Posted on 08/13/2008 9:44:45 AM PDT by Sopater
How do you conclude I was preaching from this discussion?
The population did not have the enzyme to digest nylon until it mutated the gene for an esterase enzyme, then a NEW protein was made that conferred a NOVEL ability (the ability to digest nylon being predicated upon the existence of nylon).
My claim has not been destroyed. My claim is supported. My claim being that living systems are capable of changing such that new proteins come about and novel applications can be found for them.
How blind must one be to characterize this change as devolution?
==How would epigenetics (which turns on and off genes by DNA methylation) account for a DIFFERENT protein being produced? Can you answer that?
Read the following carefully, Allmendream. You are just plain wrong on this one. Epigenetics is absolutley crucial to the production of these new proteins:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080223123054.htm
You have to remember that believers in naturalism must accept so many logical errors and fallacies to continue in their belief that they can no longer recognize truth or lies.
From circular reasoning to the many fallacies (exclusion, equivocation, etc etc etc), the naturalist believer has lost all ability for critical thinking and is merely a credulist.
It seems to be a consequence of wanting to believe the lie.
==How blind must one be to characterize this change as devolution?
Straw man. He separated the frontloaded ability of an organism to adapt to a changing environment from devolution/loss of information. Go back and read what he said again.
There are no theories behind ID
So, you're back to using intelligently-designed systems to support your naturalistic belief? How cute.
"The population did not have the enzyme to digest nylon until it mutated the gene for an esterase enzyme, then a NEW protein was made that conferred a NOVEL ability (the ability to digest nylon being predicated upon the existence of nylon)."
Every bacterial population creates that enzyme multiple times. The enzyme is neither new nor novel. The bacteria create it each time they are stressed for food. You just don't think so because you don't see it unless nylon is present. Anthropocentric reasoning error.
"My claim has not been destroyed. My claim is supported. My claim being that living systems are capable of changing such that new proteins come about and novel applications can be found for them."
Your claim has no substance. Claiming that living systems are capable of changing such that proteins come and proteins go does not mean that the ability to do that has evolved. You beg the question by assuming that the ability to do that has evolved. It could just as easily have been created. Logical error again.
"How blind must one be to characterize this change as devolution?"
How blind must one be to beg the question and assume that the ability to perform this feat has 'evolved'?
==I didn’t say epigenetics had nothing to do with HEAT SHOCK PROTEINS
Here’s your quote verbatim.
“But nothing in the heat stress protein had anything to do with epigenetic DNA methylation”
And I’m still waiting for the heat stress study you keep citing as an example, but never actually cite.
And the xylenase study i cited was a very good example of exactly what I am talking about, the only thing it is missing was the survey that showed that every possible single base change was attempted during the directed evolution experiment.
Except that, as individuals differ, no two minds have the exact same set of facts. Even the same person, at two different points in time, has different sets of facts.
Which doesn't mean the mind is or is not purely material -- In fact, I believe that there is a non-material component to the mind. It just means that your statement is premised on an event that cannot happen, i.e., two minds having the same set of facts.
I have replied with specific examples of how this done. Didn't you read them?
Here's a quote from one of several relevant links I sent you. Does this answer your question, or are you going to keep doing this song and dance in the hopes of dodging the inevitable bullet?:
HSP90 belongs to a class of proteins called chaperones, which help other proteins in the cell fold properly, prevent protein clumping, and escort improperly made proteins to be recycled. These vital functions become even more important when a cell is stressed by heat, cold, toxins or other hardships that affect protein folding.
Hsp90 is particularly interesting because it is specialized to chaperone proteins that are key regulators of growth and development. Thus, it is in a position to couple environmental change to the release of hidden genetic variation and thereby to produce a host of new traits.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080223123054.htm
Sure they can. It's easy to set up an experiment where 2 people have the same set of facts, yet make different decisions.
"Even the same person, at two different points in time, has different sets of facts."
If the facts are different, then your argument doesn't hold.
"Which doesn't mean the mind is or is not purely material -- In fact, I believe that there is a non-material component to the mind. It just means that your statement is premised on an event that cannot happen, i.e., two minds having the same set of facts."
