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One or many is largely a matter of point of view. We have that famous cliche, "Can't see the forest for the trees" and that seems to express a naturally occurring reality of perspective. Especially if we consider Big Bang, or Cosmic Egg, to be a real event, and unless it becomes possible to actually test the speculation on The Multiverse, all we know of and possibly CAN know of is One, Our Universe, all connected, all One, "The Forest" with many different kinds of "trees".
Lots of strange things have been tried. But, let's not go there, shall we?
All joking aside, your consistent refusal to ever go anywhere is kind sad. Like, you're always making declarations and never actually thinking about the meaning of the words you say.
@ntubski: I'm simply pointing out that "arbitrary combinations of genetic material" never work, and there must be a biological reason why. Reproduction is capable of repeating itself millions of times without degenerating into bio-chaos. I observe the apparent presence of mechanisms which act directly against what the "above-species evolution" proponents would suggest. This is why I conclude that there must be other things that we have not discovered yet, and do not now suspect. This unknown mechanism would allow "radical changes" to produce a wholly new organism type, thereafter followed by the resumption of the biological controls which had just been defied, so that the new organism would once again reproduce "after its own kind." (It also requires that both male and female copies of the "new organism" must come into existence at the same time, and be capable of this reproduction.) That is far too much to be left to "random chance," over "billions of convenient years." There must be something else. ("Someone?")
Actually sundial has a point. Prokaryotes (bacteria and archaea), which can evolve only through point mutations, in fact haven't evolved at all! They still look just as they did at the beginning. Bacteria can quickly evolve useful enzymes, for example to destroy antibiotics or metabolise unusual foodstuffs, and they can share these among themselves (even across species boundaries) but they can't evolve new structures because almost any change would be for the worse and those changes get edited out. That's also why bacteria and archaea still look almost identical although they separated from each other long before they did from us!
Eukaryotes originated as collectives: an archaean swallowed a bacterium that could detoxify oxygen, reducing it to water and creating energy as a by-product. It was kept onboard rather than being digested because it was useful and became the first mitochondrion. Eucharyotic cells soon had many of these mitochondria and put most of the symbiotes' chromosomes together with their own inside a nucleus. They were able to evolve rapidly because they have discovered two new evolutionary mechanisms:
First, they now had multiple copies of all the common enzymes, so they could experiment with these spare copies, allowing them to mutate into new forms which often turned out to be useful. For example, our visual pigments are related to a digestive enzyme and must have evolved out of it.
Secondly, because they were so successful, they became infected with a lot of genetic parasites. So they have learned to snip out these parasitic "intron" sequences from their mRNA with molecular scissors and stitch the "exons" (the functional bits) together before sending the result out of the nucleus to be transcribed into protein. And lo and behold! A whole new lot of proteins can be created simply be stitching together exons in different patterns. That's how your immune system produces antibodies. You have antibodies to every conceivable antigen because small exons can be stitched together in an infinite number of ways.
On a larger scale, new enzymes are produced the same way. Suppose you have an enzyme that catalyses the reaction of two compounds A and B. It might consist of three exons coding for a binder to A, a binder to B, and a central hinge to bring A and B together for the reaction. Now suppose that during transcription, the A-binding exon is accidentally replaced by a similar exon from another enzyme mRNA that binds to a compound C. If B and C are capable of reacting, then at a stroke you have an enzyme that catalyses the reaction. If this is really useful, a reverse transcriptase can copy the mRNA back into DNA for permanent storage.
No wonder eukaryotes have evolved into so many forms: single-celled, multi-celled, fungi, plants, animals...
Hello hazel, I wonder can you comment on the multiple decade study on colonies of virii or bacteria in which a large sample of the original was frozen while the rest evolved through tens of thousands of generations. There have been many thousands of mutations, some successful and passed on, others a dead end.
It should be obvious any people considering such can argue endlessly on "speciation" but I think that's because "species" is a construct for labeling, like the Dewey Decimal System in libraries that apply a somewhat arbitrary label code..
I think you have to leave viruses out of this. They aren't really alive; they're more like computer viruses that can't actually do any harm until they've inserted themselves into someone else's executive code.
Bacteria make an interesting distinction between the proteins that they need to survive (for example structural and catalytic proteins), and spare enzymes that might be useful in special situations. Genes for the former are kept on a single circular chromosome which is parked against the cell membrane, and they are protected from too much change. The others (the spare toolkit as it were) are on small circles called plasmids which can be readily exchanged even across species boundaries. I suspect that most of the "evolution" you are referring to involved plasmids, not the main chromosome.
The more I study this, the more amazed I am at God's unexpected inventiveness.
