THE Evolution Thread

[Jimmy Higgins]

Your normal ignorance, vituperation, content-free insults, and manifold other shortcomings that cause no one to post on your silly forum are again on full public display. However, your duty in this thread is to provide LULZ, and you have failed to deliver.

Question: Why don't you, for your part, shut your wide-open trap and do what I asked? Show me macroevolution.

Answer: Because you can't.

You are adhering a value to the word macro-evolution that is non-existent, nor intended. Macro-evolution isn't a switch or a moment. It is a name given to a timeline of an obscenely long period of time (compared to our lifespan) and the changes that occur during it. Asking to see macro-evolution, is like asking to see isostatic rebound along the coast of Alaska (and that'd be easier than seeing macro-evolution).

The Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto has a breathtaking exhibit on Evolution from the start to current. It is jaw dropping incredible. I don't know if other museums have something like it, but no one has one better than it, for certain.

 

[pood]

Your normal ignorance, vituperation, content-free insults, and manifold other shortcomings that cause no one to post on your silly forum are again on full public display. However, your duty in this thread is to provide LULZ, and you have failed to deliver.

Question: Why don't you, for your part, shut your wide-open trap and do what I asked? Show me macroevolution.

Answer: Because you can't.

You are adhering a value to the word macro-evolution that is non-existent, nor intended. Macro-evolution isn't a switch or a moment. It is a name given to a timeline of an obscenely long period of time (compared to our lifespan) and the changes that occur during it. Asking to see macro-evolution, is like asking to see isostatic rebound along the coast of Alaska (and that'd be easier than seeing macro-evolution).

The Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto has a breathtaking exhibit on Evolution from the start to current. It is jaw dropping incredible. I don't know if other museums have something like it, but no one has one better than it, for certain.

In fact though speciation has been observed in short times. I gave him a list of such events and he refused to read it

 

[Swammerdami]

In Thailand I can transfer (with no service charge) anything from 0.01 baht to 999,999 baht with a few clicks on my phone. ::gak::
(For more than 100,000 baht I must look at the phone's camera and blink when told.)

But last time I transferred money abroad I wasted an hour at a Western Union office. I avoid such. PayPal isn't happy to do business in Thailand. I write all this to explain that stinginess is not the only reason I lack a subscription to WIRED !

More ‘evidence’ of intelligent design shot down by science

I clicked to see

... But new research comparing mitochondria ...
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Time to plug into a WIRED subscription

The research was new in 2009, as I could have guessed if I'd actually looked at the URL. Anyway, it's new to me, and online at https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19717453/ , which has a "Free Link to Text" in turn linking to https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2747197/pdf/zpq15791.pdf

The Control-U_but_do_it_quickly trick worked on the WIRED article which is how I got the .gov URL. The .gov pdf gave more detail than the WIRED article so I reproduce key paragraphs here.

Here we show that
α-proteobacteria also have proteins related in sequence to the
other 2 ubiquitous components of the TIM23 complex, Tim44
and Tim14. These newly described proteins, TimA and TimB,
function in distinct protein complexes in bacteria, yet evolved to
serve as modules of a protein transport machine in mitochondria
(Fig. 4). We suggest that the evolution of a protein transport
pathway into mitochondria required only that the LivH amino
acid transporter could accept polymers of amino acids (i.e.,
proteins); even if this were an inefficient process initially, it
would be a starting point on which Darwinian selection could
act. Point mutations in a short segment required for interaction
of the TimA protein with LivH would provide a docking point
for the bacterial Hsp70, which is the direct homologue of the
protein transport motor (15, 28, 29). Point mutations that
favored interaction of TimB with LivH would provide proximity
of TimB stimulation to the motor’s otherwise low-level activity.
This model agrees with Jacob’s proposition of evolution as a
‘‘tinkerer,’’ building new machines from salvaged parts (30).
With these 3 bacterial proteins cooperating as subunits of a
primitive transport machine, a step-wise evolution of the more
sophisticated mitochondrial TIM complex would be enabled.
Molecular machines have been described as being of irreduc-
ible complexity (7, 8). But could a single component of the
machine function in the absence of the others to provide even
inefficient protein transport? Although searches of genomes
have not found a species of eukaryote in which the LivH/Tim23-
type channel is present in the absence of Tim44 and Tim14
subunits, equivalent studies on the TOM complex in the outer
mitochondrial membrane have provided just such a proof of
principle.

 

[pood]

On a side note, a couple of years back the James Webb telescope spotted, on a distant world, signs of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) which on earth are produced mostly by marine phytoplankton and, I believe, some human industrial processes. No non-living or non-industrial process produces it. I recall at the time it was said that the finding was tentative and needed further study. Now, after further study, not only has DMS been spotted, but also dimethyl disulfide (DMDS), the latter of which is also only produced on earth by life. The planet in question appears to be an all-water world (sort of iike the global flood that never happened on earth) and is in the habitable zone of its star. So there are indications that this planet may be “teeming” with life, as one scientist put it. Of course, even more study is needed. The upshot would be that if this planet is inhabited, the universe is probably full of life and the step from non-life to life is probably not as hard as many have thought — all by natural chemical means, no supernatural sky daddy required. This is further bolstered by the recent claim that the last universal common ancestor (LUCA) has been pushed back to about 4.2 billion years and was surprisingly modern. It’s clear that evolution can quickly bootstrap simplicity to complexity.

 

[pood]

From another source, the signal seems to show that these chemicals are thousands of times more abundant than on earth, and again, on earth, are only produced by life and some human industrial processes. Since it is produced here by marine life, maybe if this planet is an all-water world that would account for the higher content of the DMS and DMDS. Of course, it’s always possible that the planet currently has been flooded by Jehovah because he disapproved of fornication there or whatever. Somewhere on that distant world an ark may be sailing right now. .

 

[pood]

Cambridge press release.

Given everything we know about this planet, a Hycean world with an ocean that is teeming with life is the scenario that best fits the data we have.

 

[Swammerdami]

IIUC in 2009 scientists created from scratch, via mutation and selection, RNA molecules (or pairs of such molecules) which reproduce themselves. This strikes me as amazing!

Googling for a discussion of this, I find a 2022 paper "Evolutionary transition from a single RNA replicator to a multiple replicator network" which starts with one self-replicating RNA molecule and evolves it into a higher-performance network of five cooperating replicators. This "pseudo-life" in a test tube is bathed in ribonucleotide triphosphates, I guess, and given other assistance but it still astonishes and serves as evidence that evolution of complex molecules is more likely than one might have guessed.

Apologies if, as is VERY likely, my descriptions are erroneous.