Tunicates Have Human Like Immune System?

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Nice, from the article:

The body of a tunicate seems simple, Dishaw says, but the new study shows “this simple system has incredible complexity” in its immune system.

It’s starting to seem that every new paper always confirms with the Discovery Institute has known all along and the rest of us were just too stubborn to admit.

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Sorry, what is it that they’ve known all along?

Yes, PS just gave @Agauger her next column. :sunglasses:

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Its another example of irreducible complexity! Right under our noses. Can’t evolve that via stepwise natural mechanisms no doubt.

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It would be funny except that’s going to be the actual article on ENV.

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12 posts were split to a new topic: Did Behe Deny Existence of Studies on Immune Evolution?

If bacteria has an immune system (CRISPR) aren’t immune systems ancient and evolving too?

A common design would predict , now and then, immune systems that are alike in unlike creatures.
i think YEC would see the immune system as a post fall adaptation and not a god created thing yet it still , within the limits of a common blueprint, come to like results. here and there.

Ours isn’t like CRISPR. It is like that of the tunicates, whose original function was clearly simply maintaining the distinction between adjoining colonies. It’s why our immune systems don’t recognize foreign antigens by themselves, but always in the context of self (altered self).

It’s why we have enormous responses to antigens from other members of our own species, which is very counterintuitive.

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What exactly does common design predict now? I wasn’t aware of any particular patterns that it explains other than after the fact declaring that it predicted such all along. This example would be like finding two books written in english and find that ‘hey my book has chapters and your book has chapters- they must have the same author!’

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“Remarkably similar” seems to be very arbitrary and subjective. Doe these tunicates have toll-like receptors? Antibodies? MHC complexes? Do they have TNF-alpha or interferon-gamma? Complement?

I will have to comb through the original paper at some later point and see what similarities can be found.

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@pevaquark
No it’s more like my book has a chapter on downhill racing and yours has a chapter on slalom.
All immune systems are about defending against non-self. In my analogy that would represented by all sports that involve getting down snowy hills fast. There are lots of ways to do it. Some are clearly related (sports that use skis for example). Others are much less similar like inner tubing or bobsled.
I got my doctorate in a department with very broad range of subjects being researched—ecology, evolution, vertebrate and invertebrate zoology, physiology, cell biology, developmental biology, and genetics. We heard seminars in all areas. I recall at least one seminar, maybe more, on Cnidarian and tunicate immune systems. Hagfish too!

Thanks y’all for the column idea, but I don’t think I would take it the direction proposed. These days, everything is complex because everything needs to be.

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I see. Well in that case then its similar enough as @Robert_Byers noted to qualify for ‘within the limits of a common blueprint.’

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I suggest going back:

Because what he wrote was objectively false. Under oath, he added absurd qualifications that were not present in his false statement.

I think that if go look at the transcript with your eyes open, you’ll see my point and agree with Judge Jones that Behe didn’t bother looking. If you go looking with your eyes closed, you won’t.

I predict the latter. I’d love to be proven wrong.

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5 posts were split to a new topic: Mung and Swamidas (again)

The authors said:

The body of a tunicate seems simple, Dishaw says, but the new study shows “this simple system has incredible complexity” in its immune system.

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So you misread their comment, thinking “incredible” was actually “irreducible”? I’m just wondering how you made the leap from “incredible complexity” to “irreducible complexity.”

Irreducible complexity is incredible!

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