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Author | Topic: An ID hypothesis: Front-loaded Evolution | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Granny Magda Member (Idle past 107 days) Posts: 2384 From: UK Joined: |
Hi Genomicus and welcome to EvC Forum!
So, I have a couple of questions; How does this front-loading work? What is the mechanism? Can you show me an example of front-loading in a genome? Are there front-loaded genes that exist now? How would we tell? How would we differentiate between an organism whose gene had been front-loaded and one that had merely evolved? Mutate and Survive
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Granny Magda Member (Idle past 107 days) Posts: 2384 From: UK Joined: |
Merely using the phrase "molecular machine" does nothing to establish a mechanism. It is clearly a place-holder term that is standing in for an actual specific mechanism. Am I to assume that you are doing this because you cannot name a specific mechanism?
How exactly is that supposed to be achieved? How does the genome "know" which elements are to be deleted and which are to be retained?
The problem with this is that it sounds very much like an evolutionary origin for the flagellum. It sounds like it would be equally compatible with the regular Theory of evolution.
So to follow on from that, can you show me that any such example has indeed occurred? Can you show me a front-loaded gene that has been taken up? And can explain how you differentiate it form one that merely evolved?
No, I mean a gene that has been front-loaded but has not yet been, shall we say, "activated"? In other words, can you show me any allele that has been front-loaded but is not yet actively expressed in any extant organism?
Why choose multi-cellular life? It seems a bit random, was it picked out of a hat? Why not hypothesise that life was front-loaded to produce Archaea? Or bacteria? Of course, I might hazard a guess. It's because the organisms that ID lobbyists really want to think have been front-loaded are humans. Because we're special. After all, Jesus does love us...
Once again, this is indistinguishable from the consensus ToE, where the common ancestry of leads to homologous genes. In fact, a shared evolutionary heritage is pretty much part of the definition of a homologous gene. This seems to be another instance of this idea being unfalsifiable. So given that independently evolved sequences can be just as highly conserved, I fail to see how this can differentiate evolved systems form front-loaded ones.
But again, that tells us nothing. It only tells us that the sequence is highly conserved. It does not tell us whether the conservation is due to front-loading or whether it is due to it simply being a useful and thus evolutionarily successful sequence. It sounds to me like your hypothesis is lacking an actual mechanism, is based upon circular logic and assuming the consequent. It also smells, more than a little, of a convoluted Christian apologetic, wherein humans are the result of front-loading by the Christian god. Mutate and Survive Edited by Granny Magda, : No reason given.
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Granny Magda Member (Idle past 107 days) Posts: 2384 From: UK Joined:
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It's not my intent to be snide, only to be truthful. I apologise if I have offended you, but I hope you can appreciate that I must call it as I see it. I don't want to soft-soap you, I think that would be patronising and would ultimately do you a disservice. ID, as a movement, is a form of Christian apologetic. All of its leading lights are Christians, most of its supporters are Christians, the rest Muslims and other theists. There are only one or two non-theistic supporters. We know for a fact that there is a continuity between "creation science" and ID; we have the documents to prove it. So calling this hypothesis an apologetic is simply the truth as far as I am concerned. Or are you going to tell me that you are not a Christian? Meanwhile I would appreciate any response to the rest of my post. Mutate and Survive
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Granny Magda Member (Idle past 107 days) Posts: 2384 From: UK Joined:
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Hi Mr J,
I found an interesting comment from Ken Miller on this. He suggests that if front-loading were real, we would see the exact opposite of what Genomicus suggests; we would see enormous mutation rates on any front-loading sequences. They would be inactive and thus unchecked by natural selection. Those portion of the genome would be subject to runaway mutation. quote: I have to agree with that. If any gene were front-loaded it would have to have yet further (as yet conveniently undetected) mechanism to guard against this. Mutate and Survive
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Granny Magda Member (Idle past 107 days) Posts: 2384 From: UK Joined: |
Ooh! Genomicus has a blog! He proposes this answer to the above problem;
quote: Is it just me or does that sound exactly like exaptation? That's just exaptation, or at least it's indistinguishable from exaptation. So again, the best evidence for front-loading is exactly the same as what we'd see if consensus model evolution were true. Mutate and Survive
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Granny Magda Member (Idle past 107 days) Posts: 2384 From: UK Joined: |
Yes, but the actual results of that would be indistinguishable from a sequence that was simply highly conserved because it was useful. Even where the system served different functions in eukaryotes and prokaryotes, it would still be indistinguishable from conservation with exaptation. We're just left with another situation where the predictions of front-loading are exactly the same as what we would expect from regular evolution.
