Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 73

May 12, 2022

Researcher: Stinging cells evolved by repurposing a neuron from an older form of life

Specifically, the stinging cells of “sea anemones, hydrae, corals and jellyfish”:

In new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on May 2, Leslie Babonis, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology in the College of Arts and Sciences, showed that these stinging cells evolved by repurposing a neuron inherited from a pre-cnidarian ancestor.

“These surprising results demonstrate how new genes acquire new functions to drive the evolution of biodiversity,” Babonis said. “They suggest that co-option of ancestral cell types was an important source for new cell functions during the early evolution of animals.”

Cornell University, “Jellyfish’s stinging cells hold clues to biodiversity” at ScienceDaily (May 12, 2022)

So they “repurposed” cells from an earlier ancestor to produce these cnidocytes?

“One of the unique features of cnidocytes is that they all have an explosive organelle (a little pocket inside the cell) that contains the harpoon that shoots out to sting you,” Babonis said. “These harpoons are made of a protein that is also found only in cnidarians, so cnidocytes seem to be one of the clearest examples of how the origin of a new gene (that encodes a unique protein) could drive the evolution of a new cell type.”

Cornell University, “Jellyfish’s stinging cells hold clues to biodiversity” at ScienceDaily (May 12, 2022)

It’s hard to avoid the sense of design here.

The paper is open access.

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Published on May 12, 2022 19:20

In embryos, we are told, “nothing is left to chance in the ‘seating plan’ for the first few cells”

Mind the gap: Space inside eggs steers first few steps of life

Researchers from Kyoto University Kanagawa Institute of Technology, and the National Institute of Genetics have now precisely modeled the shape of eggshells to show how the space in the egg and the contours of the shell direct the relative positions of cells in the growing embryo. Their findings may provide a theoretical basis for directing the development of stem cells into larger tissues and organs./Kyoto University/Sungrim Seirin-Lee

The researchers were studying the eggs of the sturdy research worm Caenorhabditis elegans (the roundworm):

Imagine sitting at a meeting where the shape of the table and your place at it might impact how you get along with the other members. Cells also communicate with their nearest neighbors, and in embryos, nothing is left to chance in the ‘seating plan’ for the first few cells. However, questions remain about the how this process is controlled and how it can influence the overall growth of an organism.

Building on their previous studies on the development of worm eggs, researchers from Kyoto University Kanagawa Institute of Technology, and the National Institute of Genetics have now precisely modeled the shape of eggshells to show how the space in the egg and the contours of the shell direct the relative positions of cells in the growing embryo. Their findings may provide a theoretical basis for directing the development of stem cells into larger tissues and organs.

Kyoto University, “Mind the gap: Space inside eggs steers first few steps of life” at Eurekalert (May 12, 2022)

“Nothing is left to chance” even in cell spacing in worm eggs but we are told there is no design behind the universe?

The paper is open access.

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Published on May 12, 2022 18:30

Novel RNA and peptide species thought to have sparked evolution of complex life

The emergence of “information-coding properties”:

According to a new concept by LMU chemists led by Thomas Carell, it was a novel molecular species composed out of RNA and peptides that set in motion the evolution of life into more complex forms…

Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, “The origin of life: A paradigm shift” at Phys.org (May 12, 2022)

It’s a new twist on the RNA world hypothesis:

“The RNA world idea has the big advantage that it sketches out a pathway whereby complex biomolecules such as nucleic acids with optimized catalytic and, at the same time, information-coding properties can emerge,” says LMU chemist Thomas Carell. Genetic material, as we understand it today, is made up of double strands of DNA, a slightly modified, durable form of macromolecule composed of nucleotides.

However, the hypothesis is not without its issues. For example, RNS is a very fragile molecule, especially when it gets longer. Furthermore, it is not clear how the linking of RNA molecules with the world of proteins could have come about, for which the genetic material, as we know, supplies the blueprints. As laid out in a new paper published in Nature, Carell’s working group has discovered a way in which this linking could have occurred.

Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, “The origin of life: A paradigm shift” at Phys.org (May 12, 2022)

The new proposal:

According to the new theory, a decisive element at the beginning was the presence of RNA molecules that could adorn themselves with amino acids and peptides and so join them into larger peptide structures. “RNA developed slowly into a constantly improving amino acid linking catalyst,” says Carell. This relationship between RNA and peptides or proteins has remained to this day. The most important RNA catalyst is the ribosome, which still links amino acids into long peptide chains today. One of the most complicated RNA machines, it is responsible in every cell for translating genetic information into functional proteins. “The RNA-peptide world thus solves the chicken-and-egg problem,” says Carell. “The new idea creates a foundation upon which the origin of life gradually becomes explicable.”

Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, “The origin of life: A paradigm shift” at Phys.org (May 12, 2022)

Sure it works if we are not looking for something simple enough to have evolved randomly by Darwinian processes. Something else must underlie the drive for complexity (“information-coding properties”) described here.

The paper is open access.

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Published on May 12, 2022 17:53

First images of the black hole thought to be at the center of our galaxy released

Astronomers at the National Science Foundation have revealed the first detailed image of Sagittarius A, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, captured by the Event Horizon Telescope. — MSNBC

The thing is packed with the heft of four million suns. It is in the heart of our galaxy, cloaked behind gas, dust, and stars. It has never been seen before. That is, until today. – National Geographic

About 27,000 light-years away sits a massive astrophysical object, some four million times the mass of our sun, surrounded by swirling super-hot gasses…

The image gives greater insight into the mysteries of black holes and further confirms Einstein’s long-standing theory of relativity. Despite its name, the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy is quite small in the night sky. From Earth, “it’s like looking for a tennis ball on the moon,” says University of Central Florida cosmologist James Cooney, who is not affiliated with the recent announcement. – Smithsonian

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Published on May 12, 2022 16:51

Has anything been learned from nearly two decades of keening about science’s replication crisis?

As Graham Hillard explains in fact-filled article, awareness began decades ago:

Whatever their actual explanation, the failures that had dragged the hard and social sciences under the public’s microscope [by 2014] were stark indeed. According to the Reproducibility Project, a crowdsourced enterprise led by University of Virginia psychologist Brian Nosek in 2011, an attempt to replicate 100 key studies from three years prior resulted in a success rate of only 39%. Similarly distressing was the work of three Bayer scientists, that same year, examining reproducibility in oncology, women’s health, and cardiovascular disease. As stated in analyses eventually published in Nature, the Bayer team was unable to replicate nearly two-thirds of the external studies under review.

Graham Hillard, “The science crisis” at Washington Examiner (April 28, 2022)

But has anything really changed?

To name just one of the horrifying discoveries made in recent months, a meta-study published in Science Advances found that unreplicable studies in top psychology and economics journals are cited more frequently than experiments that replicate. Furthermore, “only 12% of post-replication citations of nonreplicable findings acknowledge the replication failure.”

As has been widely remarked, the reproducibility crisis is not mere inside baseball but a matter of some urgency for a liberal order under fire from both the Left and Right. Until actual science gets its house in order, hysterical worship of “The Science” will remain exactly what it is today: an implausible posture that only emboldens those who would tear down America’s institutions.

Graham Hillard, “The science crisis” at Washington Examiner (April 28, 2022)

Science is beginning to sound like the medieval church, actually. We are now moving on from keening to caterwauling. But nobody working on the inside can actually do anything about it.

Hillard is managing editor of the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal.

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Published on May 12, 2022 07:08

UK Spectator: “Why is Canada euthanising the poor?” (Slippery slopes dept.)

