Information and Genetics

Just a couple of observations.Fred asks how the nylon-digesting enzyme would be reported. Let's assume that we are presented with the nylon bacterium and its carbohydrate eating progenitor devoid of historical knowledge of which food source was available first or which bacterium arose from the other. We could recognise that the two bacteria were very closely related and a gene differed by only one base (addition or deletion?) But which version would be the true version and which one would be the "broken" version? Fred is only making this judgement because we are aware of the historical context. But lose the historical context and add a thousand years of mutation and evolution, how could we distinguish between the "true" code and the "broken" code.Fred finds support in the comment that "its been observed "more than once"". But were the other occurences the identical mutation or can a variety of mutations produce an adequate protein configuration for metabolising nylon? Obviously if any of the mutations resulted in a severe disadvantage (inability to metabolise carbohydrates) without an offsetting advantage (ability to metabolise yet-to-be-invented nylon) they would be removed by selective pressure.If as Fred suggests, "certain portions (hot-spots) of the genome have been pre-programmed for hypermutation during environmental stress to toggle bits in an effort to find a possible combination that improves survival in the degraded environment", why does this not occur with all individuals in the bacterial population? Why does the switch only flick (or exist) for a select few? And if such versatility is the produce of intelligent design, why is the alternative state so inefficient? Why not have an efficient carbohydrate metabolising gene and a seperate, efficient nylon metabolising gene to cope with the possibility of a degraded environment?Fred says "But it is clear that 0 is the favorable state (in general), and the study confirms that this method is a whopping 98% more efficient. So based on this knowledge, we actually lose information when we go from 0 to 1."Hmmmm. How much "information" did we start with for a nylon metabolising process? How much "information" did we end up with for such a process? Seems like a net increase in "information" on nylon metabolism.

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Originally posted by ChaseNelson:

By the way, we don't even have to mention that ultraviolet radiation destroys ammonia and many organic compounds that would have been present in the ocean... oh I just did

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Perhaps you were right not to mention it. Here's some relevant comments by Gary S. Hurd at
Account Suspended"Unfortunately for Sarfati, reality intrudes again. In Noll et al. (1997) for instance it is learned that an atmosphere with less than 10% of the Earth's current oxygen level could have as much as 25% of the Earth's current ozone. Further, without any free oxygen, or ozone, there are several additional means available that could have protected early macromolecules, and life itself. For example, Cleaves and Miller (1998) observe that the prebiotic organic compounds in the oceans would easily absorb the UV radiation flux during the Archean (when the Sun produced less heat [IR radiation] and more UV than today). Earlier, Sagan and Chyba (1997) had shown that methane photolysis could have provided an effective ultraviolet radiation shield for the Earth and prevented, or minimized global glaciation. However, a third model exists, the occasional impact melting of frozen oceans on the early Earth (early to middle Archean approximately 3.9 Ga to 3.5, 1Ga=1 billion years before present) which provides oceanic organic chemical concentration, and an impact heat sink in addition to UV protection of prebiotic chemicals by ice (Bada et al. 1994). Indeed there is strong evidence that these processes could have begun during the Hadean as early as 4.4 Ga (Sleep and Neuhoff 2001, Wilde et al. 2001). "So UV dissociation of complex organic molecules may not be the problem which creationists suggest.