Mutate and Survive
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Granny Magda Member (Idle past 107 days) Posts: 2384 From: UK Joined: |
Hi Chuck,
Well if I remember correctly, Behe goes as far as to say that he suspects the designer to be the Christian god. Certainly Genomicus doesn't go that far. If you take a look at his blog, particularly this post, he expresses his frustration at many within ID over their insistence on dragging theism into the mix. He sees this - quite correctly - as being counter to good science. Here's a quote; quote: Now I come close to agreeing with him here. ID is indeed far too steeped in religion. Where I differ from Genomicus' position is in his view that "theistic language" is what needs to minimised in ID. I think that's wrong. I think that the real problem is not merely theistic language, but the whole focus of ID. The problem is not that the posters at Uncommon Descent have misunderstood the point of ID, it's that Genomicus has misunderstood the point. That point is that ID exists solely for the purpose of Christian apologetics, specifically, getting those apologetics into schools. It's not just the language, it's the whole ideology. For ID to produce the kind of good science that Genomicus seems to honestly desire, it would have to abandon it's dishonest approach to the subject. It would have to become something totally different to what it is today. It would have to drop it's political and religious aims and concentrate solely on the data. But then of course, it would no longer be ID science, it would just be science. This is another topic I admit, but it might make an interesting thread when we've finished with this one. If you want more on the science side of things, check out Genomicus' blog. It's quite good as these things go and it has a lot of material on this subject. I still don't think he's right, but it should be of interest to you. Mutate and Survive
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Granny Magda Member (Idle past 107 days) Posts: 2384 From: UK Joined: |
Hold on, aren't you jumping the gun here? Why should we assume that eukaryotes were the intended result? You've shown homologies between modern prokaryotes and modern eukaryotes, but why should it then follow that the eukaryotes are the ones that the front-loader is interested in? Why can't it be the other way around and the modern prokaryotes are the intended outcome? You appear to be kind of assuming your conclusion here. Of course, I could hazard an educated guess at why ID/front-loading enthusiasts prefer to think that metazoans are the intended outcome, but you won't like it... Mutate and Survive
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Granny Magda Member (Idle past 107 days) Posts: 2384 From: UK Joined: |
But you're just asserting that. There is no reason to assume it. That completely undermines any arguments based upon the assumption.
It may not be true for you personally, but the fact remains that the purpose of the ID movement is not the way you seem to want to paint it. I fear that you have been had. If you are truly interested in unbiased scholarship, then the ID lobby are not your fellow travellers.
But that's not any kind of valid reasoning, that's just bias. You are assuming that the front-loader would make something that resembles us just because that what you or I would make. You are founding your whole argument upon an unsupported assumption based upon anthropomorphic bias.
But that doesn't mean a thing. Maybe the front-loader aimed for bacteria, got what he wanted and life has progressed on its own terms since that time, no front-loading required. Besides, modern prokaryotes haven't been around for billions of years. One could easily argue that some recently evolved eukaryote was the intended outcome. Perhaps the recently evolved nylon-eating bacteria were the intended outcome. Come to that, we could decide that blue-footed boobies were the intended outcome. Or absolutely any organism you care to name. This lack of specificity strikes me as a pretty major flaw. Mutate and Survive
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Granny Magda Member (Idle past 107 days) Posts: 2384 From: UK Joined: |
But there's absolutely no reason to prefer it over any other hypothesis, right?
