25May 2020 by Post

Behe Vindicated Again: Sherpas Climb Everest Easier, Because Darwin Devolves

altitude, brown bears, climbing, Daisheng Song, Darwin Devolves, Darwinism, Evolution, genes, genetic information, genome, Han Chinese, hemoglobin, Himalayas, Intelligent Design, interfertility, loss of function, lowlanders, Michael Behe, Mount Everest, mount improbable, natural selection, Nepalese, oxygen, Phd2, PNAS, polar bears, positive selection, seal meat, Sherpa, super-athletes, Tibetans, Wikipedia
How can Tibetans survive high altitudes that leave lowlanders gasping? The answer is found in broken genes. A new paper on the Tibetan genome vindicates what Michael Behe said in Darwin Devolves: evolution breaks things, but sometimes, like in the case of polar bears, the result can allow organisms to thrive in specific environments. Yes, this follows on the heels of last week’s Behe vindication; see here. A team of 16 scientists, writing in PNAS, sought to understand the genetic basis for Tibetan high-altitude adaptation in more detail. Tibetans and Nepalese, many of whom serve as guides for lowlanders wanting to conquer Mount Everest, routinely carry heavy burdens at altitudes above 14,000 feet, the average elevation on the Tibetan plateau. In its entry on Sherpa people, Wikipedia notes, Many Sherpa…
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04Mar 2020 by Post

Episode 4 of Secrets of the Cell — Broken Wolves and other Evolutionary Conundrums

biochemistry, biological information, broken wolves, creative power, DNA, Dogs, E. coli, Evolution, Evolution News, genes, genetic function, Intelligent Design, Michael Behe, mutations, polar bears, Richard Lenski, Secrets of the Cell, wolves
On a new episode of Secrets of the Cell with Michael Behe, the famed biochemist and intelligent design proponent briefly examines several evolutionary icons. These are living species that are considered by Darwinists as slam-dunk evidence of unguided evolution’s creative power, but that turn out to be just the opposite: Dogs, for one, in their great variety descend from wolves. Atheist biologist Richard Dawkins and others have pointed to man’s best friend as confirmation that evolution creatively builds new species. Behe explains, though, that when the cell’s secrets are considered — biological information at the DNA level — we discover that dogs are broken wolves. Of course that doesn’t make them any less loveable. They evolved largely by losing genetic functions through mutation. As Dr. Behe explains, “The mutations don’t…
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10Jan 2020 by Post

New Research on Animal Egg Orientation Shows “Unexpected” Diversity

Christian de Duve, eLife, embryo, embryonic development, Evidence, Evolution, evolutionary plasticity, evolutionary theory, evolutionists, genes, nucleic acids, proteins, unexpected, Urs Schmidt-Ott, Vital Dust, Yoseop Yoon, zygote
When the first cell of an animal — the zygote — divides, it usually has a front end, and a back end, and this orientation will influence how the embryo develops. This orientation is inherited from the egg, where certain gene products are deposited, often at the front end of the egg. These so-called anterior determinants signal the basic, front-back, orientation which is fundamental for the later embryonic development. But as is typical in biology, the specific genes involved often are not conserved across different species. As the summary of recent research explains: With very few exceptions, animals have “head” and “tail” ends that develop when they are an embryo. The genes involved in specifying these ends vary between species and even closely-related animals may use different genes for the…
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02Jan 2020 by Post

Care for Appetizers? Electric Proteins, Spidey Sense, and More

anatomy, appetizers, Arizona State University, Barry Scott, Biomimetics, centipedes, cilia, electricity, electron transport, gene repression, genes, genomes, Intelligent Design, Irreducible Complexity, Joubert syndrome, Junk DNA, Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, Massey University, materials science, metabolism, Michael Behe, miRNA, orb webs, photosynthesis, physiology, Siam News, sliders, spiders, Stuart Lindsey, swimming, Tohoku University, University of North Carolina, University of Otago, X-ray crystallography, Zheng-Yi Chen
Welcome to the second day of the New Year! Like tasty sliders, these short news stories should get the juices flowing for big developments in 2020. Electric Proteins Dr. Stuart Lindsey at Arizona State University is an expert in single-molecule dynamics in biomolecules. Older methods of observing protein structure, such as X-ray crystallography, only gave single snapshots of the highly dynamic world, he says, where proteins rapidly change conformations and interact in complex ways. Electron transport has been well known in the cases of photosynthesis and metabolism. But a few years ago, his team was astonished to find that a run-of-the-mill protein conducted electricity. The protein was acting like a wire! Further observations revealed that all proteins conduct electricity — even the ones that had “weren’t designed to do this”—…
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