My apologies, hazel, I'm convinced of the correctness of Evolution due to many other observable higher lifeforms speciation with fewer generations and I couldn't recall offhand the name of the man and group performing the 30 year study and I forgot whether it was virii or bacteria. My fault was I didn't search long enough to find it asnd hoped you were familiar. It is bacteria and here's a synopsis https://evolutionnews.org/2013/11/richard_lenskis/
I could "blow this off" as intended tongue-in-cheek irony considering at the bottom the writer is listed as part of The Discovery Institute, one of the worst of the christian equivocators I have already mentioned as proven to lie under oath in a court of Law in the Dover case, but the sad truth is as much as I love the Linux ability to copy by swiping and pasting by middle-click, the fact is I posted the wrong link and didn't check. I won't be deceptive nor make any excuses. Normally I'm much more thorough, so I will have be more firm about not being swayed by a clock.
Normally I'm much more thorough, so I will have be more firm about not being swayed by a clock.
It can be a hard thing to balance - either submitting too hastily and inevitably finding something that needs correction, or paying far more time writing a response than the thread warrants.
On the former of those, I just realised I'd incorrectly assumed Richard Lenski's personal blog was the official website, when it is actually the-ltee.org, which has ongoing news about the experiment.
Any discussion of bacteria, or anything else, is ever going to convince me that we actually have the answer yet. The proposition, for me, is simply "a bridge too far." Yes, we know that species evolution exists. But I will never agree that it causes diversity above the species level – let alone entirely new life forms.
Every form of life reproduces "after its own kind" and there are obviously controls which make it do nothing else successfully. But the proposition is that, somehow, these rules are turned off and a brand-new viable form of life "appears," simultaneously in male and female form and capable of mating with each other. But then, the rules are turned back on again as the brand-new form of life once again reproduces "after its own kind" until there are millions of them walking, flying, or swimming around. And they survive. Even thrive.
I simply think that we must acknowledge that we have zero idea how this is done.
But, unlike some others, I can "leave it at that." I don't have an explanation at all. All that I have is "wonder," and of course, "curiosity." But I do not have an answer and I never expect to have one. Not religion, and not science. There are hardlimits to our knowledge, and this is one of them. (At least for now ...!)
Last edited by sundialsvcs; 07-04-2022 at 12:29 PM.
Hello again sundialsvcs. I can't help but wonder if there exists a causal connection, or at least heavy influence, between your "difficulty" with "millions and billions" and your problem with accepting the validity of Evolution. It is quite common that people who imagine Evolution takes place at the individual level, instead of at the genetic level in very small steps over very long periods of time or generations. When combined with your congenial but nevertheless obvious blanket skepticism, especially in areas where you are less than expert and apparently expect any event to "just make sense to you", it does seem a recipe for for rather offhand dismissal.
That makes some sense as well since it has been more than a few hundred years since the age of the Renaissance Man, where it seemed possible to know much of what all humans could know at the time. It is indeed, extremely hard for many to accept limitations or assume that one's limitations exist in everyone. One common example of that very human assumption is The Armchair Quarterback or other Sports enthusiast.
Sylvester Stallone once mentioned that when training with professional boxers for the "Rocky" films, his own skills naturally improved greatly. He could feel his own considerable progress. So he asked one of them if the boxer thought he, Stallone, could handle an actual pro fight. When told respectfully but emphatically, "No!" his ego was bruised so he pleaded with the boxer to demonstrate in a real sparring session. Stallone said he didn't even see the punch coming it was so fast, and he was hit so hard he was "talking to dead relatives" for an hour. He then understood his own hubris at comparing a few months a few hours at a time of "film training" to look convincing to day-by-day dedicated training for decades when one's health and livelihood were literally on the line.
Granted, Evolution requires considerably more research and understanding of specific scientific expertise than say Humans Landing on the Moon, but apparently you still subscribe to that particular Dunning Kruger effect and confirmation bias. I do hope a man of your obvious intellect can rise above such constraints someday. Bonne Chance!
@enorbet: Everything of course revolves around "genetics," "DNA," and so forth ... but where we disagree is "very small steps over long periods of time." Even in the readily-observable process which we call "evolution," and can easily see in moths and so forth, I think that there are still hard limits. You can talk all you want to about Rocky Stallone, but I don't apologize for having "blanket skepticism" in this matter. I do not think that these "small steps" will ever be capable(!!) of marching beyond "the species boundary," but are instead ... somehow ... turned back.
I look at this conundrum, and to me "evolution" is not enough. No matter how much "time" you decide to throw at it.
