Posted on 11/22/2002 9:09:10 PM PST by forsnax5
NSF awards grants to discover the relationships of 1.75 million species
One of the most profound ideas to emerge in modern science is Charles Darwin's concept that all of life, from the smallest microorganism to the largest vertebrate, is connected through genetic relatedness in a vast genealogy. This "Tree of Life" summarizes all we know about biological diversity and underpins much of modern biology, yet many of its branches remain poorly known and unresolved.
To help scientists discover what Darwin described as the tree's "everbranching and beautiful ramifications," the National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded $17 million in "Assembling the Tree of Life" grants to researchers at more than 25 institutions. Their studies range from investigations of entire pieces of DNA to assemble the bacterial branches; to the study of the origins of land plants from algae; to understanding the most diverse group of terrestrial predators, the spiders; to the diversity of fungi and parasitic roundworms; to the relationships of birds and dinosaurs.
"Despite the enormity of the task," said Quentin Wheeler, director of NSF's division of environmental biology, which funded the awards, "now is the time to reconstruct the tree of life. The conceptual, computational and technological tools are available to rapidly resolve most, if not all, major branches of the tree of life. At the same time, progress in many research areas from genomics to evolution and development is currently encumbered by the lack of a rigorous historical framework to guide research."
Scientists estimate that the 1.75 million known species are only 10 percent of the total species on earth, and that many of those species will disappear in the decades ahead. Learning about these species and their evolutionary history is epic in its scope, spanning all the life forms of an entire planet over its several billion year history, said Wheeler.
Why is assembling the tree of life so important? The tree is a picture of historical relationships that explains all similarities and differences among plants, animals and microorganisms. Because it explains biological diversity, the Tree of Life has proven useful in many fields, such as choosing experimental systems for biological research, determining which genes are common to many kinds of organisms and which are unique, tracking the origin and spread of emerging diseases and their vectors, bio-prospecting for pharmaceutical and agrochemical products, developing data bases for genetic information, and evaluating risk factors for species conservation and ecosystem restoration.
The Assembling the Tree of Life grants provide support for large multi-investigator, multi-institutional, international teams of scientists who can combine expertise and data sources, from paleontology to morphology, developmental biology, and molecular biology, says Wheeler. The awards will also involve developing software for improved visualization and analysis of extremely large data sets, and outreach and education programs in comparative phylogenetic biology and paleontology, emphasizing new training activities, informal science education, and Internet resources and dissemination.
-NSF-
For a list of the Assembling the Tree of Life grants, see: http://www.nsf.gov/bio/pubs/awards/atol_02.htm
There is a lot of active research in this area. Most major universities, as well as some smaller podunk universities, have centers of theoretical and computational biology or bioinformatics and biostatistics. You'll find much of interest to read.
This goes to show how meaningless it is to put up numbers. Dolts haven't a clue what they mean. For lurkers: The DNA samples were such a close match that the chance of finding a random RFLP match in the general population would be 1 in 720 million.
No what it shows is your twisting and shouting. First you accused opponents of not believing that such large numbers proved that OJ was guilty, now when shown that it is evolutionists who ignore even more tremendous numbers (such as the 1 chance in 4^250,000 of getting a correct DNA string for a living thing) you say that numbers mean nothing. Since when do numbers mean nothing in science Nebullis?
BTW - to show your 180 degree turn, here is the post to which I had responded:
That number was a match of 1 in 720 million. The jury, like a bunch of creationists, rejected that evidence because it was still probability obtained by a scientific method they did not understand.
1179 posted on 12/07/2002 7:03 AM PST by Nebullis
Whereas I readily agree with you that the process is accomplished by the information comprising its formulation - I also am amazed that the process itself is able to symbolize information at the genetic level.
For instance, data can be acquired through a physical process - such as sensing a body. But to operate on that information conditionally requires symbolizing, e.g. "If the body [acquired data] is Doe [symbol] then..."
And of course that implies learning, databasing.
Fascinating...
I haven't said that. How do you justify your dishonesty?
That's bit subjective. I'm partial to the group I'm familiar with at UCLA. Lee Hood has put together a good group up at University of Washington. MIT, NIH and other East Coast centers are good as well. Some researchers are subsumed under genomic research and don't work as part of a defined core group. My suggestion would be to find some books in this area to get a start and then to follow up on specific areas via the literature.
I tried searching for Bioinformatics and the results were unclear. Everything I've found so far is information processing in support of genetic research, and that's great, but what I'm looking for is the analysis of genetic information processes.
I'll try the leads you just mentioned. Thanks!
However, the entropy of carbon monoxide which has been frozen in a field-free environment is larger by a factor of Sqrt(2) than that frozen in a magnetic field. The physical quantity (entropy, a state variable) exactly corresponds to what information theory predicts.
