Evolutionary Biologist Rick Sternberg Defends Stephen Meyer, Challenges Darrel Falk
| March 14, 2010 | Posted by scordova under Intelligent Design |
Rick Sternberg, PhD PhD is one of the finest and most courageous evolutionary biologists on the planet. He recently has come to the defense of Stephen Meyer by Asking Darrel Falk to Pick a Number
Rick points out a peculiar claim by Darrel Falk which can be falsified:
almost certainly much, if not most, of the DNA plays no role, and in many cases can be harmful
Darrel Falk
Professor of Biology
Sternberg counters with an implicit wager after first providing some insights:
I have long questioned the assumption that most genomic DNA sequences are “nonsensical” or “junk.” And given the data that have emerged over the past seven or so years, a functionalist view of genome has robust empirical support. It is for this reason that I think many of the arguments presented by the Biologos Foundation are “wrong on many counts,” to borrow a phrase from Darrel Falk.
and
Here is an example. While reading the ”critique” of Steve Meyer’s book, Signature in the Cell, by Francisco Ayala, a number struck me that I know to be incorrect. The integer that I am referring to is “25,000” and it is claimed to be the known tally of genes in our chromosomes:
The human genome includes about twenty-five thousand genes and lots of other (mostly short) switch sequences…
Now, the problem with such a statement is this: While there are ~25,000 protein-coding genes in our DNA, the number of RNA-coding genes is predicted to be much higher, >450,000.1 Some of the latter range in length from being quite short—only 20 or so genetic letters—to being millions of letters long. Since 2004 we have learned that over 90% of our DNA is transcribed into RNA sequences at some developmental stage, in different cell and tissue types.2, 3, 4 (Our brain cells are unusually rich in these non-translated RNAs.) These RNAs are then processed into regulatory and structural sequences of all sizes.
It could of course be argued, as it has been, that most of these RNA transcripts are themselves junk. But a host of them are packaged into complexes with different proteins.1
So the true number of genes in our DNA is probably “450,000 + 25,000 = 475,000″. What is more, these 450,000 genes cover more than 88.5% of our 3 billion genetic letters. That’s right—most, if not close to all, of our chromosomal DNA consists of different types of genes that have only recently been discovered.
And this leads to what I characterize as a friendly gentleman’s wager:
How do these facts square with this comment made by Falk?
but this still doesn’t negate the fact that almost certainly much, if not most, of the DNA plays no role, and in many cases can be harmful.
Well, it all depends on how he is using the words “much” and “most.” I really don’t know. So I have a question for him: Exactly what fraction of the transcribed 88.5% of our DNA are you willing to say “plays no role” or can be harmful? All I am asking for is a prediction, such as “90% of these DNA letters is superfluous” (“or 79.5% of the RNAs are nonsensical”). Since he also said “almost certainly” in the above statement, he must have a figure in mind. So I say pick a number, any number…But to be a good sport, I’ll show my prediction: All of the expressed 88.5% of our DNA has diverse roles in our development.
41 Responses to Evolutionary Biologist Rick Sternberg Defends Stephen Meyer, Challenges Darrel Falk
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So Nak, What percent of the genome do you think is functional now? 43% instead of the 42%? lol,,,
I forgot to ask you yesterday Nak,,, How in the world do explain evolution now that multiple layers of error correction are found that prevent any undirected changes in proteins as well as in the genome? Don’t you find that a even a bit disconcerting for the love affair you have for all things Darwin? Oh I forgot, your love for Darwinism forgives all transgressions no matter how egregious the violations of logic.
I’m in such a state of suspense, waiting for Dr Sternberg to explain isochores and why SINE distribution supports ID! Golly!!
What I don’t understand Nak, is why you would even have the audacity to declare 42% of the genome junk when the complexity that man has been able to decipher in the genome so far, which is clearly just the tip of the iceberg of the complexity being dealt with in the genome, far exceeds the complexity of any computer program or algorithm written by man. Basically you are saying,,,
“Yeah 42% is fantastically complex compared to man’s ability, but the other 58%, since we don’t really have a handle on what its doing yet, is junk. Why? well ba77, because I just have to believe Darwinism is true no matter what the evidence says because to do otherwise may make me accountable to the God whom I have chosen not have to deal?”
Is that a little to honest as to how it really is Nak?
Mr BA^77,
How in the world do explain evolution now that multiple layers of error correction are found that prevent any undirected changes in proteins as well as in the genome?
