Posted on 08/29/2003 6:14:50 PM PDT by gore3000
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Nobel Prize Design in DNA |
In [1902] Emil Fisher, won the Chemistry prize for the discovery of the chemistry of carbohydrates. He was the first to isolate the purines, the proteins which form one half of the DNA code Adenine and Guanine, the other half the closely related pyramidines Thymine and Cytosine form the four bases of DNA. Adenine always joins with Thymine and Guanine with Cytosine to form the two DNA pairs. These two simple combinations form the code behind all living things. In RNA Thymine is usually (but not always) replaced by another pyramidine, Uracil. Fisher also discovered the importance of the shape of enzymes through his study of sugar proteins.
Eduard Buchner in [1907] was the first to demonstrate that enzymes could work outside the living organism by using the juices of yeast cells to achieve fermentation. Enzymes are biological catalysts which help speed up chemical reactions. They are used everywhere in organisms from helping digestion in our stomachs to destroying bacteria with our tears. Some enzymes, like fibrin, which controls blood clotting are made in an inactive state and made active when needed. Because enzymes are highly specific and often can bind to only a single molecule, some 10,000 enzymes are needed for our bodies to function,
Blood Group |
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Antigens | Agglutinins |
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Alleles |
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A | A |
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Anti-B |
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AA or AO |
B | B |
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Anti-A | BB or BO | |
AB | A and B |
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Neither | AB | |
O | Neither |
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Anti-A and anti-B |
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OO |
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Chromosomes - The 3 billion bases of the human genome are not all in one continuous strand of DNA. Rather, the human genome is divided into 23 separate pieces of DNA, called chromosomes. Chromosomes are strands of DNA bundled together by proteins. Humans have 22 numbered chromosomes (also called autosomes, and conveniently named 1 to 22) and the X and Y sex chromosomes. A typical cell has 2 copies of each of the numbered chromosomes, one from the mother and one from the father, and two sex chromosomes. Females have two X chromosomes, while males have an X and a Y. This results in a total of 46 chromosomes in each cell.[1933a] |
The benefits of genetic recombination are great. They constantly recombine and thus re-unite the different genetic variations in a species. The process requires great care in properly sorting the chromosomes and in properly aligning the chromosomes during meiosis. The entire process with its various steps from the creation of a different mode of duplication of cells, through the sorting, the sexual conjugation and the sexual reunion producing again two sets of chromosomes in the progeny is clearly part of a single system which is useless without all the parts being present and working together with great exactitude. The development of such a system by haphazard stochastic methods is totally unimaginable.
In [1946] Herman J. Mueller won the prize for his work on radiation producing mutations. These mutations were random and not specific. Nevertheless by destroying various parts of the genetic structure at random, the purpose of the genetic material affected could be determined. Mutations were thus an early means of 'killing' genes in order to see by the absence of their function, what was the purpose of the gene. His work showed him that:
Linus Pauling was the kind of scientist we seldom see anymore, a "Renaisance" man of science making great contributions to physics, chemistry and biology. His [1954] Nobel Prize was in chemistry for his studies of forces holding together proteins. Proteins were far too complex to investigate by the methods current at the time so Pauling examined the structure of the amino acids. From the study of simpler structures and the theoretical relations of its elements he was able to give a description of the relationships in the DNA chain:
With the work of Sir Alexander Todd recognized in [1957] showing the role of DNA in genetics we have almost reached a complete description of the plan for DNA. Todd discovered that the DNA bases were held together 'as pendants in a chain" made up of sugar and phosphoric acid molecules. He found that RNA was unstable to alkali but DNA was not. Because DNA is so tightly packed in the chromosomes, observation was not able to show whether the DNA bases were arranged in a chain or branched out in many ways. Todd ascertained that they were arranged linearly due to the alkali instability which would have arisen if DNA branched on the phosphoric linkages. The arrangement thus established that DNA was able to code for an almost infinite variety of possibilities without any chemical interference as to their arrangement since each 'pendant' on the chain was joined in the same way to the chain as all others. Indeed, the arrangement is so malleable that the A-T and G-C base pairs can be (and indeed are) easily 'flipped' on the chain to show on each side of the chain the four different bases.
The importance and significance of this arrangement cannot be exaggerated. Without violating the laws of chemistry, DNA nevertheless places itself beyond its influence. The material constraints on it are therefore non-existent and it is able to be arranged like letters in the alphabet, or like dots and dashes in Morse Code, like 0's and 1's in binary computers. This allows DNA to be arranged according to purpose, goal and function instead of according to physical necessities. It is thus perfectly suited for the design of a vast variety of complex organisms.