I perceive that "evolution" essentially consists of small, environment-triggered adaptations that occur within small closed boxes, allowing a species to adapt within the confines of that box but not to escape it. This is a highly desirable characteristic to have, because it helps the life form to avoid being eaten.
But the closed box remains closed. Each biological system does not fail to sustain itself. And I happen to think that this is one of the reasons why "biological systems manage to sustain themselves" in real-world conditions. If arbitrary changes were to be possible, then simple probability says that they would very rapidly would leave the whole enterprise ... dead. (XXX-lions of "genetic reproductions" occur every single second throughout the planet.)
I'm not being a Luddite nor an "intellectually constrained person" when I examine what "the evolutionists" say, and conclude that "no, that doesn't add up. You don't have the missing piece [yet]." There must be something else. (And, I don't say that "the creationists" have it, either.)
Maybe – in direct opposition to the "micro-adjustment processes" of "species evolution" – there is also an as-yet-undiscoveredmacro process that, for example, enabled a water-bound creature to escape the hard limit of a drying-up pond by becoming a tadpole which could then become a frog. I can easily imagine such a "dimension" somehow existing. But, I don't believe that "evolution" is actually what we are all looking for. (And, I have no idea what it is.)
Last edited by sundialsvcs; 07-04-2022 at 06:02 PM.
I perceive that "evolution" essentially consists of small, environment-triggered adaptations that occur within small closed boxes, allowing a species to adapt within the confines of that box but not to escape it. This is a highly desirable characteristic to have, because it helps the life form to avoid being eaten.
I'll respond to this full last post soon but for now it might be helpful to understand the above is a common misconception.
There was a time (before Darwin) that it was thought for example that because giraffes had to constantly stretch to reach higher limbs and their leaves that their necks extended and then that trait was passed on to offspring, ultimately resulting in very long necked giraffes. This simply isn't so. Evolution is not goal-oriented. It isn't conscious so doesn't make adaptive changes. Simply random mutations as simple as my brother is substantially taller than me though also a lot skinnier despite that we came from the same 2 parents, produced giraffes at some point with longer than average necks and very likely also some with shorter than average necks. Chance had it that tall trees existed in their environment so the ones with longer necks had an evolutionary survival advantage, so the species favored longer necks over time. Had it instead been that only very short trees existed it is likely the short necked giraffes would have been favored, all sheerly by chance.
Some "boxes" are small but some are at least global. Numerous species grew to fantastic sizes (like dragonflies with 6 foot wingspan) during a time when the oxygen content of Earth's atmosphere was very high but that was an unstable condition for the long run. So those oxygen dependent variations went extinct, just like 99% of ALL past lifeforms have. Certainly there are distinct differences between sea life and land life but ALL have a great deal in common most likely having a single common ancestor. We are all carbon-based Earthlings arising from a similar environment as compared to any other planet we currently know. For example we have considerable genes in common with simple Yeast.
In fact some are "swappable"
Quote:
Originally Posted by InternationalBusinessTimes
Out of the many new strains of yeast thus created, each with a single human gene, around half survived and reproduced.
"Cells use a common set of parts and those parts, even after a billion years of independent evolution, are swappable," said Edward Marcotte, professor in the university's Department of Molecular Biosciences and co-director of the Center for Systems and Synthetic Biology (CSSB).
"It's a beautiful demonstration of the common heritage of all living things — to be able to take DNA from a human and replace the matching DNA in a yeast cell and have it successfully support the life of the cell."
Marcotte expects another 1,000 or so pairs of swappable genes between humans and yeast.
I believe fwiw that it's not the survival of the fittest that drives evolution but the emigration of the failures. It is the meek who inherit the earth, just as the Good Book says! The fittest, most ruthless and most successful animals do not evolve. They just become better and better versions of what they already were. They are impaled on an evolutionary fork: as long as their environment stays the same, so will they; if it changes, they go extinct.
But the failures, the ones who can't compete, have to find another way of surviving. Sometimes of course they don't survive; they just go to the wall. But often they emigrate to get away from the competition. Some emigrate literally: it was the least successful chimpanzees who had to move out of the forests into more open woodland and wooded savannah and they became our ancestors. In other cases, the emigration is notional: less successful animals move sideways to find a vacant ecological niche. Less successful diurnal predators have to start hunting at night. Less successful birds have to nest later and will end up feeding their young on different food.
Initially the effect of emigration is to remove the dead hand of natural selection. In the new environment, there is no competition, so all kinds of crazy genetic experiments become possible. Eventually the animals become numerous enough to start competing with each other and natural selection clamps down again. The original form and most of the variants die out and only the most successful variant is left: a new species. It probably happens quite fast (say over 20 generations) and to a small initial population so it's not surprising that we find no trace of it in the fossil record.
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