“Our experiments show how biological complexity can evolve though simple, high-probability genetic paths,” said Thornton, who served as co-senior author. “Before the last common ancestor of all animals, when only single-celled organisms existed on Earth, just one tiny change in DNA sequence caused a protein to switch from its primordial role as an enzyme to a new function that became essential to organize multicellular structures.”
Let’s hope filling this gap creates two more, either side of it!
Admin, please linkify my linky? Geez, these place is waaaay worse than UD.
Obviously front-loaded.
You’d know that if you had a good, solid idea that can explain anything and everything, like ID does (as typically “argued,” anyway).
Glen Davidson
Doug Axe will be all over this.
You could do that yourself before posting. There’s a “Preview” option to test.
To linkify in the visual editor, just select the full URL and click the link icon (looks like a chain link).
Thanks Neil. Edit would be nice though 😉
Come on, they just published a paper. There’s only so much complexity the Bio-Complexity servers can take, needs a year to cool down
Pesky darwinists and their Ancestral Sequence Reconstruction.
Time to consult my list of Cdesignproponentsist interpretations, I wonder what the normal response to ASR is:
Ancestral Sequence Reconstruction = *crickets*
.. oh.
The ancestral result was smuggled in.
No but seriously, that result is simply astonishing. I would not have dared to predict such a radical transformation in function could be produced by a single mutation.
“In the history of life on Earth, few events were as significant as the evolution of multicellular animals from single-celled ancestors.”
Yeah sure, to their descendants … ! Those metazoans, think it’s all about them. Especially the chordates. Especially the primates. Especially … me!
Rumraket,
‘Tis rather cool, for a whole host of reasons. And it raises questions for ID on Islands of function, common descent/common design, information increase, a step in the ‘IC’ world of complex multicellular development, CSI …
The gap will never be bridged, the end-points are too far apart, it is too unlikely, Hoyle, Wistar Conference!!.
“How would you even test such a claim?”, a noted ID advocate remarked.
I was actually just about to create a post on this! The full paper is freely available to all and can be found here:
http://elifesciences.org/content/5/e10147#F1
Richard is not even clever when he drunk posts.
Interestingly, not the only time GK has been exapted at the cell surface in multicellular organisms. The vertebrate ‘tight junction protein’ is also a GK homologue. And so are a family of mammalian NDMA receptor proteins, which are involved in nerve impulse transmission across synapses.
I note with interest that this thread and the one about micro fossils found 100 million years before the Cambrian attract no attention from the ID regulars.
compares with Behe
The experimenters got this multicellular protein to be expressed in E. Coli (a prokaryote). Did the E. Coli become multicellular? 🙂 NO.
One residue mutation does not a multicellular eukaryotic creature make.
Nice paper though.
We know Sal, The E coli didn’t evolve into a giraffe or a blue whale therefore ID.
The real question is whether Doug Axe will ever evolve into a scientist.
Gene duplication and divergence. That doesn’t sound like natural selection, drift or neutral changes were responsible. That would take several specific mutations which Durrett and Schmidt demonstrated would take to much time.
For a duplicated gene to do anything it would need a new binding site. Then it would need to be expressed. Fort a change of function it would take mutations to that gene. And not just any ole mutations will do.
So how can we test the claim that natural selection, drift and/ or neutral changes did it? Alan Fox says testability is important so let’s have it.
He is more of a scientist than anyone posting here.
I tried it out on a female cat, and it didn’t give birth to a dog.
God did it wins every time.
Glen Davidson
Oooh snap! Just read the abstract, Phoodoo.
Richardthughes,
Shitty attempt. Are you drunk?
You tried to have sex with a female cat?
phoodoo,
No more than usual. READ THE PAPER 😉
FYI- Multicellularity alleged evolved 30 times- Nick Lane “The Vital Question”
Richardthughes,
Shitty attempt. You don’t understand math.
Not all of it. But based on your hilarious probability posts, more than you 😉
Line drawn!
Nobody believed or predicted they would.
And they never will, because eukaryotism is a necessary precondition for that.
Rich,
I didn’t know you were Denyse’s friend! Thanks for helping her out in her news content.
Amazing coincidence, I was just pointing this out from the article you highlighted the very same thing you must have told Denyse:
You have no idea. back in the ‘overwhelming evidence’ days her password was “Denyse” or “Oleary” (I forget). Think of the damage / hilarity I could have done.
I miss Dr. Atevad, he should have become a UD author. I laughed every time I saw him posting at UD. I didn’t realize his true identity till you told me. That was a pretty good prank. I was wondering how long it would take DaveScot to figure out what was going on.
Sorry for the off topic. Anyway, the article in the OP was very educational. Makes me realize how little I know about biology….
Me too. Fortunately brighter minds than mine are on it!
stcordova,
And yet you “teach” strawman versions of biological concepts and errant nonsense to children in an attempt to indoctrinate them with your unevidenced beliefs. What do you suppose that god you’re betting on thinks about that kind of behavior?
The ID god has considerably lower ethical standards than you.
I’m happy to see them go to high school university some day and hear the other side. At least I know I gave them my side of the story to the best of my ability.
If you like, some of the creationist college biology students I interact with, I’ll invite to TSZ, and you can argue your best case in front of them.
If you’re up for the challenge you give your best, and I’ll give my best. I’ll invite them to read what you have to say. I’d be glad for the students to hear the ID best in technical debate against the evolutionary best in technical debate.
PS
Along those lines, I’m sort of a student again myself as I’m applying to the NIH FAES grad school this semester to spool up on biology.
I think that would be excellent Sal. Remember that Rocky Mountain photo I posted? Maybe we can start our discussion with the age of the Earth.
The Law of Lousy Numbers.
We should wade through all the snark because that’s the kind of site Elizabeth wants?
Besides, we see new multicellular species arising all around us every day. Of course it must be easy.
Mung,
Coming up with slingshots in the time of tanks means you’re a bit late to the party.
Mung,
Occurrences hardly need to be frequent to be possible. There are about 16 surviving different multicellular lineages of independent origin, likely more that are extinct. Even so it’s hardly essential for survival. The vast majority of life on earth can’t be arsed with it.
The designer could do that, presumably. Why has it stopped is the question you should be asking yourself.
I think the title of this thread is misplaced, I would agree with that. I don’t think multicellular life is “easy”. I also don’t think multicellularity evolves in one mutation, which the article also correctly notes it doesn’t.
What is important and astonishing is the completely new function conferred by a single mutation in a single protein, and that this change leads to an entirely new cellular capability that translates into tissue formation. A protein is changed from an enzyme, to a binding structural protein that gives cells the capacity to orientate themselves in relation to surrounding cells, the result of which is the formation of a bona fide tissue. That’s amazing.
It is not in and of itself multicellularity, nobody here has said it is and nobody in the study claims as much. Nobody expects or predicts this mutation will confer any single-celled organism the multicellular trait alone, and in particular nobody expects or would predict something like a bacterium would ever become multicellular through something like this.
While on the topic of bacteria and multicellularity, there is some quite substantial evidence that bacteria are physiologically incapable of becoming multicellular without endosymbiosis. The biochemist Nick Lane sums up this research quite well in his new book The Vital questio: Why is life the way it is?
stcordova,
Sure, after you’ve corrupted them with your nonsense before they have the capacity for critical thinking.
Bring your YECs, your evangelicals, the teeming refuse of Liberty University. Perhaps it will undo some of the damage you have so deliberately done.
Patrick,
Is this post attacking the post or the poster?
Let watchers decide.