Frederick Sanger was the first to break down and determine the exact amino acid sequence of a protein and received the Chemistry prize for it in [1958]. The insulin protein which he studied is an important hormone which was not only small (51 amino acids long) but also was clearly divided into two chains making the disassembly of it easier. Though small, the work yielded important discoveries (Note: residues is the name given to amino acids after bonding to others in a protein chain):
Beadle and Tatum won the [1958b] Prize by
The secret of DNA and RNA replication won the [1959]Nobel prize for Arthur Kornberg and Severo Ochoa. The processes are similar but not the same. The replication of DNA requires in bacteria three different DNA polimerases: Pol I is used to proofread and correct the copying process of Pol III which does the main job of replicating the DNA, Pol II's job has not yet been determined. In this work, they require the help of various enzymes: RNA primase copies a small section of DNA to get the work started (about 50 nucleotides), DNA Helicase splits the DNA double strand in two to enable replication, SSB's - single strand binding proteins keep the split strands from binding, DNA Ligase joins any splits left after Pol I does its joining and proofreading job in the newly formed chain. Pol III is the main agent of replication and has many jobs. It holds the two separated chains together while it replicates the DNA bases by adding the complement (A-T, G-C) to the base in the divided strand [1959a], [1959b]. Here we see again the beauty of DNA organization because the complement of each base is invariably the same, one can duplicate it by looking at only one side of the chain. This makes both duplication and error correction easy. Replication is so accurate that only one base in a billion gets copied incorrectly. The beauty of it all is amply shown in the award speech:
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Just answer the question; asking you to justify an empty assertion is not "arrogance". What makes a biologist a credible expert in algorithmic information theory?
Did you expect them to admit that evolution is a bunch of pseudoscientific quackery?
Only programmers of mediocre skill. Our code writing behaviors and methodologies are artifacts of the limitations of our brain (it isn't big enough). If God can't write perfectly optimal code all the time, it would damage his reputation to say the least. Or at least strongly suggest that God has a finite intrinsic Kolmogorov complexity, which while fine with me (it actually makes for a consistent and lucid explanation of God's apparent properties), isn't so fine with a lot of others on principle alone.
You jumped around about your varying claims of "machines are machines" versus your earlier Can't use a PC comments.
Just admit it and move on. If you can't admit to even your simple mistakes, you'll get no credibility at all.
So the 'designer' in ID presumably can't be an omnipotent, omniscient being, because said being wouldn't leave 49 copies of 'commented-out' cytochrome c genes lying around in the genome. He's more an ADD-designer rather than an intelligent designer. People leave in 'commented-out' code because they don't have time to clean up their code.
Evolution, of course, has no problem with pseudogenes; in fact, they make perfect sense, given the important role gene duplication has in evolution.
Perfection is a straw man; easy to knock down.
That's not what this debate is about, even in the slightest.
Is there an intelligent bias that is responsible for our Origin? A chemical bias? An electrical bias? Or is it due to pure unbiased chance?
That's the debate. Notice that nowhere in those questions is "perfection" sought or asked.
Indeed. People leave in commented code all the time. Moreover, "people" are examples of intelligent intervention and bias, traits that favor ID. In fact, it's safe to say that human software owes its Origin to ID (i.e. people did it).
Thus, commented out code favors ID rather than some non-intelligent process such as Evolution.
The problem with depending upon such cross-breeding as mentioned above to explain speciation is that we know for a mathematical fact that cross-breeding can not explain the Origin of the first TWO species of life (simply because it takes at least two species before you can first cross-breed).
Let's not go drawing such weak conclusions from such flimsy evidence. Commented code may or may not have ever once been useful. Sometimes a programmer will comment out something that simply hasn't been tested yet, for instance.
And that certainly doesn't mean that such code ever "evolved" from something else.
Cytochrome c. About 100 amino acids long, heme-containing protein which is an important coduit for transferring electrons during respiration. Occurs in almost every organism; you can construct a reasonable phylogenetic tree for life using this one protein.
That's funny, but what happens if we do find a comment or two in our DNA code?!
You were ascribing to all machines the practical problems and intractabilities of one narrow class of machine model (classic silicon). This was fallacious reasoning on your part.
There are entire classes of algorithms which are provably intractable on a classic silicon machine, which are demonstrably tractable on other classes of machine model (even if running in a silicon simulator). By very apparently excluding the rather relevant and important capabilities of some other machine models (e.g. the entire class of differential non-axiomatic models), you constructed an entire argument on a rather shaky premise.
For every machine model, there are some algorithm spaces that are effectively intractable on that model. Premising a model for which a relevant algorithm space is provably intractable is disingenuous. I wasn't trying to make a big deal out of it; most geeks aren't even aware that there are multiple orthogonal machine models in theory because we tend to optimize everything we do for the machine model that classic silicon uses.
Isn't the compiler supposed to strip that stuff out before it goes into production?
I've written a lot of code in my time, and the one thing I've always thought I'd do if I had time was go clean it up. Why did the intelligent designer run out of time or energy?
What information do you have available to help answer that question?
If you have insufficient information, then the question isn't worth pursuing at this time.
To: Southack
It doesn't really matter if it is biological, chemical, or silicon. Machines is machines is machines. Heck, that's two-thirds of the elegance of the mathematics.
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187 posted on 09/02/2003 2:20 AM CDT by tortoise (All these moments lost in time, like tears in the rain.)
There are entire classes of algorithms which are provably intractable on a classic silicon machine, which are demonstrably tractable on other classes of machine model (even if running in a silicon simulator). .
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215 posted on 09/02/2003 1:58 PM CDT by tortoise (All these moments lost in time, like tears in the rain.)
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