is itself irreducibly complex.
"Arguably" it is, they say. Translation: "We can't actually *demonstrate* that it *is*, but we can *argue* about how it *might* be, and how it might *seem* that evolution might not be up to the task of producing an intricate system, and isn't *that* good enough to "disprove" evolution?
Tell the IDers to come back when they have a stronger case, if ever.
In any case, the co-option argument tacitly presupposes the need for the very thing it seeks to explain—a functionally interdependent system of proteins.
No, it does *not*. The "co-option" argument is that *BEHE* is not allowed to "tacitly presuppose" what *he* needs to make his case -- the allegation that parts of the flagellar motor could *not* have been the result of co-option or other evolutionary processes.
Finally, phylogenetic analyses of the gene sequences [20] suggest that flagellar motor proteins arose first and those of the pump came later. In other words, if anything, the pump evolved from the motor, not the motor from the pump.
Wow, a citation finally! But if they ever attempt to publish this "paper", they're going to have to correct their error in the title of their citation...
In any case, Minnich et al "forgot" to mention that newer research has superceded their citation. That's a *BIG* no-no in *real* peer-reviewed scientific papers (seriously -- as in evidence of incompetence and/or dishonesty), but I see that it's no impediment to the sort of unreviewed "conference papers" that IDers put out in order to try to keep the dream alive.
See for example:
Bacterial type III secretion systems are ancient and evolved by multiple horizontal-transfer events, U. Gophna et al. / Gene 312 (2003) 151–163This was published in APRIL *2003* -- what excuse to Minnich et al have for not being aware of it while preparing a paper in LATE 2004? A publication keyword search for either "Type III secretion systems" or "Flagella" (and even more importantly, *both*) would have turned up this paper without a problem. Hell, *I* found it in three minutes with Google *without* using a keyword search, just by Googling for the (correct) title of citation#20 -- it turned up this paper, which cites the Nguyen paper, something that Minnich et all should have done at a *MINIMUM* as due dilegence to find subsequent related research (pro *or* con)... Did Minnich et al not *bother* to research anyone else's findings before they sat down to put together their "paper"?Abstract: Type III secretion systems (TTSS) are unique bacterial mechanisms that mediate elaborate interactions with their hosts. The fact that several of the TTSS proteins are closely related to flagellar export proteins has led to the suggestion that TTSS had evolved from flagella. Here we reconstruct the evolutionary history of four conserved type III secretion proteins and their phylogenetic relationships with flagellar paralogs. Our analysis indicates that the TTSS and the flagellar export mechanism share a common ancestor, but have evolved independently from one another. The suggestion that TTSS genes have evolved from genes encoding flagellar proteins is effectively refuted. A comparison of the species tree, as deduced from 16S rDNA sequences, to the protein phylogenetic trees has led to the identification of several major lateral transfer events involving clusters of TTSS genes. It is hypothesized that horizontal gene transfer has occurred much earlier and more frequently than previously inferred for TTSS genes and is, consequently, a major force shaping the evolution of species that harbor type III secretion systems.
(Also note the passage about "lateral transfer" -- this is YET ANOTHER evolutionary mechanism which Behe's cartoon scenarios of evolution COMPLETELY OVERLOOK.)
This is, unfortunately, all too typical of "papers" by IDers/creationists. Unlike real *scientists*, they're not interested in gathering the best available findings and then seeing the best "big picture" the evidence suggests. Instead they're *starting* with their desired conclusion, and then searching out and presenting *only* the "findings" which would *seem* to support their position when considered IN ISOLATION.
And then you wonder why we claim that ID/creationism isn't real science (at least the way it is invariably performed)?
[Thunderous applause!]
You guys should learn to write more concisely.
Sometimes all those words can look like padding.
We are all searching for the 'truth'. I don't understand why you are so overly critical of these men and women and the work they are doing? For someone so intelligent, you sure are quick to judge them and quick to toss-out a whole branch of research that many people are interested in.
Killjoy.