Red Blood Cells

[modest]

Intelligent design has it own definition with a bible context...

 

The buzz term, intelligent design, in a language proper subject like biology, will be taken to mean the proper one-to-one correspondence (bible) like other biology terms...

 

...Yet this will be called biblical, since it is based on me using the term intelligent design at one time or another...

 

Intelligent design doesn't have to be biblical or religious and nothing that I said indicated otherwise. Neither did it indicate that I'm misunderstanding your use of the term. Your whole post addresses something that misses the point I was making, or at lest, trying to make.

 

You repeat unsupported claims while dismissing those who would critique your arguments. This is a problem—regardless of your motivations or religious intentions or preferences.

 

~modest

[HydrogenBond]

Let me do it this way. Explain how the current version of evolutionary theory is consistent with the conservation of energy?

 

Don't get me wrong, I can see how the fossil data shows life changing over time, with carbon dating and other dating methods spreading the data over a long extended time. But the conservation of energy requires that the current interpretation of the data, needs to take into considerations all forms of energy and not just entropy/random, or else it might define perpetual motion.

 

If the proof of a well written law of science is not provided (energy conservation) is the current interpretation of the data speculation?

 

Again, I am not attacking the data, the data collection, and how its extends over billions of years. I am challenging the current theory to provide its energy balance?

 

I am trying to improve the data interpretation, by not fixating on only one aspect of energy; random.

 

The question again is, how does the existing interpretation of the data, maintain the conservation of energy? At the very least, any good interpretation of the data needs to include water, since there is energy and entropy within water that will be needed to close any energy balance in the cell. I am trying to be sensitive, but I am also holding a dogma of science, to the standards of even firmer laws of science.. Energy conservation is much more fundamental.

 

This is not to promote creationism, but I want to improve the theory. The "he is a creationists" argument can be used to evade the question. Suspending me might make the question go away. But I am firm in my resolve, because no where else in science is the conservation of energy ignored and a theory still promoted as a final version.

[Rade]

Let me do it this way. Explain how the current version of evolutionary theory is consistent with the conservation of energy?

It is explained in this book, Symmetries of Nature, Klaus Mainzer, 1988. Begin reading at page 332 from this link (then jump to page 477):

 

http://books.google.com/books?id=rqzaQo6CaA0C&pg=PA332&lpg=PA332&dq=time+translation+symmetry+and+theory+of+evolution&source=bl&ots=8bjuL3EXvG&sig=sjkTraZDKUX7Mfq9KF8SXM9efQ8&hl=en&ei=GngrTcKHHZDWnAfM9NyKAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=time%20translation%20symmetry%20and%20theory%20of%20evolution&f=false

 

{edit} HB, your question is also explained on page 38 of this paper--the key is to understand the concepts of symmetry breaking and non-equilibrium systems and how these relate to Darwin theory of evolution and conservation of energy laws.

 

http://www.acadeuro.org/fileadmin/user_upload/publications/ER_Symmetry_supplement/Mainzer.pdf

 

The creationist argument that biological evolution violates conservation of energy laws has been rejected by physicists for over 100 years now.

 

It seems to me we have wandered far from the OP topic about red blood cells in vertebrates.

Edited January 11, 2011 by Rade

[Qfwfq]

The question again is, how does the existing interpretation of the data, maintain the conservation of energy?

Photosynthesis and, marginally, a few other energy sources at a temperature higher than surrounding environment.

[modest]

I should ask the question, how is evolution, as defined (proper definition) consistent with energy conservation? ...

 

The lipid bi-layer (hope that is the proper term), forms to minimize energy in water. Random energy is a small player compared to other forms of energy. In the case of highly conserved genes, entropy and random is a smaller player than other forms of energy. If I said RBC causing a potential, I am thinking energy conservation that goes beyond only entropy/random.

 

[my bold]

 

Let me do it this way. Explain how the current version of evolutionary theory is consistent with the conservation of energy?

 

I don't understand where you're coming from.

 

The onus is on you to show where random mutations as a mechanism for evolution violates energy conservation. So far, you have not even given a reason why this would be, much less supported that reason.

 

Naively, a random mutation costs the least energy. As wikipedia says:

 

Therefore, the optimal mutation rate for a species is a trade-off between costs of a high mutation rate, such as deleterious mutations, and the metabolic costs of maintaining systems to reduce the mutation rate, such as DNA repair enzymes.[5]

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation

 

The process itself clearly does not violate conservation of energy—it costs only the energy needed to make the mutation which is easily given by UV radiation or many other sources. A process which were directed by the cell itself (some kind of purposeful DNA adaptation not unlike DNA repair) would cost the cell more energy.