April 30:

Since last year, Canadian law, in all its majesty, has allowed both the rich as well as the poor to kill themselves if they are too poor to continue living with dignity. In fact, the ever-generous Canadian state will even pay for their deaths. What it will not do is spend money to allow them to live instead of killing themselves.

As with most slippery slopes, it all began with a strongly worded denial that it exists. In 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada reversed 22 years of its own jurisprudence by striking down the country’s ban on assisted suicide as unconstitutional, blithely dismissing fears that the ruling would ‘initiate a descent down a slippery slope into homicide’ against the vulnerable as founded on ‘anecdotal examples’. The next year, Parliament duly enacted legislation allowing euthanasia, but only for those who suffer from a terminal illness whose natural death was ‘reasonably foreseeable’. It only took five years for the proverbial slope to come into view . . . .

A man with a neurodegenerative disease testified to Parliament that nurses and a medical ethicist at a hospital tried to coerce him into killing himself by threatening to bankrupt him with extra costs or by kicking him out of the hospital, and by withholding water from him for 20 days. Virtually every disability rights group in the country opposed the new law. To no effect: for once, the government found it convenient to ignore these otherwise impeccably progressive groups.

Since then, things have only gotten worse . . . [Click and read]

This is the Schaeffer-Koop warning about the incremental undermining of the value of life, and it is a case in point on slippery slopes. Let us hope Canada wakes up and let us not go there. END

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Published on May 12, 2022 05:59

May 11, 2022

Richard Weikart on the non-religious racism that anti-racists ignore

Weikart, the author of Darwinian Racism: How Darwinism Influenced Hitler, Nazism, and White Nationalism writes:

While it is salutary to examine and expose the religious roots of racism, one might get the mistaken impression from this discourse that today’s white nationalists are direct heirs of the Ku Klux Klan, who did indeed (mis)use religion to promote their racist ideology …

So, if the vast majority of scientists reject racism, one might conclude that scientific racism is no longer a problem. Maybe religious racism really is a more important target. However, this conclusion ignores the elephant in the room.

What elephant? Well, how about examining the white nationalist scene today to see what they actually believe? How do they justify their racist ideology? While researching my book, Darwinian Racism, I examined the websites and publications of many neo-Nazi, white nationalist, and alt-right individuals and organizations. What I discovered was that most white nationalists and white supremacists today embrace a social Darwinist version of scientific racism and vehemently oppose Christianity.

Richard Weikart, “Anti-Racists Often Ignore This Non-Religious Source of Racism” at Evolution News (May 10, 2022)

But few would want to discuss that because it would then be necessary to discuss the role Darwinism plays in the development of racist ideologies.

Does it matter? Well,

One of the most virulent pieces of social Darwinist racism I have ever read is the 1896 book Might Is Right by Ragnar Redbeard (a pseudonym), which is currently popular among white supremacists. Indeed, in 2019, shortly before a 19-year-old gunman at the Gilroy Garlic Festival killed three and wounded 17, he recommended on social media that people read Redbeard’s book.

Many white nationalist websites recommend this book, and some even sell it.

Richard Weikart, “Anti-Racists Often Ignore This Non-Religious Source of Racism” at Evolution News (May 10, 2022)

But then, consider this recent story: Well, this is good news for criminal defense lawyers: Psychopathy is an “evolutionary adaptation” Researcher: The results were not conclusive, but they do add to a growing body of research supporting the possibility that psychopathy is not a mental disorder.

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Published on May 11, 2022 20:27

New PBS NOVA special on the day the dinosaurs died

Featuring David Attenborough:

Trailer:

Episodes.

Sixty-six million years ago, a gigantic asteroid slammed into Earth, wiping out the dinosaurs.

There’s strong evidence of the asteroid impact, but no fossils of a dinosaur killed in the event have ever been found. Now, at a dig site in North Dakota, scientists have uncovered a wealth of fossilized creatures that could reveal a more detailed picture of the devastating day the asteroid hit.

