Posted on 03/27/2014 11:31:20 AM PDT by fishtank
Mind-Boggling Complexity in the Fruit Fly Transcriptome
by Jeffrey Tomkins, Ph.D. *
The humble fruit fly that has been at the heart of genetic studies for nearly 100 years continues to amaze scientists and defy simplistic evolutionary predictions. A research team recently evaluated the diversity of gene expression across the insect's genome in much greater detail than previous studies, and the results revealed incredible complexity and design.1
One of the key features that is emerging across the spectrum of research in plant and animal genomes is the fact that nearly all DNA is expressed (copied into RNA).2 This expressed RNA makes up what is called the transcriptome. The different types of RNA molecules that are produced can be placed in a wide variety of functional categories that include noncoding RNAs (short and long) and protein-coding RNAs. The various noncoding RNA molecules greatly outnumber the protein-coding segments. Noncoding RNA regions of the genome act like an overlying informational system controlling the usage of protein-coding areas.
In this new study published in the journal Nature, the authors captured and analyzed the expressed RNA from many different fruit fly tissues using advanced sequencing technology.1 The researchers discovered more than 1,200 new genes that were previously unknown. These results show that even in well-studied, small-size genomes, much still remains to be understood and cataloged.
Another amazing discovery was the dramatic prevalence of overlapping genes encoded in two different directions. DNA is a double-stranded molecule and genes are found on both strands (running in opposite directions) with segments that can overlap each other. One strand may contain a protein-coding gene, while the other strand may encode what are labeled as antisense RNAs.3 These antisense RNAs help regulate their forward-sense protein-coding counterparts and appear to play a major role in controlling gene expression in the fruit fly genome at much higher levels than previously anticipated.
Another finding was that alternative splicing is considerably more complex and common than previously known. Both protein-coding and noncoding RNA genes contain regions called exons and introns. After a gene is copied into an RNA transcript, the introns are often spliced out and the exons are spliced together. In many genes, the exons are alternatively spliced to form variable and diverse gene products. In humans, it has been estimated that about 95 percent of genes are alternatively spliced.4,5 In fruit flies, alternative splicing was found to play a major role specifically in gene regulation during both the development and functioning of neural cells.
Much of the unexpected complexity in the fly transcriptome is due to many newly characterized control features that not only regulate gene function but also alter the RNA transcript after it is made. The authors of the study stated, "The fly transcriptome is substantially more complex than previously recognized, with this complexity arising from combinatorial usage of promoters, splice sites and polyadenylation sites."1
Even what was originally thought to be a simple animal genome continues to startle scientists with its incredible complexity. The more we discover about the genome, the more we realize that biocomplexity is much greater than ever imagined. While evolution does not predict this, a creationist view of an infinitely wise and omnipotent Creator does.
References
Brown, J. B. et al. 2014. Diversity and dynamics of the Drosophila transcriptome. Nature. doi:10.1038/nature12962.
Tomkins, J. 2013. Explaining Organismal Complexity with Non-Coding DNA. Acts & Facts. 42: (11) 19.
Pelechano, V. and L. M. Steinmetz. 2013. Gene regulation by antisense transcription. Nature Reviews Genetics. 14 (12): 880-893.
Wang, E. T. et al. 2008. Alternative isoform regulation in human tissue transcriptomes. Nature. 456 (7221): 470-476.
Pan, Q. et al. 2008. Deep surveying of alternative splicing complexity in the human transcriptome by high-throughput sequencing. Nature Genetics. 40: (12) 1413-1415.
* Dr. Tomkins is Research Associate at the Institute for Creation Research and received his Ph.D. in genetics from Clemson University.
Article posted on March 26, 2014.
Regards,
It’s all random via natural selection, and took Billions and Billions of years of random events that resulted in these random things being created out of nothing. Random chance, really.
Now that is just revolutionary.
Somewhere is Stalinist hell, Lysenko is smiling.
The process of polyadenylation begins as the transcription of a gene finishes, or terminates.
To these lyrics from Black Sabbath's "Heaven andHell":
The lover of life's not a sinner
The ending is just a beginner
The closer you get to the meaning
The sooner you'll know that you're dreaming
It PROVES there must be a supernatural explanation!
Not only that, these same random processes repeated themselves across millions of different plant and animal species throughout the ages and in all niches of the earth, with each species demonstrating fabulous and unique complexities of existence.
The probability of all this occuring from random natural processes is precisely 0 (as in ZERO!). If this is not intuitively obvious to anyone, then said person has an agenda other than Truth.
Suggests a further layer of complexity below the level of DNA/RNA. Sub-atomic DNA?
How to Tell the Sex of a Fly
JUST TOO CUTE.
A woman walked into the kitchen to find her Husband stalking around with a fly swatter.
‘What are you doing?’
She asked.
‘Hunting Flies’
He responded.
‘Oh! Killing any?’
She asked.
‘Yep, 3 males, 2 Females,’ he replied.
Intrigued, she asked.
‘How can you tell them apart?’
He responded,
‘3 were on a beer can,
2 were on the phone.’
No it is not zero. The randomness of which is being discussed is genetic mutations. These are derived from numerous sources including electromagnetic energy penetrating our atmosphere, oxygen radicals from food sources, ozone, etc hitting a weak spot on a chromosome and bang - the gene is modified.