Having multiple layers of error correction is an admission that errors are still getting through all the previous layers! Do some research and find out the actual error rates, even in the presence of all these systems.
And yet, humans know how to build secure error detection and correction information processing systems with much lower error rates. Why is there no checksum in DNA? If DNA is designed, it is designed to change.
Nak, the master of rationalization and denialism. You should get a award for your ability to go in the completely wrong direction as logic dictates.
Let’s see how you work this one out.
Darwinism requires a fairly beneficial rate of change to the genome to work on paper, even though Genetic Reductionism is shown to be completely false, yet even though you are working from a falsified foundational basis of reason in the first place, you say that the multiple layers of error correction are of no concern to you because somewhere in your “alice in wonderland” world of science a “error” is able to slip through ever once in a great while. When it is pointed out to you that these errors are shown to always be detrimental to functionality when they are truly errors, and not just changes of directed adaptations that arise from higher levels of information in the genome, you say that these rare detrimental errors, that slip through, accumulate in some unsubstantiated “Junk” part of the genome, and then, magically, as if by the will of the mad-hatter, they suddenly become functional so as to someday be incorporated into higher base levels of functionality within the genome, even through some genomes have demonstrated stability for millions of years. (Cano, Vreeland)
I guess you just cant beat logic like that Nak, how could I have ever missed the obviousness of your position,,, by the way have you seen the new Alice in Wonderland yet?
Mr BA^77,
When it is pointed out to you that these errors are shown to always be detrimental to functionality when they are truly errors, and not just changes of directed adaptations that arise from higher levels of information in the genome, you say that these rare detrimental errors, that slip through, accumulate in some unsubstantiated “Junk” part of the genome, and then, magically, as if by the will of the mad-hatter, they suddenly become functional so as to someday be incorporated into higher base levels of functionality within the genome, even through some genomes have demonstrated stability for millions of years. (Cano, Vreeland)
I respect your attempt to restate my position in your own words. It was a pathetic failure, but you tried, and I respect that.
My position on variation doesn’t include the neat choice of categories “truly error” OR “directed adaptation”. If you feel that those are the only choices, state that as your own opinion, not mine.
If you need to use a modifier such as “truly”, it should be an alert that your position is poorly supported. See No True Scotsman. See Weasel Word.
Since the average lifetime of a species is ten million years, saying that some genomes have demonstrated stability for millions of years is really not saying much.
Of course, anyone arguing for the stability of genomes can’t also argue for Genetic Entropy. You do see the logical contradiction there, I hope.
Nak,
Well how do your “beliefs square with the facts:
you stated, apparently without much thought that:
“Of course, anyone arguing for the stability of genomes can’t also argue for Genetic Entropy. You do see the logical contradiction there, I hope.”
yet the evidence behind door # 1 is:
Though it is impossible to reconstruct the DNA of these earliest bacteria fossils, scientists find in the fossil record, and compare them to their descendants of today, there are many ancient bacteria spores recovered and “revived” from salt crystals and amber crystals which have been compared to their living descendants of today. Some bacterium spores, in salt crystals, dating back as far as 250 million years have been revived, had their DNA sequenced, and compared to their offspring of today (Vreeland RH, 2000 Nature). To the disbelieving shock of many scientists, both ancient and modern bacteria were found to have the almost same exact DNA sequence.
The Paradox of the “Ancient” Bacterium Which Contains “Modern” Protein-Coding Genes:
“Almost without exception, bacteria isolated from ancient material have proven to closely resemble modern bacteria at both morphological and molecular levels.” Heather Maughan*, C. William Birky Jr., Wayne L. Nicholson, William D. Rosenzweig§ and Russell H. Vreeland ;
http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/...../19/9/1637
and this:
Revival and identification of bacterial spores in 25- to 40-million-year-old Dominican amber
Dr. Cano and his former graduate student Dr. Monica K. Borucki said that they had found slight but significant differences between the DNA of the ancient, 25-40 million year old amber-sealed Bacillus sphaericus and that of its modern counterpart,(thus ruling out that it is a modern contaminant, yet at the same time confounding materialists, since the change is not nearly as great as evolution’s “genetic drift” theory requires.)
