Woese's progenote hypothesis

I notice that you do not address the content of my post at all. That shows who is really evading.The more so since you did not even allow me sufficient time to reply to the post where you first asked the question.-

You are not answering. Why does he propose a progenote, Paulk?A general answer that he did so in his judgement based on the evidence, blah, blah, blah,....is simply an evasion of engaging the facts here.What specific reasons does he give for proposing a progenote? What's the deal here?And no one claims that he doesn't argue for common descent. Obviously he does or he would not propose the hypothetical or perhaps mythical? construct of a progenote.

I am addressing your posts. You claimed I was taking something out of context. That's total BS on your part. I asked you why he proposes a progenote to get you to deal with the facts and arguments presented in the paper. If I can get you to do that, then it becomes very clear I have taken nothing out of context, but so far you are evading the topic of the thread and hurling baseless charges.

Well apparently this is why. Do you fully understand it? I certainly don't because I'm not a biologist. Also bear in mind that this is 30 year old research and current thinking appears to have moved on.Edited by RickJB, : No reason given.

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You are not answering. Why does he propose a progenote, Paulk?
A general answer that he did so in his judgement based on the evidence, blah, blah, blah,....is simply an evasion of engaging the facts here.

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I have answered. The reason is because most of the mechanism for high-fidelity reproduction seem to have arisen after the division between the three kingdoms. Giving an answer you do not like is not an evasion.

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And no one claims that he doesn't argue for common descent. Obviously he does or he would not propose the hypothetical or perhaps mythical? construct of a progenote

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Now this is an evasion. Do you accept that Woese's "drastic and disruptive" changes referred only to evolving the ppheotype of one kingdom from that of another or do you still insist that Woese meant: As you claimed in the OP ?

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I am addressing your posts

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Your Message 14 is a reply to my Message 13 It does not address the points raised there. Instead it accuses me of evasion apparently on the grounds that I had not instantly answered your Message 12 which I had not even seen at the time I wrote Message 13.

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You claimed I was taking something out of context

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But NOT in Message 13 which is a reply to your Message 10, which does nto deal with that issue at all.

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I asked you why he proposes a progenote to get you to deal with the facts and arguments presented in the paper.

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Which again avoids the primary issue - which is that the paper itself indicates that it would likely be outdated within a decade. A point which you failed to "deal with" in your OP. And a point you are still failing to deal with.

PaulK, all you are doing is dodging, and as usual in my experience, discussion with you is unfruitful because of evading the topic.Stating " most of the mechanism for high-fidelity reproduction seem to have arisen after the division between the three kingdoms" is not an answer. All you are doing is essentially repeating the conclusion. The question is why does he propose a progenote, why does he think the mechanism for genotes (all organisms we see today) arose after the division of the kingdoms?Quite obviously the reason I asked this question is your baseless charge of taking things out of context. Woese gives specific reasons for insisting that a progenote had to be the universal common ancestor. I quoted those reasons and thus took nothing out of context. You ignored those reasons, falsely charge I took something out of context, and continue to evade Woese's data.Since Woese's conclusions and data are the OP, you are merely clouding up the thread with no substantive comments at all.Why?Woese insists that a genote cannot be the common ancestor, and hence my language Woese "cannot see anyway that is feasible or reasonable for a common ancestor to evolve into what he classifies as the 3 primary kingdoms, at least if their shape and characteristics are handed down by their genes and so mutations are selected via natural selection and so the creatures' features evolve via gradual change into different creatures."Woese raises a problem, stating normal evolutionary processes, as we see with genotes (theoritically), cannot account for the massive differences in the 3 kingdoms. That was my point on the language you object to. Obviously, genes are involved, but not in what you call "high-fidelity" reproduction.That's why I brought up natural selection. If a trait based on genes can be selected for, but not necessarily passed on, it is not clear how such a loose reproductive process can work with natural selection because there is no reason to expect the genes that are selected for to be passed on.In terms of whether this is out of date, you are welcome to show you understand and can identify the problem Woese raises and then offer an alternative. So far, you don't seem to even understand his reasons for proposing a progenote. There are other "solutions" to the problems he raises, but we aren't going to have a fruitful conversation if you won't acknowledge those problems first since they are based on data.

Rick, Woese talks about several reasons for advancing the progenote hypothesis. One particular reason, which I quoted in the OP, is that Woese does not think current observed processes of reproduction and evolution can account for the 3 kingdoms arising. That's my point.So he advances an idea of a different kind of evolutionary process based on a different sort of creature (one might be tempted to call this a Just-So Story since we have no examples of progenotes).Now, I actually think Woese is interesting and offers an honest perspective, but imo, when evos honestly try to assess a weakness or problem and offer a solution, it is problematic for evos in general because so many evos insist the problems never exist. That's what I think is happening on this thread.An alternative to Woese's hypothesis is simply that the 3 kingdoms did not share a common ancestor.Edited by randman, : edit to change a mistake on a double negative

