Evolution (or lack thereof) of microtubule polarity from an ancestor lacking polarity

You’re more than welcome for the laughs. I’m glad I can provide some entertainment, but to the matter at hand, Steve Matheson helped me articulate the problem more succinctly, namely, the problem of fitness peaks and how natural selection is in many cases an IMPEDIMENT to evolutionary change, not a mechanism that facilitates it.

The issue at hand is the emergence of functional and integrated paralogs such as the tubulin paralogs in eukaryotes. Co-option of domains and major parts is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the evolution of such functional systems.

By way of analogy, when computer users create pass words, they co-opt the same alphabet as everyone else, the fact of co-option doesn’t make it probable that one user will be able to find a functional password to someone else’s user account. The existence of co-opted parts (as in protein motifs), does not imply functional integration will proceed naturally. Such as in the issue of promiscuous domains, it creates problems for the feasibility of evolution.

I’m assuming you don’t want an answer to your question.

Sure I’ll answer it, there is no fundamental difference, except evolutionary biologists don’t admit their theory needs miracles to make common descent actually work.

They don’t and it’s not.

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However it’s worded it’s a problem, imho, and worth a separate discussion which I hope to explore in another thread. It is very evident in the problem of evolving Eukaryotes from some, presumably simpler prokaryote-like ancestor. But the problem is also relevant in this discussion.

Thank you anyway for your comments, they were helpful.

You’re not humble.

But not worth you actually DOING anything, amirite?

That makes me wonder if you know what “paralog” means. Do you?

No, that’s the wrong answer. In fact I already answered your question, correctly, the last time you asked it. You appear to have ignored me that time, so I’ll repeat: the difference is huge, as separate creation explains nothing, while common descent (even with miracles) explains the nested hierarchy of the data, including the pattern of distribution of those features you consider miraculous. Of course common descent is highly preferable.

Only in a Jack Chick fantasy would your question be a stumper.

No, I went and started the thread since it is relevant to the problem discussed here:

The problem is that if one is going to say the Prokaryotic architecture is “conserved” that would mean selection disfavors slight variations from it. Hence it is the problem of evolving something that is already working under the assumption it is “conserved” for hundreds of millions of years.

This does relate to the problem of evolving structurally polarized microtubules using 3 paralogs of tubulin. But there is a large issue of Natural Selection being inappropriately advertised as facilitating evolution, when it can be said it ought to do a lot of preventing evolution!

The nested hierarchy of data includes taxonomically restricted novel systems not found in other lineages. Thus, common descent doesn’t explain those.

Common descent, for example doesn’t explain membrane bound organelles in Eukaryotic architecture, although all Eukaryotes “nest” under the general category of Eukaryotes.

So the data disagree with your characterization that common descent “explains” the pattern of nesting. At best it “explains” the pattern of nesting for shared systems and proteins/DNA, not the stuff that is not shared!

Common Design Optimized for De-crypting the intricacies of human biology is the better explanation. The supposed evolutionary progression is more like a Rosetta stone for decrypting the structure and function of human biology. So, yes there is a progression, but not one of common descent but of a succession of forms for scientific discovery.

Did you read the paper, or just the abstract?

“If humans evolved from apes, how come there are still apes?”

I absolutely love these comments from the skeptics. They out and out prove that they have no answer to the dilemma posed by @stcordova. I must admit I am really enjoying this one…!

My comment was directed at his reply to me, where he made a couple of comments on the abstract, but nothing about the main text. I think he should read the main text before continuing to comment on the system, as it contains a lot of relevant information.

The “dilemma” he’s posing is the standard ID “gotcha”: “look at how complex this system is, the mind just boggles at the thought of how it could have evolved!” It’s the same line, just applied to a different molecular system each time. It’s much easier to throw up your hands and invoke miracles than it is to actually get stuck in and study these systems.

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But it does explain the pattern of distribution of those systems, which is what common descent is supposed to explain. Common descent doesn’t explain the origin of any new features. It doesn’t even explain point mutations, just the pattern of distribution of point mutations among taxa.

You’re wrong. It explains that pattern just fine. You keep bringing up the origin of novelties as if the novelty itself is the pattern. But it isn’t. The distribution of novelties is the pattern.

That’s not an explanation at all. And if it were, it would apply only to a limited number of taxa that we could use as model organisms. Why should there be a nested hierarchy among apicomplexans or scarabeids or lauraceae? It’s the height of personal arrogance to think that all the millions of species, extant and extinct, were arranged for the benefit of Sal Cordova.

No. Here is what is really going on. You don’t really have a good answer and it is high time that everybody here on this forum start a new life of honesty and transparency. You say you want PEACE? Well, let it begin with you. What does it hurt you to concede that @stcordova has made a pretty good point? And how does it hurt you to confess, “I don’t really have a good answer right now.”?

LET THE PEACE BEGIN…the peace that everybody here says they want. Admit what you DO possess as well as what you DON’T possess in your paradigms.

And that includes you too, @John_Harshman – maybe especially you. I have never heard you one time admit to any kind of weakness in your ideologies or ideas.