 

In terms of the greater picture—when lifeforms actually evolve usefully—perhaps you are saying this violates conservation of energy. But... how so?

 

Consider the case of putting E. coli in a harmful medium. The bacteria which do not mutate a resistance die. The bacteria which mutate a resistance, along with its offspring, will live. In cases where this is experimentally shown to be caused by random mutation, http://www.sci.sdsu.edu/~smaloy/MicrobialGenetics/topics/mutations/fluctuation.html, how would this violate energy conservation?

 

Neither the bacteria which did not mutate and therefore died nor those which did mutate and therefore lived were doing more work than their energy budget allowed.

 

It would be more energy-costly if all the bacteria had a predisposition to survive because they had within them some directed process that allowed them to react positively to their environment. This is not the case as is shown experimentally. But, important to your point, if that were the case then each bacterium would require more energy because the process of evolving into its new environment would need to be within the cell.

 

The cell would need an energy-powered mechanism to check the environment and deal with it if it were the specific environment in question. The mutation being random takes less energy than the mutation being directed by some metabolic process.

 

So, what is this objection concerning conservation of energy about? What exactly do you mean by it? How exactly does evolution via random mutation cause a violation of conservation of energy?

 

You are the one making the claim that evolution has a problem in that life cannot arise 'randomly' because of energy concerns. How so?

 

~modest

[HydrogenBond]

The conservation of energy, I had I mind, was more about an energy balance around a cell, leading to a mutation for evolution and selective advantage. I not trying to address broad strokes of the pen such as symmetry.

 

I am not challenging the changes within life over the eons, only addressing the energy considerations that are leading to these changes.

 

For example, there are highly conserved genes. A purely random change on the DNA should not allow this. That would be like throwing a six sided dice, with only some of the numbers coming up most of the time, with these particular sides of the dice leading to evolution. However, we also have a few sides of the dice that come up less often, voiding the laws of probability for the dice.

 

This is off the path for RBC, since I am trying to first address the loaded dice of evolution. I am not saying the dice are loaded all the way to an exact predictable change, but the dice are loaded in the sense that some changes have a lower probability than others, such as highly conserved genes.

 

Relative to an energy balance, since some sides are more likely than others, one possible theory are the energy hills for all genes are not exactly the same. The analogy would be like loading a dice, so one side tends to come up more often. Although it is possible to get the dice to fall on any side, in spite of being loaded, energy considerations will favor the weighed side ending up on the bottom. The loaded side of the dice, will end up on the bottom and therefore very rarely change, although not with zero probability. We get conserved genes.

 

Genetic drift tells us how the dice are loaded. We already know, in general terms, where the dice are heading. Purely random would not allow genetic drift, since other genes that are not part of the drift, would be just as likely, if the dice of drift were not loaded.

 

The question becomes, how does life load the genetic dice, as observed by genetic drift and conserved genes?

 

If you look at selective advantage, it implies an optimization but in the context of the environment. Thick or thin fur may or may not give an advantage in the wrong environment. If we combined loaded dice drifting to an optimization, the question I pose is, is the cause and effect, the environment creating the potentials needed to load the dice so the drift moves in the right direction. The answer would require an energy balance that needs to take into consideration not just the organics but also the water, since the cell will not work without water nor with substitute solvents. There is a cause and effect, where water loads the cell for activity. One may explain this is due to the life evolving that way, which simply means water loaded the dice right from the beginning; tailored to water.

 

I am being consistent with the theory and observation, with the only change connected to loaded dice, which would require an energy balance to explain, so the entropy along the DNA is not uniformly distributed.

[Rade]

For example, there are highly conserved genes. A purely random change on the DNA should not allow this. That would be like throwing a six sided dice, with only some of the numbers coming up most of the time, with these particular sides of the dice leading to evolution.

Your argument is not valid, you are not thinking in terms of probability for a genetic population. So, suppose a highly conserved gene (call it HCG-A) in a population of some butterfly species. Without HCG-A any individual butterfly would die before it could reproduce, this is why it is highly conserved, it has some function vital to survial. As you say, random effects can cause a mutation in HCG-A in a very small percentage of the butterfly population, say 1%/month (that is, you roll the dice and you get a bad result). All this means is that natural selection will ensure that the mutated gene from that individual is eliminated from the population, otherwise, the entire population would go extinct (and maybe in fact such population wide mutation events do occur and help explain why large % of all species known to have existed in past are today extinct). Where your dice example fails is that you do not take into consideration that the dice was also rolled for all the other individuals in the butterfly population and the HCG-A remained intact.