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/...../5213/1060
30-Million-Year Sleep: Germ Is Declared Alive
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/f.....gewanted=2
In reply to a personal e-mail from myself, Dr. Cano commented on the “Fitness Test” I had asked him about:
Dr. Cano stated: “We performed such a test, a long time ago, using a panel of substrates (the old gram positive biolog panel) on B. sphaericus. From the results we surmised that the putative “ancient” B. sphaericus isolate was capable of utilizing a broader scope of substrates. Additionally, we looked at the fatty acid profile and here, again, the profiles were similar but more diverse in the amber isolate.”:
Fitness test which compared the 30 million year old ancient bacteria to its modern day descendants, RJ Cano and MK Borucki
Thus, the most solid evidence available for the most ancient DNA scientists are able to find does not support evolution happening on the molecular level of bacteria. In fact, according to the fitness test of Dr. Cano, the change witnessed in bacteria conforms to the exact opposite, Genetic Entropy; a loss of functional information/complexity, since fewer substrates and fatty acids are utilized by the modern strains. Considering the intricate level of protein machinery it takes to utilize individual molecules within a substrate, we are talking an impressive loss of protein complexity, and thus loss of functional information, from the ancient amber sealed bacteria.
Ancient Fossils That Have Not Changed For Millions Of Years – video
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4113820
THE FOSSILS IN THE CREATION MUSEUM – 1000′s of pictures of ancient “living” fossils that have not changed for millions of years:
http://www.fossil-museum.com/f.....8;limit=30
further notes Nak:
The Cambrian’s Many Forms
Excerpt: “It appears that organisms displayed “rampant” within-species variation “in the ‘warm afterglow’ of the Cambrian explosion,” Hughes said, but not later. “No one has shown this convincingly before, and that’s why this is so important.”"From an evolutionary perspective, the more variable a species is, the more raw material natural selection has to operate on,”….(Yet Surprisingly)….”There’s hardly any variation in the post-Cambrian,” he said. “Even the presence or absence or the kind of ornamentation on the head shield varies within these Cambrian trilobites and doesn’t vary in the post-Cambrian trilobites.” University of Chicago paleontologist Mark Webster; article on the “surprising and unexplained” loss of variation and diversity for trilobites over the 270 million year time span that trilobites were found in the fossil record, prior to their total extinction from the fossil record about 250 million years ago.
http://www.terradaily.com/repo.....s_999.html
Evolution vs. Trilobites – Prof. Andy McIntosh – video
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4032589
In fact, the loss of morphological traits over time, for all organisms found in the fossil record, was so consistent that is was made into a scientific “law”:
Dollo’s law and the death and resurrection of genes:
Excerpt: “As the history of animal life was traced in the fossil record during the 19th century, it was observed that once an anatomical feature was lost in the course of evolution it never staged a return. This observation became canonized as Dollo’s law, after its propounder, and is taken as a general statement that evolution is irreversible.”
http://www.pnas.org/content/91.....l.pdf+html
A general rule of thumb for the “Deterioration/Genetic Entropy” of Dollo’s Law as it applies to the fossil record is found here:
Dollo’s law and the death and resurrection of genes
ABSTRACT: Dollo’s law, the concept that evolution is not substantively reversible, implies that the degradation of genetic information is sufficiently fast that genes or developmental pathways released from selective pressure will rapidly become nonfunctional. Using empirical data to assess the rate of loss of coding information in genes for proteins with varying degrees of tolerance to mutational change, we show that, in fact, there is a significant probability over evolutionary time scales of 0.5-6 million years for successful reactivation of silenced genes or “lost” developmental programs. Conversely, the reactivation of long (>10 million years)-unexpressed genes and dormant developmental pathways is not possible unless function is maintained by other selective constraints;
http://www.pnas.org/content/91.....l.pdf+html
Dollo’s Law was further verified to the molecular level here:
Dollo’s law, the symmetry of time, and the edge of evolution – Michael Behe
Excerpt: We predict that future investigations, like ours, will support a molecular version of Dollo’s law: ,,, Dr. Behe comments on the finding of the study, “The old, organismal, time-asymmetric Dollo’s law supposedly blocked off just the past to Darwinian processes, for arbitrary reasons. A Dollo’s law in the molecular sense of Bridgham et al (2009), however, is time-symmetric. A time-symmetric law will substantially block both the past and the future,”. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....f_tim.html
Nak as far as restating you position in my own words; all I have is one question;
Do you or do you not believe that “errors” accumulate in alleged “junk dna” regions where they may gain functionality?
If you do believe this then “my words” are actually your very own beliefs stated with an piercing honesty that you find very uncomfortable. For you to deny that this truly is so you will have to deny the premises of the question I asked you!
Sternberg labored…
And brought forth a mouse:
“Isochores might provide a clue to cause of the mystery signal, but the cause—whatever it may be—is outside the BioLogos box.”