Your argument follows the form of 'since the molecular configuration of the universe is never exactly the same that it can't rain', but that would be an erroneous argument. Same here. Your argument is erroneous.
PS I’m still waiting for the study, or at least an article on the same. Why are you having so much trouble finding citations to back up one of your three top examples of Darwinian adaptation?
Methylating/demethylating DNA turns genes on or off it doesn't change what proteins they make. That is accomplished through mutation.
Nothing you have sourced contradicts this. You have proposed an epigenetic model to explain the emergence of heat tolerant proteins from non heat tolerant proteins but cannot explain how the heat tolerant protein was produced through DNA methylation and not DNA mutation.
Do you even understand the difference?
The sources I cited show that they are both related. Do have to go in and hand pick every quote for you? Doesn’t seem fair seeing how you have of as yet produced the study, or even an article about the study, that you say disproves directed mutation/adaptation.
Here’s another quote from the SAME article. Are you starting to catch on yet?
“The abundance of naturally occurring genetic variation that is affected by Hsp90 was remarkable. The authors also genetically mapped the traits that could be affected by HSP90 and found that nearly every complex trait in A. thaliana that they investigated could be affected by HSP90-dependent genetic variation.”
Oh good grief. Try researching 'differential transcription' before you make such a fool of yourself. The study he references is for eukaryotic plants.
Related how? I understand if you do not really comprehend the article you sourced, but nothing in it shows how methylating DNA can lead to a different amino acid protein being made from a gene.
How does methylating DNA supposedly lead to a different protein being produced?
How? I can quite simply explain how MUTATING the DNA rather than METHYLATING it will.
DNA triplet codons in a mRNA molecule specify a particular amino acid that is charged onto a tRNA molecule with the corresponding triplet codon. If one changes that DNA triplet codon the ribosome might produce a Alanine instead of a Glycine in that particular protein.
In the xylenase protein three amino acid substitutions during a directed evolution experiment led to an exzyme capable of working at high temperatures.
How is methylation/demethylation of DNA in epigenetics going to accomplish the same thing?
As a review methylated DNA is more attractive to histones, proteins that spool DNA around them and bind it up where RNA polymerase cannot turn the gene “on” making a mRNA out of it to be translated into the amino acid sequence of a protein. This works at turning genes OFF. It doesn't produce NEW proteins.
Hsp90 is not a DNA methylating enzyme, it is a chaperon that is involved in folding the amino acid sequence of a protein into the proper 3-D configuration so that its electromagnetic properties can act in a specific manner.
This is one of the last steps in performing biological function, about as far as from where epigenetic factors act as is possible to get.
************************
To review.......
Information is in DNA. This information is subject to change through mutation. This information specifies the amino acid sequence of a specific protein that performs specific structural/enzymatic/signaling/etc function(s).
This information is accessed when RNA polymerase binds to non-histone bound (unmethylated) DNA that is bound by transcription factors (such as heat shock proteins for proteins that might be handy during heat) and makes a mRNA transcript of the information. THIS is where epigenetic works, in the passing down of or development of a particular methylation pattern to DNA, thus turning some genes off.
mRNA is spliced such that it is read in the best manner with many ‘nonsense’ sections being taken out, or to specify an entirely different configuration as circumstances dictate.
The spliced mRNA goes to a ribosome where the information is translated into the amino acid sequence of a protein by matching it up with its corresponding tRNA that carries a specific amino acid.
Amino acid sequence of a protein folded into proper 3-D structure by chaperon proteins like Hsp90.
Protein performs specific function.
I see the problem...You have a very antiquated understanding of epigenetics. Epigenetics is the study of ALL heritable changes in gene function that occur “without a change in the sequence of nuclear DNA.” But even that definition isn’t expansive enough, because now we are finding the epigenetics factors can “allow previously unseen genetic variation to be expressed.” Which, I dare say, goes right to the heart of the matter being discussed. Namely, the ability of an organism to adapt to changing environments was frontloaded by God at the time life was first created.
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