It's generally true that the correspondence between physical states and "humanly given meanings" to such states is arbitrary. The limit on the amount of information storage is a physical quantity. You should not confuse "information" as in humanly assigned meanings (that which #6 won't give up) with "information" as used in communications theory.
I haven't said that. How do you justify your dishonesty?
You keep twisting and turning and when caught at it you call me a liar. Figures. That's the only 'refutation' evolutionists have. Your words below show quite well who is being dishonest here. That you have the nerve to deny it after just a few posts and accuse me of dishonesty shows your total shamelessness:
To: gore3000
Me: That number was a match of 1 in 720 million. The jury, like a bunch of creationists, rejected that evidence [nebullis] You really are twisting the facts! [gore3000]
This goes to show how meaningless it is to put up numbers. Dolts haven't a clue what they mean. For lurkers: The DNA samples were such a close match that the chance of finding a random RFLP match in the general population would be 1 in 720 million.
1199 posted on 12/07/2002 10:35 AM PST by Nebullis
BTW nowhere in post#1202 did I say the words you posted above and attributed to me, you have willfully distorted them. Here's what I said:
No what it shows is your twisting and shouting. First you accused opponents of not believing that such large numbers proved that OJ was guilty, now when shown that it is evolutionists who ignore even more tremendous numbers (such as the 1 chance in 4^250,000 of getting a correct DNA string for a living thing) you say that numbers mean nothing. Since when do numbers mean nothing in science Nebullis?
BTW - to show your 180 degree turn, here is the post to which I had responded:
As Dembski himself is the only one who could clarify the point, let's just agree to disagree and move on, eh?
Let's suppose that you are correct, and Dembski actually believes the first life was created by Intelligent Design. Can that Intelligent Designer be God?
And I found this Genetic Algorithm Archive that lurkers interested in that aspect might wish to explore.
None of this however focused on the symbolism which is enormously important in information theory. Just when I was about to give up I got a Freep mail, and was given the name of Hubert Yockey.
He is a physicist and a ground roots information theorist who took a look at genetics using math. In other words, he is exactly what I was hoping to find. I also found a related group: Biological Theory and Chowder Society.
Now I must obtain a copy and read Professor Yockey's book Information Theory and Molecular Biology!
On first blush, it appears his conclusion after thorough analysis is what I was expecting!
As Dembski himself is the only one who could clarify the point, let's just agree to disagree and move on, eh?
In spite of your attempt at creating confusion Dembski is very clear about abiogenesis - life was designed, period, paragraph, end of story. We do not have to read his mind to make that conclusion, we just have to read his words:
With regard to these four possibilities, the crucial question now is this: How does one make sense of these possibilities in light of intelligent design? Clearly, none of these possibilities makes sense without some directed coordination.
As to who the Intelligent Designer of life could be, of course it can be God, and in my view it is. God is not a four letter word as evolutionists try to portray Him. Evolution set itself against God and the Bible by denying him his greatest creation, man. The argument here is whether science supports ID or evolution. Since science is about what is real not about what might be, could be, perhaps may be proven, or about what might against all odds be shown to be possible, science favors the ID interpretation and that is why scientists believe that the Universe was designed, that life was created and that the development of people from conception to birth is a program - in other words intelligently designed also.
However, the entropy of carbon monoxide which has been frozen in a field-free environment is larger by a factor of Sqrt(2) than that frozen in a magnetic field.
That may be very interesting, but I don't think that it can show me how to get from my house to Burger King.
You can freeze, magnetize, electrocute, irradiate a million monkeys if you like and they still will not write Hamlet.
It is this kind of information I speak of and it proves false the main contention of materialists - that there is nothing but matter in heaven and earth. It shows quite well that the non-material does exist, and can be shown to exist.
Yes, I think Plato was correct in his concept of the idea. Clearly we use symbols in order to function. We cannot fit in our brains all the things we see in a single day so we must somehow abstract and symbolize that information in order to make it useful. We do not need to see every car to know a car when we see one. We clearly do not check our 'database' of cars to see if what we are seeing is in the 'car' section of the database. We just recognize that it is a car because it fits the concept we consider car.
Another example would be when a wife changes her hair color and hairstyle. The husband (and most people) will still recognize her right off even though she does not look exactly as she did the last time he saw her. We are not checking in other words the concordance of every single bit we saw the last time, we are just making a comparison to some significant data which we ourselves are not even completely aware of what it is. Not only that, husbands being husbands, will often not even notice the change in hairstyle and hair color!
Have you been talking to my wife? Hey at least being color blind gives me an occasional excuse for not noticing.
Indeed, the seamless use of symbols at our level is a remarkable thing to consider. And it is even more amazing to me that symbolization (abstraction) is implied at the genetic level, which is mindless.
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