Posted on 02/10/2003 12:41:03 PM PST by CalConservative
Scientists Flood the Flagellum Engine 02/10/2003
Japanese researchers have found that flagella, the whiplike propellers that make bacteria swim, can get flooded with too many protons if the pH is lowered inside, reports Nature Science Update. Like a flooded car engine, the motors come to a stop. But they can run fine again if the artificially-induced pH change is reversed. The article concludes by discussing the functional specifications of these molecular machines:
This is a motor with quite remarkable properties, says Robert Macnab of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, who studies the assembly of bacterial motors. It runs like a battery, moves like a ships propeller, has a gear switch so it can rotate in either direction, and its under the control of information from environment. These are biological functions at their most simplified form, and yet there are 60 different types of components in this little engine.Kendall Powell explains the interest in these motors: Researchers are keen to understand such chemically driven biological motors, which are only millionths of a millimetre across, as electronics do not work on this scale.
The bacterial flagellum has become the unofficial mascot of the Intelligent Design movement, since the publication of Darwins Black Box and the film Unlocking the Mystery of Life. And not without cause; this article does nothing to explain how evolution could produce such a molecular machine. It doesnt even broach the subject. On the contrary, it underscores the point that this is an irreducibly complex system. Macnab claims there are 60 different types of components in this little engine. See the picture in the article, and consider also that many bacteria have more than one propeller this species appears to have eight that work in coordinated movement. In addition to all the complexity of each individual flagellum, having a system of eight requires fast signalling across the interior.
This is just one of many molecular machines in the cell that argue for intelligent design. As Bruce Alberts has said, Indeed, the entire cell can be viewed as a factory that contains an elaborate network of interlocking assembly lines, each of which is composed of a set of large protein machines. Many of these structures are just as amazing, and more so, as the flagellum. For a few examples, see the spliceosome, RNA polymerase, and ATP Synthase. Another article posted yesterday on EurekAlert uses the word machine seven times as it discusses an intricately complex protein machine that adjust the connections between neurons.
Well, the heros of evolutionists - Darwin, Gould and Dawkins, never did a day's productive work in their life. The real science, the discoverers, could care less about evolution. They are trying to solve problems, cure diseases, learn about life. The keep constantly destroying your silly little theory which even in 1859 was lousy science and today is just a joke.
I am afraid that science fiction does not count as evidence of evolution. You folk are getting pretty desperate.
Of course it does. It is an enormously efficient motor made up of some 60 individual parts all coming together to produce one smooth working unit. Just about all the parts are specific to the flagellar mechanism and no one has shown they evolved in the 8 or so years since the claim was made. That is pretty strong proof that it did not evolve, however, if you have valid scientific proof for it having evolved, let's hear it. Rhetoric is evidence of nothing and that is all you have.
Rats, my Baloney detector went off again.
Your pure hatred shows through and destroys your credability.
No I don't know who he is. No scientist would ever accept "evidence" that was passed around by word of mouth for over a hundred years before it was recorded as proof of anything. I was simply asking for your evidence, your accusation that I diverted into religous bashing is an admision that you have none.
[This ping list for the evolution -- not creationism -- side of evolution threads, and sometimes for other science topics. To be added (or dropped), let me know via freepmail.]
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You are not a scientist, you are not into evolution for the science, you are into evolution because of your irreligious beliefs. If you were in it for the science (and evolution were a scientific fact as evolutionists claim) then you would know how to defend it by giving scientific evidence for it.
Hmmm, what evolutionist could you guys be talking about?????? I have the name on the tip of my tongue.... does not seem to know much about evolution but a lot about religious bashing ...
You know Patrick, evolution has become so discredited, that I do not think that if you and your friends talked solely amongst yourselves, you could win the argument for it!
Not quite what I have said. I have said that every Nobel Prize given in the field of biology has tended to disprove evolution. This claim was challenged a couple of times when it was first made with shameful defeats of the evolutionists by me.
The challenge is still open to all comers - including you. So you see, you have no need to insult, you can prove me wrong if you think you are up to it. But then, we both know you are not up to it, all you know how to do is hurl lame insults.
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