Posted on 10/03/2011 5:29:32 AM PDT by spirited irish
You seem to be the skeptic here. I have been utterly amazed the breadth and depth of information I can find in support of a young earth, creation and the Bible.
from s8int.com...
“The Baalbek Monolithic Stones
This column was hewn as one solid piece and weighs 1200 tons. It’s two cousins are in place in the base of the “Temple of Jupiter” and weigh in at over 1000 tons. (The “Temple of Jupiter” is pictured [on the website] in the banner on the top right of this page and in the photo on the left.)
“The temple is one of the largest stone structures in the world. Some 26 feet above the structure’s base are found three of the largest stones ever employed by man.
Each of these stones measures 10 feet thick, 13 feet high, and is over 60 feet long. Knowing the density of limestone permits weight estimates of over 1.2 million pounds. Some people with impressive engineering skills cut, dressed, and moved these immense stone blocks from a quarry 3/4 of a mile away.
A walk to this quarry introduces the observer to the Monolith, an even larger block of limestone: 13 feet, 5 inches; 15 feet, 6 inches; and 69 feet, 11 inches. The Monolith weighs in at over 2,000,000 pounds. In comparison, the largest stones used in the Great Pyramid tip the scales at only 400,000 pounds...”
Where he goes off into neverneverland of “sentient” cells explains why he publishes apparently only in his own vanity press.
Selection gets rid of the “deadwood” of unfavorable variations.
Expression of error prone DNA polymerase creates variations, both favorable and unfavorable ones.
Innovation, the “novelty in evolution” we are discussing is not an accidental process - but the error prone DNA polymerase DOES introduce random changes (mutations) in the genome. The changes it introduces are NOT directed by a sentient cell.
Error prone DNA polymerase does not work only on pseudogenes - it works in introducing mutations throughout the entire genome.
Moreover bacterial genomes are very compact and contain very little noncoding DNA - including pseudogenes.
It is hardly mechanistically capable of being a “tote bag” of discarded mutations for every gene in the genome that may have a function in different environmental conditions when there are so very few pseudogenes and so many actual genes.
Sorry, it is the actual genes that are modified through error prone DNA polymerase - and those modifications are variations subject to natural selection.
Still struggling under the mistaken impression that all cell stresses lead to cell death?
I’m skeptical of what appears to be selective skepticism. Aren’t you?
Nope. You obviously cannot establish that every cellular response to a stress involves the use of error DNA_polymerase in the solution. Specifically, the example from slide 22.
Why, are you ignorant enough to STILL insist that all cell stress leads to cell death?
Why are you so stupid as to not admit it was a distractor. That is why I placed, "Be that as it may" immediately subsequent to that statement. It is a definition question in my opinion. If you wish to define a stress as anything that provokes a response to it as stress that is fine. If you wish to define a stress as something that is harmful to the organism that is also fine, but I will not give up my French Fries or coconut oil because you think them stressful.
Some novelty in evolution comes about through regulated cellular responses. The stress response that leads to expression of error prone DNA polymerase is one such regulated cellular response - and it DOES lead to novelty in evolution.
Care to describe to me how some 8% or less of the bacterial genome can be a “tote bag” for innumerable ‘discarded’ mutations for every possible gene in the bacterial genome for every possible stress it might encounter?
Besides if you even agree that there IS such a thing as novelty in evolution - as Shapiro posits - why would it have to come from some “tote bag”?
If it was there but unused until it was needed it wouldn't be “novel” now would it?
How humble of you.
Where he goes off into neverneverland of sentient cells explains why he publishes apparently only in his own vanity press.
True to form you use Ad Hominem. Look, I'm sure you are a Harvard grad, have a PHD in genetics and wrote a book or two, but to say that the following publications are vanity press is a stretch
Shapiro JA. 2005. Retrotransposons and regulatory suites. BioEssays 27, 122-125.
Shapiro JA. 2005. Thinking about evolution in terms of cellular computing. Natural Computing, 4, 297-324.
Shapiro JA. 2006. Genome informatics: The role of DNA in cellular computations. Biological Theory 1(3): 288-301.
Shapiro JA. 2007. Bacteria are small but not stupid: cognition, natural genetic engineering and sociobacteriology. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 38 (2007) 807819.
Shapiro JA. 2009. Letting E. coli teach me about genome engineering, Genetics 183: 12051214
Shapiro JA. 2009. Revisiting the central dogma in the 21st Century. Ann NY Acad Sci 1178: 6-28. Paper presented at a symposium on Natural Genetic Engineering Natural Genome Editing, July 2-6, 2008, organized by Guenther Witzany.
Shapiro JA. 2010. Mobile DNA and evolution in the 21st Century. Mobile DNA, 1:4.
No, bacteria do not all eventually die. All bacteria alive today are descended from bacteria that DID NOT DIE - they split and live on in the form of at least one living ‘descendant’.
“The point is that if the cell dies, it was a stress. If it does not die, it wasn't a stress.” AndrewC
So how does a cell “know” it is under stress you ask? Apparently by your ludicrous definition - when it is DEAD it knows it was under stress!
A stress is something that interferes with the living processes of a cell. It can be an antibiotic, a toxin, heat, cold, high pressure, low pressure - anything that can be detected through molecular mechanisms that causes interference in the living processes of the cell.
These molecular mechanisms that detect cellular distress start a signaling transduction pathway that activates transcription factors that enable the expression of stress response genes.
One of these stress response genes is error prone DNA polymerase.
Why it is expressed during stress is because, as you helpfully point out - if it didn't change it would (be more likely to) die.
Now what is changing when error prone DNA polymerase is used during cellular reproduction instead of high fidelity DNA polymerase?