You need to reread the post you’re responding to there. I don’t think that species were arranged for my benefit. Do you?

I do. Christians believe the Creator of the universe, Jesus Christ, died for their sins, not because sinners deserved this act of grace, but because it was an act of grace.

If God would do that for a sinner, then it is not unreasonable God could create a world optimized for humans. It’s nice that we can dissect pigs, mice, fruit flies rather than humans to understand human biology. If we did not have a progression of forms from simple to complex, but just humans on the planet, to understand biology, we’d have to dissect humans to understand our own biology. This is what we’d have to subject humans to rather than the fetal pig depicted below to understand biology:

Would you rather we learned biology through having model creatures that God made like the Pig pictured above, or would you rather volunteer your own body for dissection like this for the furtherance of scientific discovery? God made creatures similar to us as a Rosetta Stone/Decryption System so that we can understand how we are fearfully and wonderfully made. The alternative is just to make humans that can do chemosynthesis, but then they would have no recourse to understand their own architecture except by killing each other…this was brutally apparent to me when I had to do a report that involved the Embryonic Stem cells of an aborted human fetus…at that point I saw the nested-hierarchy as Designed Gift of God, not as an accumulation random accident in the process of common descent. It then became clear the nested hierarchy and the progression of forms from simple to complex isn’t an evolutionary progression but a designed progression like a Rosetta Stone/Decryption System.

The universe is fine-tuned for life, and the pattern of hierarchy is fine-tuned for scientific discovery. The progression is real, but it is not common descent, it is common design for the purpose of science.

Common descent needs miracles to explain the evolution of this eukaryotic system for DNA Double Stranded break repair from a prokaryote-like system. You can assert there is no miracle needed, but it’s just bald assertion. Random mutation can’t build anything like it, and selection would fail since half-formed DS repair systems would be selected AGAINST not for, since in many cases the creature would die.

I’d find your claims of natural mechanism more believable if you could offer mechanistic explanations for the evolution of such systems rather than vague appeals to unseen, untestable, unknowable mechanisms that are capable of making such designs – which ironically don’t seem to different than appealing to an Intelligent Designer, except you won’t admit it!

I was taught about the following system by a pioneer of Histone code theory in grad school. You’re welcome to explain for the readers why this system can naturally evolve. The first step is giving an account of what the ancestor looked like and then the steps of change from that ancestor.

The fact evolutionary biologists pretend they’ve explained how it evolved naturally is the reason I disregard their claims. We couldn’t build a system this complex even if we put some of the best engineers and chemists on the project! An intellect far beyond the capabilities of the sum total of human science couldn’t build a system as complex as this.

https://clincancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/16/18/4543

Model of histone modifications and chromatin remodeling during DNA DSB repair, step 1: Recognition and signaling of a DSB. γ-H2AX plays a key role in DNA damage signaling, acting as a platform of assembly for the repair factors as well as for checkpoint proteins. Immediately following the apparition of a DSB, the MRN complex binds DNA ends and participates in ATM kinase recruitment. ATM then rapidly phosphorylates the H2AX histone variant at the site of the break. Phospho-H2AX, also called γ-H2AX, allows the binding, retention, and accumulation at the break of the complexes involved in the DDR. The simultaneous presence of the RSC remodeling complex at the break may facilitate the access of the recruited repair factors. Indeed, the mediator protein MDC1 is recruited to the DSB and binds γ-H2AX, where it promotes further ATM and MRN accumulation. As a consequence, γ-H2AX bidirectionally spreads out from the DSB (approximately 2 Mb), thus increasing the accumulation of repair factors. MDC1 also recruits RNF8/UBC13 ubiquitin ligase, which ubiquitinates H2A and H2AX, which, in turn, is recognized by RNF168-UBC13 H2AX-ubiquitin–ligase complex, resulting in the amplification of γ-H2AX polyubiquitination near the DSB. In parallel, γ-H2AX also permits TIP60 HAT recruitment at the break, followed by the acetylation of H2A and H4 histones, and destabilization of the nucleosomes. In addition, phosphorylation of H2AX could induce conformational changes in the nucleosome, resulting in the exposition of H4K20me and H3K79me, recognized by the checkpoint protein 53BP1.

So you read the paper?

More diagrams with abbreviations, colored shapes, and numbered arrows pointing around, please. They make you look really clever.

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They make God, the creator of these systems, look even more clever.

That’s a hallucination. What you describe would require a ladder of life, not a tree. You consistently ignore most of what I say. Let me also point out that it’s not necessary to kill anyone in order to do a human dissection. Aren’t you aware that there are human dissections happening all over the world, without the need of murder?

That explains why it’s only present on one planet, while most of it is inhospitable vacuum, I suppose. And why you think it could arise and propagate only by special creation. Some fine-tuning that is.

Whether there is or is not has nothing to do with the point under discussion, but you just can’t see. The fact that you can’t see the difference between an explanation for mutation and an explanation for the pattern of differences is preventing any real discussion of common descent. All your arguments are against purely natural evolution of novelties and have nothing to do with common descent. Why do you reject common descent?