Gauger: Alternate Reading Frames Unlike Human Design

I’m ok with theistic evolutionists. I look at it as a question about ultimate causes, not proximate ones.

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Not in my experience. From what I can tell, most of us just want to go about doing science and don’t feel like constantly fighting culture wars.

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Yepp! I made the mistake of spending way too much time on this stuff. To the point I got burned out and all but left the life sciences.

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Agreed. You complained about the word ‘fact’. I removed it. :slightly_smiling_face:

No, I complained about your definition of the word. Taking it out doesn’t alter the embedded claim about facts.

You are correct.

I hope things have improved since then!

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Seems to me that is exactly what the TE’s have been doing - taking a stand for faith and reason together. More power to them.

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@noUCA Good place to start woudl be this short summary: Ken Ham’s Darwinism: On The Origin of Species by Means of Hyper-Evolution Following Noah’s Flood – Naturalis Historia

Change is a beautiful fact of life. That is not the argument. The argument here is, where is God in evolution and in the upward advance of life over billions of years? The evolutionist - that is, in the true and original sense - doesn’t find God at all, while the theistic evolutionist invokes him at every turn in the road.

But wow, we are off-track here, aren’t we. Simply put, Ann Gauger identified what she thought was design in DNA. I agreed and challenged you to “figure it out” without an appeal to God’s design (my words, not Ann’s). Please tell us how this complex chemistry and engineering of Life occurred without God.

Why aren’t you contradicting yourself?

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@noUCA

You apparently dont realize God can use evolution as a method of creation, just as much as he uses special creation as a method!

1] God designs which genes will mutate.

2] God picks which parts of an ecosystem will change.

3] God designs when and where 2 originally similar populations will “speciate” and evolve in different directions!

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Actually that is not what happened.

She found something that did not looked designed, and then concluded it was a “genius” design.

We are still trying to figure that one out.

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That reminds me of the logic in Full Metal Jacket when the helicopter machine gunner was asked how he knows the people he’s shooting at are Viet Cong:

“If they run, they’re VC. If they don’t run, they’re well disciplined VC” :grimacing:

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I’d agree with this paper:

Evolution of new genes within such double reading frame arrangements have been known since some time [26, 27] (called “overprinting” by [27]). They have been well studied in viruses [28, 29], but several examples are also known from eukaryotes and have been studied in detail for some genes [3032]. Chung et al. [33] provided a first systematic approach to identify such alternative reading frames (ARFs) in mammals and suggested 40 candidate genes which appeared to use ARFs. We find here that it is indeed possible to retrieve even among annotated genes additional cases of overprinting, where the alternative reading frame maps to a different phylostratum than the original reading frame. This suggests that existing genes may readily become templates for de novo evolution of new gene functions within them, further supporting the notion that de novo evolution of gene functions are possible.
Phylogenetic patterns of emergence of new genes support a model of frequent de novoevolution | BMC Genomics | Full Text

You might wonder how this is possible? Turns out that evolving a “functional” protein is likely far easier than Doug Axe’s estimate. Alternate reading frames of an existing gene might have a couple advantages over other parts of the genome: 1. longer runs of coding DNA before a stop codon, 2. already transcribed at a low level. They are still random, but random DNA often produces proteins with function. If that function is beneficial, you have a de novo gene to select.

This process has been studied a lot in viruses. The only reason it is difficult for ID to believe is because overprinting itself is inconsistent with their understanding of protein space. If protein function was astronomically rare and disconnected in sequence space, overprinting would be flat out impossible.

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The third possibility to initiate an alternative reading frame within an existing gene is a new upstream exon, driven by a new promotor, combined with alternative splicing. …

[Query] This raises of course the question of how the new promotor for the new upstream exon has evolved.

[Hypothetical support to Query which is limited, weak, and may not in any way aid the Query in reality ] However, it has been shown that there is a widespread presence of long-range regulatory activities in the mouse genome, which can act on inserted promotors [52].

[Conclusion which is really inconclusive ] Thus, it seems indeed rather conceivable that random mutations in such potentially active regions might suffice to create a new regulated initiation site.

Like I said, when you get it “figured out” in a conclusive manner that rules out the more elegant solution of intelligent design, you let us know.

I think of theistic evolution the same as I do theistic gravity, theistic chemistry, or theistic microbiology.

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That would be her subjective opinion. Scientists are less than impressed.

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Do you think that if we find a natural explanation for a phenomenon this means God is not involved?

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