I thought to help further this topic along I would answer a question so that we could get beyond it. I am not arguing here, merely stating the reason for the progenote concept (why it is necessary according to some rather than a generic amalgum)So the big question is why does Woese believe that a progenote is the only explanation as the common ancestor of the three urkingdoms? I have tried to think of suitable analogies but think it would be better to just explain.Woese makes an assumption that within gene types of the groups studied the change over time is constant. That is, if the distance between two genes is x and that works out to be 10 million years, then a distance of 4x is calculated to be split 40 million years and so on. This molecular clock holds up fairly well and matches known splits within the urkingdoms.So Woese then looks at the differences within the urkingdoms and between them. Looking at the distance within the urkingdoms he extrapolates that they have been evolving since near the origin of life. Assuming a constant rate of change, this would put the common ancestor of the urkingdoms impossibly far back. So if we say in this case that x distance equals 3 billion years (and x is the greatest distance within the urkingdoms) and we see that the difference is between urkingdoms is 2x. That leaves two possibilities. 1) The common ancestor lived 9 billion years ago or 2) x is not a constant or was not a constant in the early days of life.So given this Woese postulates a common ancestor with a mechanism that allows it to change significantly more rapidly than we see today. Whether that is true or not is interesting, and should be the subject of this discussion. I hope this helps illuminate the argument. I found a good number of papers since Woese that discuss this concept. I will read the ones I have and wait for some thers via ILL and hopefully contribute.

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Doctor Bashir: "Of all the stories you told me, which were true and which weren't?"
Elim Garak: "My dear Doctor, they're all true"
Doctor Bashir: "Even the lies?"
Elim Garak: "Especially the lies"

I was going to ask Bradcap1 in a differn't tHread, if his insistance contra both RAZD and I was due to his rejecting the CONCEPT of "the cell" in life.Such a rejection of this fairly stable staple of biology (cork generalized) seems the only reason I can fathom Woese's theme while dropping the Woese name. Rejection of the cell is possible to me but only with a lot of attention to the word "organ" while that lingo would not ever concurrently denote 'tissue.'

Abiogenesis science has often stated that the original replicators would probably be very different from life as we observe it today. If your only point is....an evolutionary scientist has given name to the proposed ancestors of the three kingdoms and said that this was the point before which 'life' was very different...then you have hardly sprung upon something particularly important. Quite right - some traits might not be passed on. Those traits don't get passed on. Other traits can be passed on, and selection acts on these. Once again, this is nothing new. If you've ever read Dawkins, you'll be familliar with his almost alien speculations on early replicators. The craziest was the 'clay hypothesis'. When we start going to the early replicators stage, one has to stop thinking of current life forms since they will be, by definition, fundamentally different than current life forms.It is not really mind blowing to hear that 'current observed processes of reproduction and evolution could not account for the 3 kingdoms arising.' because that situation basically had to have happened at some time between the first replicator and current ones.

Yea, Woese prefaces his conclusion early on by insisting that demarcating a line between life and non-life is a creationist heresy or some such, and so I think he avoids the issue of what is a life, but on the other hand, I think a progenote is considered a cellular organism.Maybe someone more knowledgeable can clarify?

Is it your view he is talking about abiogenesis? I think he is talking about the point after that. The title of his paper is "Bacterial Evolution", is it not?You seem to be handwaving the issue away by calling it abioogenesis when Woese is talking about evolution.Known evolutionary processes cannot account for the 3 kingdoms arising, right? So why do you guys insist they arose from a common ancestor at all? It seems akin to mythmaking to me.

Thanks for your comments. The molecular clock angle is interesting because it does suggest that the 3 kingdoms could not have arisen via present processes we observe today, but it also illustrates the considerable weight thrown into assumptions within evolutionary science.Personally, I think accepting that these 3 kingdoms did not arise from a common ancestor is actually a more tenable conclusion, even if one accepts abiogenesis, which is another leap of faith imo.But if abiogenesis occurs, isn't it likely that there would be multiple instances of it, and yet would likely produce a similar type of organism based on the principles, yet discovered I might add, of chemistry that demonstrate life arising. So why wouldn't one just think that the 3 kingdoms arose via multiple origins?Of course, the whole idea of abiogenesis is barely scientific in the sense of being testable, and we have no real evidence for it, but nevertheless, even if one rejects ID and creationism, the evo insistence on a common ancestor seems more willful than fact-based.

I think you missed my point somewhere.The first replicators (Abiogenesis) are widely regarded to be massively different than current life. This is nothing new.The second replicators are widely regarded to be massively different than current life.The third, the fourth and so on and so forth are all regarded as being different from current life.At some point, they started to resemble modern life forms in their cell function etc.Woese proposes that this happened as the kingdoms began to form. IE before the kingdoms, life is significantly different than it is now.The idea that such a line exists is not new, Woese has theorized the temporal location of that line. It depends what you mean by known evolutionary processes. The early replicators are conceived to have evolved through differential replicative success - a known evolutionary process. Obviously the exact manner that replicative success was determined is unknown when life was so primitive as to be fundamentally different than life today.