Following a trail of remarkably well-preserved fossils, including a pterosaur embryo in its shell and a dinosaur leg with its skin intact, Sir David Attenborough in this two-part special guides us on a search for clues that could give an unprecedented snapshot of what happened in the dinosaurs’ final moments on Earth.

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Published on May 11, 2022 18:58

Before dividing, cells toss out waste products

It’s as if they were designed to do that:

MIT researchers have discovered that before cells start to divide, they do a little cleanup, tossing out molecules that they appear not to need anymore.

Using a new method they developed for measuring the dry mass of cells, the researchers found that cells lose about 4 percent of their mass as they enter cell division. The researchers believe that this emptying of trash helps cells to give their offspring a “fresh start,” without the accumulated junk of the parent cell.

“Our hypothesis is that cells might be throwing out things that are building up, toxic components or just things that don’t function properly that you don’t want to have there. It could allow the newborn cells to be born with more functional contents,” says Teemu Miettinen, an MIT research scientist and the lead author of the new study.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “Cells take out the trash before they divide” at ScienceDaily (May 10, 2022)

The paper is open access.

You may also wish to read: The secret world in the gaps between brain cells Neuroscientist: It’s now known that every cell in the brain is separated from its neighbor by a fluid-filled extracellular space (ECS), which forms sheets and tunnels, as shown on page 26 in a computer reconstruction of the ECS in a rat’s brain.

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Published on May 11, 2022 18:11

May 10, 2022

Claim: Human cognitive abilities a consequence of walking upright

We’ve heard this before but anyway:

Bipedalism developed around seven million years ago and dramatically reshaped the hominin pelvis into a real birth canal. Larger brains, however, didn’t start to develop until two million years ago, when the earliest species of the genus Homo emerged. The evolutionary solution to the dilemma brought about by these two conflicting evolutionary forces was to give birth to neurologically immature and helpless newborns with relatively small brains — a condition known as secondary altriciality.

A research group led by Martin Häusler from the Institute of Evolutionary Medicine at the University of Zurich (UZH) and a team headed up by Pierre Frémondière from Aix-Marseille University have now found that australopithecines, who lived about four to two million years ago, had a complex birth pattern compared to great apes. “Because australopithecines such as Lucy had relatively small brain sizes but already displayed morphological adaptations to bipedalism, they are ideal to investigate the effects of these two conflicting evolutionary forces,” Häusler says.

University of Zurich, “Complex human childbirth and cognitive abilities a result of walking upright” at ScienceDaily (May 10, 2022)

The explanation sounds rather contrived and, curiously, makes “evolution” sound like a theistic evolutionist’s God.

The paper is open access.

More on bipedality/bipedalism: Paleontologist: Humans walked on two legs from the beginning Carol Ward: It seems to be a behavior that was present in some of the earliest members of our branch of the family tree. It represented what was really the initial major adaptive change from any apelike creature that came before us.

Researchers: Supernova prompted humans to walk upright Funny, if bipedalism originated in a global catastrophe, that it never occurred to any other primate to resolve the problem by becoming fully bipedal. But keep thinking. Resist groupthink.

Bipedalsm: Regulatory area cent.com/intelligent-design/bipedalis...” target=”another”>missing in humans

Researcher: To Understand Human Bipedalism, Stop Assuming “A Chimpanzee Starting Point”

Rough terrain caused humans to start walking upright

Early bipedalism walked no straight line

We’ve also heard that bipedalism developed so we could hit each other. Or carry infants. Or scarce resources. Or save energy. Or cool down. But mainly so we could have our hands free for whatever. (Saving eneregy and cooling down don’t really count here because lots of other methods would have worked; they just wouldn’t have freed the hands at the same time.)

See also “I’m Walkin’, Yes Indeed I’m Walkin’” But Not Because It’s Necessarily a Better Way to Get Around

Also, Design perspectives and the physiology of walking

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Published on May 10, 2022 20:04

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