 

So, HB, there is no 'loaded dice' effect to explain how evolutionary theory allows for highly conserved genes over time. In fact, it is your hypothesis that requires loaded dice. You load the dice because you do not allow for natural selection to remove the mutated gene from the population. You demand that the mutated gene remain generation after generating in the population producing negative energy drain.

 

Another issue you miss is that there are many types of reverse mutations known, that is, a negative random mutation on a highly conserved gene (say a A nucleotide mutated to a T nucleotide) can be repaired by random mutations in other genes. But this is really a side issue to the problem discussed.

 

The rest of your post demands your false loaded dice hypothesis to be true (such as different sides of the loaded dice having different energy). So, while I agree you are being consistent in your approach to critical review of evolutionary theory, what I see is that you are being consistently in error because you propose over and over again new hypotheses to question evolutionary theory (which is good) based on false premise (which is not good, and leads to your false understanding of evolutionary theory).

[Qfwfq]

So, HB, there is no 'loaded dice' effect to explain how evolutionary theory allows for highly conserved genes over time. In fact, it is your hypothesis that requires loaded dice. You load the dice because you do not allow for natural selection to remove the mutated gene from the population. You demand that the mutated gene remain generation after generating in the population producing negative energy drain.

Actually, I would put it a bit differently: It is natural selection that loads the dice. This ought to solve the problem that HB finds.

[Rade]

Actually, I would put it a bit differently: It is natural selection that loads the dice.

Thank you, I agree in that natural selection is a non-random process the effects the phenotypic expression of the genotype. But I do not think this is how HB understands natural selection to be a dice loader.

 

My read is that HB claims that random mutations should be effecting the conserved genes, but that natural selections loads the dice in a non-random way such that conserved genes are not effected by random mutations. So, certain roll of the dice that should occur by chance (mutations of conserved genes) do not, and the reason is because the dice are loaded by natural selection.

 

This differs from saying that natural selections loads the dice such that conserved genes that are effected by random mutations are non-randomly removed from the population.

[HydrogenBond]

So, HB, there is no 'loaded dice' effect to explain how evolutionary theory allows for highly conserved genes over time. In fact, it is your hypothesis that requires loaded dice. You load the dice because you do not allow for natural selection to remove the mutated gene from the population. You demand that the mutated gene remain generation after generating in the population producing negative energy drain

 

If there was a fully random change within all the genes, more can wrong than right, since even important systems would be free game for bad choices. Take any enzyme and tell me how many ways to make it worse and how many ways to make it better? Which has more options?

 

As an analogy, say we asked a blind man to evolve a car. He is blind like evolution. What we will do is give him book of all the components for that car (its genes) and for each component (gene) there will be another book of some useful, but mostly unsuitable components. For the first car, he randomly picks the cigarette lighter. From the second book, it picks a book of matches and an arc welder for two options. We will let him do this for a thousand similar cars or all the cars in the parking lot herd. The one with selective advantage will more than likely be the one he messed up in the least critical way. But every dogs has his day, so periodically, it does good.

 

Based on that advantageous car, we do the entire process again, and again, starting with that. It is a matter of so many cycle,s until even the best car of the herd is not functional.

 

Try the car example on a computer, to see what would happen to a car, after a few hundred cycles of blind man evolution. It is not conducive to life.

 

This may be harder to see with genes since predicting functionality from random genetic change may be more of an art than a predictive science.

 

If we wanted to allow the car remain functional, even after a million cycles, we need to load the dice (conserve key components). Less random picking will not be as de-evolutionary. If we restrict him to hood design and car color, he may actually come up with a new combination.

 

If we started with the Model T, instead of a 2011 Jaguar C-X75, we don't need to restrict him as much. He can actually quantum leap forward, by picking obsolete radial tires for the Model T, since these might actually be way ahead of the times. But on the Jaguar C-x75, even a tire change can be tricky, causing severe performance limitations. We may have to conserve that more a little more, than for the Model T.

 

I can see how some data appears contrary and other less so.

[maikeru]

 

:)

[maikeru]

When cells undergo mitosis, the DNA is taken off-line. Without the cell body, the DNA would remain off-line. Since the DNA is off-line, during mitosis, is this an aspect of the cell cycle when the cell is dead, since the DNA is more of a passive variable dependent on other factors?