So whose idea was it exactly? Where does it originate?
The latter is merely a less direct version of the former.
It just seems odd that you would be so interested in this idea. It does seem to be popular within the ID community and it doesn't seem to have any traction elsewhere.
Exactly the same as you cite for eukaryote front-loading; conserved sequences and such. The real problem is that the evidence that one would expect for prokaryote front-loading would not differ one iota from what you predict for eukaryote front-loading. nor would either differ in the least from what we would expect for normal evolution.
Is that question only just occurring to you? Genomicus, we might as well ask why the "front-loader" didn't just go straight for the blue-footed boobies, day one. Why bother with any of this? As far as I can tell, the only reason to assume that metazoans were the intended outcome is pro-metazoan bias and anthropomorphism. Mutate and Survive
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Granny Magda Member (Idle past 107 days) Posts: 2384 From: UK Joined:
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Given that your primary competition is the Theory of Evolution, probably the best evidenced theory in all science, that would seem to leave you high and dry.
So your primary source for this is a single pseudonymous blogger? One who admits that he is not a biologist? That's even more perplexing. Also, given the fact that Gene is a major contributor to Telic Thoughts - a blog that is lousy with theism - this does little to counter the charges of stealth theism. This absolutely is an ID hypothesis, whether its originator has differences with the mainstream ID movement or not.
I think you're wrong about that. In fact that would be a necessity of your argument. For starters, we would expect the eukaryote line to be more conserved, because prokaryotes generally mutate faster than prokaryotes, engage in LGT, etc. If the genes in prokaryotes that you describe as homologous to eukaryote genes are functional, then it is perfectly possible that they have achieved the aim of the front-loader with that function. The continuing presence of the same gene sequences in eukaryotes is simply a result of the front-loading and its conservation mechanism (whatever that might be). You can't assume that the flagellum is the function that was front-loaded; it might just as easily be the homologous function in the prokaryote. If the proteins in prokaryotes have been preserved by some sequence preservation mechanism, then that mechanism would have to be present in the eukaryote as well, given their common heritage. Either that or you have a situation where the preservation mechanism gets switched off in later lineages and that seems like a huge stretch of the imagination.
But if they are performing a vital function in prokaryotes, then the ToE does indeed predict that they would be highly conserved. They have a function after all.
But they are performing a function, that was a requirement of the kind of proteins we're talking about. In your model, these sequences are conserved because they are front-loaded with a function. In the standard model they are highly conserved simply because they have evolved a function. You can't point to proteins that you yourself claim to be functional and then say "Look! They're highly conserved! That's not what we would expect under the ToE if they had no function". They have a function. That's enough to explain why they are conserved. We're talking about some of the most ancient adaptations for multicellularity after all. What's more, defective IFT proteins specifically are associated with a raft of hideous maladies, so that would seem to provide ample reason that they should be conserved in either model.
I don't see anything that prevents that from being equally true the other way around. I don't see what's to prevent such an astonishingly proficient entity from creating a whole ecosystem; clearly they are superlative gene-engineers, why impose arbitrary limits upon them? The suggestion made by Bluegenes would also make sense. Why not start with a simple eukaryote? That would be pretty robust and it would avoid the need for chancy freak events like the origins of mitochondria or chloroplasts. Or alternatively, just being patient would seem to be a better bet. The front-loader could have waited for an ecosystem to develop and then inserted his target organism.
Well I did mention nylon-eating bacteria. For a bacterium to eat nylon, some kindly metazoan must first come along create nylon. Many modern prokaryotes are every bit as environment-dependent as eukaryotes. If the target organism were nylon-eating bacteria or the latest strain of swine flu, it too would flounder on the early Earth. This line of reasoning strikes me as all being a bit post hoc to be honest. Mutate and Survive Edited by Granny Magda, : No reason given.
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