Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

The vein patterns in fruit fly wings never vary by “more than the width of a single cell”

Share
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Flipboard
Print
Email

Different flies, same width. Very precise indeed.

From The Scientist :

Gregor and his colleagues used computer analysis and superimposition to measure and compare wing vein patterns in fruit flies. Even when grown at different temperatures, genetically similar flies had as little variation between two flies’ wings as between the left and right wings of a single fly. And genetically less-similar flies’ wings differed by no more than one cell’s width, suggesting exquisitely precise developmental control over vein patterns. “At every single step, we are at the precision of one half to one cell, so no [additional] error-reducing mechanisms [are] necessary,” says Gregor.

Confirming these data among fruit fly lines with known mutations in wing patterns is crucial, says evolutionary geneticist Ian Dworkin of Michigan State University in East Lansing. If the data hold, it would point to “a remarkable amount of communication between the two sides of the body,” he says. “It would mean development is really incredibly precise.”

File:A small cup of coffee.JPG

Note: The article’s title, “Precisely Placed,” had me thinking a moment—grammatically, it sounded familiar—until I realized that it fits the pattern of “intelligently designed.” Hmmm.

Follow UD News at Twitter!

Hat tip: Ilion Troas

Comments
As to:
“a remarkable amount of communication between the two sides of the body,” he says. “It would mean development is really incredibly precise.”
Perhaps more precise than even he is aware.,,, For fruit fly embryonic development to be any more precise, we would have to locate to an alternate universe,,
Seeing the Natural World With a Physicist’s Lens - November 2010 Excerpt: Scientists have identified and mathematically anatomized an array of cases where optimization has left its fastidious mark, among them;,, the precision response in a fruit fly embryo to contouring molecules that help distinguish tail from head;,,, In each instance, biophysicists have calculated, the system couldn’t get faster, more sensitive or more efficient without first relocating to an alternate universe with alternate physical constants. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/02/science/02angier.html?_r=2&scp=1&sq=seeing%20the%20natural%20world%20with%20a%20physicist%27s%20lens&st=cse
bornagain77
September 18, 2014
September
09
Sep
18
18
2014
11:53 AM
11
11
53
AM
PDT

Leave a Reply