 

Forward poses the idea that the DNA, might be able to alter the cell body before it goes off-line. The cell body would then continue in its characteristic autonomous fashion, but having been modified, result in its own dumbbell shape, which could then allow the cell bodies to swap genes.

 

Please acquaint yourself with a biology 101 textbook.

[freeztar]

If there was a fully random change within all the genes, more can wrong than right, since even important systems would be free game for bad choices. Take any enzyme and tell me how many ways to make it worse and how many ways to make it better? Which has more options?

 

What is your point?

 

I'm assuming you are trying to show that the propensity for "bad" gene expression would outweigh "good" gene expression over time through evolution and that would lead to the extinction of all life, which is clearly not the case, so evolution must be a bunk idea. Did I get that right?

 

The problem with that idea is that the words "bad", "good", "beneficial", "wrong", "worse", and "better", are not meaningful when considering evolution of life over eons.

 

As an analogy, say we asked a blind man to evolve a car. He is blind like evolution. What we will do is give him book of all the components for that car (its genes) and for each component (gene) there will be another book of some useful, but mostly unsuitable components. For the first car, he randomly picks the cigarette lighter. From the second book, it picks a book of matches and an arc welder for two options. We will let him do this for a thousand similar cars or all the cars in the parking lot herd. The one with selective advantage will more than likely be the one he messed up in the least critical way. But every dogs has his day, so periodically, it does good.

 

I've never been fond of the "blind" analogy with regards to evolution. Richard Dawkins wrote a book in 1986 titled "The Blind Watchmaker" which addressed the ideas brought up by William Paley. While I feel that Dawkins ultimately defeated the analogy, I also feel that it was just that...a defeat of an analogy. Analogies can be useful conceptual tools, but they can also add unnecessary confusion. HydrogenBond, your analogies are confusing to me and others besides being more often than not a reflection of a fundamental misunderstanding of modern Biology. Please do your research before posting. This will also benefit you for the "reference requirement" that this site's rules dictate. We do encourage new ideas and postulations, but they must build from currently accepted scientific principles. Otherwise, it is fodder for the Strange Claims Forum, not Biology.

[JMJones0424]

I get the sense that HB still has a problem regarding dissipative structures, even though this was brought up long ago when he claimed evolution violates the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, and problably even earlier than that. This is an issue that I run across frequently with friends. If you fail to realize how random interaction in systems far from equilibrium can bring about structures which can be viewed as "ordered", then the entire notion of life and evolution seems to require a guiding hand to prevent a descent into chaos. Since HB has displayed both a consistent misunderstanding of entropy and a disregard for others' attempts to correct his misunderstanding, it does not surprise me that he continues to resort to a form of a guiding hand hypothesis to explain the evolution of dissipative structures.

[HydrogenBond]

I'm assuming you are trying to show that the propensity for "bad" gene expression would outweigh "good" gene expression over time through evolution and that would lead to the extinction of all life, which is clearly not the case, so evolution must be a bunk idea. Did I get that right?

 

Not exactly. What I was trying to say, a completely random model for mutations, would lead to the extinction of life. Therefore evolution does not follow this schema, since extinction is not the case. I am not denying evolution, rather I do not fully accept a fully random bio-chemical mechanism. The blind car builder does not reflect the evolution we see. The cell would not have evolved proof reading enzymes if life had random in mind. There is an advantage to less random or this mechanism would not have evolved. This appears to have selective advantage.

[freeztar]

Not exactly. What I was trying to say, a completely random model for mutations, would lead to the extinction of life. Therefore evolution does not follow this schema, since extinction is not the case. I am not denying evolution, rather I do not fully accept a fully random bio-chemical mechanism. The blind car builder does not reflect the evolution we see. The cell would not have evolved proof reading enzymes if life had random in mind. There is an advantage to less random or this mechanism would not have evolved. This appears to have selective advantage.

 

We've seen evolution happen on a microscopic scale, random or not. Every flu season is evidence of this. Try to explain that away!

[Qfwfq]

Paley's argument was defeated even long before Dawkins, in The Origin by Darwin.

 

What I was trying to say, a completely random model for mutations, would lead to the extinction of life.

I'm no expert but I'll say one thing: The mechanism of evolution is mostly by chiasms and actual mutations are rare, else kids wouldn't look so much like both parents.

 

Now if you consider that mom and pop, as members of the same species, share a whopping fraction of genome --and especially the most fundamental traits-- you should understand how most of what varies is detail. I'm no expert but I imagine that most of the fundamental traits in a species are homozygous too.