Scientists Flood The Flagellum Engine

Creation-Evolution Headlines ^ | 2/10/03 | Creation-Evolution Headlines

[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 ship’s propeller, has a gear switch so it can rotate in either direction, and it’s 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 Darwin’s 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 doesn’t 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.

[Aric2000]

Every biological advance proves more and more that evolution is a joke.

Put up or shut up.

Name one, just one biological advance that disproves evolution, and none of your Behe crap.

Give me ONE example of a renowned biologist discovering something new or advancing that science that disproves evolution.

Come on G3K, let's see you do it, you made the statement, NOW BACK IT UP WITH FACTS!!!

[Buckeye Bomber]

Your posts are like a horse with diarrhea. It's not going to stop for a while, so just stay the heck away from it and hope the stink doesn't make you too sick.

You don't even bother reading other posts. What is your profession gore3000? If you are a biologist, present some biology. All you say is that complex biological mechanisms, which I'm assuming is what this alleged Nobel work is about, disprove the possibility that they could have evolved. That doesn't prove or disprove anything. Look you obviously have no idea how science works.

Here's a question for all of you fellow "evilutionists" out there: why do we bother? They won't listen to our science. They'll find one crazy scientist who supports them and listen to him. They won't listen to our thoughts that religion and science aren't enemies, but complementary disciplines. They won't listen to our pleas for some sort of sanity. They won't even bother looking up any science unless it comes from "The Jesus Science Society of America" or "The Mistranslated Myths of 3000-year old Desert Nomads Tell Us the Way the World Works Society". This debate tires me, and I really need some help to keep up the fight.

Here's a question for those of you who are Christians: if I believe that Jesus Christ died for my sins, and I accept Him into my heart and life, does it EVEN MATTER WHAT TYPE OF BELIEF I HAVE ON ANYTHING ELSE!?! Leave me alone to my science. Go read your Old Testament and tell me which shell fish I can't eat and which day that particular shellfish was created on, while I go feed the poor and care for the sick.

[Buckeye Bomber]

Did you read the whole interview? The interviewer came up with the zip code quote. That's the funniest thing I've ever seen. The Doctor says, "Right, like a zip code, if you wish." Ha ha ha! He might as well have said, "Right, if you want to dumb it down, a zip code is what it is like, if that helps you, you idiotic journalist." And he never mentions this "zip code" as proof of divine origins. Wow, this is what the creationists throw at us. I think I'm getting my strength back for this fight, when the opponent is so weak.

[PatrickHenry]

... like a horse with diarrhea.

Yes, if the horse has been eating blueberries.

[Junior]

Ah, the ChristianCourier. They couldn't be biased now, could they? And, as for philanthropy, what has that to do with research?

[Condorman]

ALL NOBEL PRIZE WINNING DISCOVERIES IN THE FIELD OF BIOLOGY HAVE TENDED TO DISPROVE EVOLUTION

Can you provide a list of recent recipients of the Noble Prize in Biology that this claim may be verified?

[f.Christian]

To: gore3000

Why should I, a college student majoring in psychology and political science, with a few biology classes under my belt, waste my time convincing an idiot with strong religious convictions that his beliefs on the origin of the world and the life on it is false? It's beyond use. You can't defeat religious beliefs with reason and science. Religion is on a whole other plain of being and of thinking. Yet you seem to be believe the scientific community shares your little belief. There may be a few holdovers from the days when we had the four humours and Eve came from Adam's rib, but overall, most scientists have long since rejected your religious dogma. Science will not go backwards to the Dark Ages with you and your ilk. It may advance forward, and improve on Darwin's original theory, but science does not go back.


41 posted on 02/11/2003 7:36 PM PST by Buckeye Bomber


fC...

All your subjectivity // BIAS . . .

you remind me of an illegal immigrant // parasite (( evo drone )) . . .

who refuses to learn English (( science // philosophy // history )) !