Most (>99%) all of these randomly-caused mutations have no impact. Some cause suffering or premature death. Some have a phenotypic expression (something that others can perceive, color for scales or feathers) and this may convey a reproductive benefit or some other beneficial characteristic for that organism in the environment in which it lives.
If that random mutation is beneficial and the creature reproduces and successfully passes this genetic material to the offspring they may thrive and the genetic trait flourishes.
Over a billion years the probability of observing this process is not zero.
Handling fruit flies is tricky business. Too much knock out juice and you kill them. Not enough knock out juice and they regain consciousness quickly and fly away.
I certainly don’t deny variation within a species, as has been observed throughout the ages. My point is that the probability for the development of *new* life forms via the mechanism you broach, where an entirely new species emerges from a precursor is zero. Note that these argument beg how life itself began, as there was (hypothetically) no life to evolve. See The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism by Michael Behe.
“The ascription of all changes in form to chance has long caused raised eyebrows. Let us not dally with the doubts of nineteenth-century critics, however; for the issue subsided. But it raised its ugly head again in a fairly dramatic form in 1967, when a handful of mathematicians and biologists were chattering over a picnic lunch organized by the physicist, Victor Weisskopf, who is a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and one of the original Los Alamos atomic bomb group, at his house in Geneva. `A rather weird discussion’ took place. The subject was evolution by natural selection. The mathematicians were stunned by the optimism of the evolutionists about what could be achieved by chance. So wide was the rift that they decided to organize a conference, which was called Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Theory of Evolution. The conference was chaired by Sir Peter Medawar, whose work on graft rejection won him a Noble prize and who, at the time, was director of the Medical Research Council’s laboratories in North London. Not, you will understand, the kind of man to speak wildly or without careful thought. In opening the meeting, he said: `The immediate cause of this conference is a pretty widespread sense of dissatisfaction about what has come to be thought of as the accepted evolutionary theory in the English-speaking world, the so-called neo-Darwinian theory. This dissatisfaction has been expressed from several quarters.”—*G.R. Taylor, Great Evolution Mystery (1983), p. 4.
Murray Eden (MIT professor) showed that it would be impossible for even a single ordered pair of genes to be produced by DNA mutations in the bacteria, E. coli,—with 5 billion years in which to produce it! His estimate was based on 5 trillion tons of the bacteria covering the planet to a depth of nearly an inch during that 5 billion years. He then explained that the genes of E. coli contain over a trillion (1012) bits of data. That is the number 10 followed by 12 zeros. Eden then showed the mathematical impossibility of protein forming by chance. He also reported on his extensive investigations into genetic data on hemoglobin (red blood cells).
Look up also Marcel-Paul Schutzenberger, a french mathematician. From Wikipedia:
Schützenberger himself admitted that biology was not his speciality,[22] but stated that “[t]he participation of mathematicians in the overall assessment of evolutionary thought has been encouraged by the biologists themselves, if only because they presented such an irresistible target.”[22] Thus his assertion of the probability of random mutations consistently giving negative results brought about a symposium in 1966 (the Wistar Symposium) where he first presented openly (along with MIT professor Murray Eden) the problems with bringing accurate mathematical probabilities using neo-Darwinism.
Not so. The definition of a species matters and the one that is in use today refers to the group of living organisms consisting of similar individuals capable of exchanging genes or interbreeding.
If a population of critters are isolated (geographically) and then undergo a "series of random mutations" over hundreds of thousands of years - they may not be able to reproduce with those from the colony from which they were separated. If they cannot reproduce (successfully) with them by definition a new species has arisen. The probability of new species development is not zero.
We did that in my 10th grade Biology class (in Detroit!). Had to knock them out, sort by gender and virgin or not and check for traits, all before they got up and walked, or flew away. No sneezing or laughing too hard, also! It was fun though.
Roger that. Darwin was ignorant in that he thought that “simple” single-celled creatures were just blobs of protoplasm. We know better now. The most “simple” single-celled organism is stupendously complex.
The idea that a single usable protein in such an organism could have arisen from “time and chance,” the twin evolutionary “gods,” has been compared to a solar system full of blind men all simultaneously solving Rubik’s Cubes. And that “simple” cell requires dozens to function.
So the thought that those dozens of proteins, a cell membrane, cytoplasm, organelles, and the most complex code in the universe, DNA, could have all just formed themselves out of their chemical elements is laughable.
Evolutionists really have no idea how such a miracle beyond miracles could have happened. They just have faith that it did. But there’s a reason what there’s such a thing as the “Law of Biogenesis,” that life always comes from life. It’s a Law because it has always proven to be true.
Evolutionists are really a throwback to the ancient Greeks who believed in spontaneous generation. But since theirs is pretty much a religious faith itself, it’s impossible to dissuade them from it.
When I was a kid we put them in the freezer for several hours. When we took them out and, when they warmed up, they flew way.
I just read an article about the loblolly pine tree. It has the longest genome sequence discovered. Seven times the size of humans.
Yes my words are flying right past you. You do not want to consider them. New species are emerging. Some are going extinct. Take a look out of the window.
I don't believe "evolution" makes any prediction about how complex the genome might turn out to be, and I'm even more sure creationism doesn't.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.