The entire genome, not just psuedogenes, not just things from your absurdly small “tote bag” - NO! The ENTIRE GENOME is subject to change - and good thing too - because during during extreme heat stress (for example) a large % of genes would need mutations that made them more stable at high temperatures in order to survive and thrive at higher and higher temperatures.
No, but it is to support your assertion that it is directly involved in the response to insult.
Care to describe to me how some 8% or less of the bacterial genome can be a tote bag for innumerable discarded mutations for every possible gene in the bacterial genome for every possible stress it might encounter?
No, it only has to tote some things.
Besides if you even agree that there IS such a thing as novelty in evolution - as Shapiro posits - why would it have to come from some tote bag?
It doesn't just have to come from the tote bag. But there are things that are important to have. Speaking of bacteria, their tote bag also involves the outside world. So the bacterial tote bag carried within the cell can be smaller than otherwise. If you had listened to the lecture carefully, you would understand that.
There isn't just ONE stress response.
But error prone DNA polymerase is a stress response gene.
It apparently only “totes” a vanishingly small amount of DNA - how does that small amount of DNA cover the numerous genes that must be modified via mutation from error prone DNA polymerase?
You really think 8% of a bacterial genome can “tote” all the information needed to have the appropriate modifications of every single bacterial gene to every conceivable stress?
So it doesn't HAVE to come from the “tote bag”.
OK then - can you explain to me again why bacteria have a gene for an error prone DNA polymerase and why it would be expressed during stress?
Your ‘answers’ where they are coherent, contradict each other.
Okay, so now you see it as a definition problem. Clearly, my statement applies to the situation in which the cell does not respond or inadequately responds to the stress. Look at slide 22 of the pdf. It clearly shows the delay for MCS2. On the other hand, MCS1366 does not have the proper tool in the totebag(It was removed by the researcher) and it will die. A bacteria will not die if it gets a little more "food", but it does react.
The rest of our post establishes that a complex directed response is provoked prior too any increase in the use of error prone DNA polymerase.
How does the cell “know” it is under stress you ask in one post.
Then you define stress such that anything that doesn't kill the cell isn't a stress.
Care to deal with your statement that the bacteria will die eventually anyway?
Or would that just further illustrate your ignorance?
Where do you think the novelty in evolution that Shapiro speaks of comes from?
It cannot come from the “tote bag” and still be novel.
Where does this novelty in evolution come from?
I await a coherent answer, most likely in vain.
Where does novelty in evolution come from?
Read my answer again and read your statement in post 407 indicating that you understand my answer.
Now you are contradicting your answer to say that the only “change” comes from some “tote bag” ( a very very small “tote bag” of bacterial pseudogenes) of discarded mutations that are then expressed.
Do you see where these two positions cannot coherently coexist in a rational mind?
Before I answer, I will give you a chance to reread my post 408, especially my last para.
If they didn't change they would die - that is why bacteria express error prone DNA polymerase during stress.
This could possibly reactivate pseudogenes through mutation of the sequences then rendered them ‘pseudo’ - but that is a small part of the effect.
The effect of expressing error prone DNA polymerase during stress is not to change expression of the genome (expressing psuedogenes) or to engage in gene transfer from other bacteria - it is to introduce changes into THE GENOME ITSELF.
Instead of reproducing two daughter cells that are as close to itself as possible in DNA - it introduces mutations. This has the effect of introducing novel variations.
Shapiro pointed out that novel evolutionary variations come about through regulated cell processes.
Expressing error prone DNA polymerase is a regulated cell process that introduces novel evolutionary variations.
Novel evolutionary variations. Not a ‘tote bag’.
Riddle me this, Narcissus. Does a bacteria continue to abundantly produce error prone DNA polymerase after it provides an adequate response to the "stress" when the conditions (the "stress") remains?
The rest of your post is just so much blather since the answers are in the video which you refuse to view.(or if you did view it, the concepts went over your head)
Once the bacteria is adapted to the stressful environment it becomes the ‘default’ environment and then ‘normal’ would be a stress.
Apparently it went over your head as well because you cannot seem to explain the contradiction without further contradicting yourself.
Taking off for a long vacation.
Come back with a consistent and coherent position if you want to discuss the issue competently.
Read Shapiro.
So what was the stress and how did the cell "know" it was a stress?
Once the bacteria is adapted to the stressful environment it becomes the default environment and then normal would be a stress.
So once the stress is answered and the stress is then removed, the cell reignites the error prone DNA polymerase fire? Ludicrous.
Apparently it went over your head as well because you cannot seem to explain the contradiction without further contradicting yourself.
Fooling yourself again.
Taking off for a long vacation.
You need it.
Come back with a consistent and coherent position if you want to discuss the issue competently.
That has been done. You just refuse to see it. Read James A. Shapiro.
The point of this discussion is that our current knowledge of genetic change is fundamentally at variance with neo-Darwinist postulates. We have progressed from the Constant Genome, subject only to random, localized changes at a more or less constant mutation rate, to the Fluid Genome, subject to episodic, massive and non-random reorganizations capable of producing new functional architectures.
...
Both sides appear to have a common interest in presenting a static view of the scientific enterprise. This is to be expected from the Creationists, who naturally refuse to recognize science's remarkable record of making more and more seemingly miraculous aspects of our world comprehensible to our understanding and accessible to our technology. But the neo-Darwinian advocates claim to be scientists, and we can legitimately expect of them a more open spirit of inquiry. Instead, they assume a defensive posture of outraged orthodoxy and assert an unassailable claim to truth, which only serves to validate the Creationists' criticism that Darwinism has become more of a faith than a science.
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