One of the things that I’ve really enjoyed about the creationism war is learning new things.\u00a0 It’s especially fun when you’re talking to a creationist and they trot out an old, worn analogy or claim and you can dump an actual paper on them that shows they are wrong.\u00a0 It’s almost disturbing how good it feels.<\/p>\n
Something I would like to do here is provide something of a resource to defeating even the uncommon arguments both in creationism, anti-vax, anti-GMO, and other pseduoscience arguments.\u00a0 This post directly involves Intelligent Design’s poster boy, Michael Behe.<\/p>\n
Behe, at some point, was probably a decent biochemical researcher.\u00a0 He’d probably never have gotten into Nature or Science, but then not everyone does.\u00a0 But he could have plodded along, contributing to the knowledge of humanity.\u00a0 Then he let something bad happen.\u00a0 He let belief interfere with reality and it’s basically killed his career.\u00a0 Even his own department has issued a statement<\/a> saying his work is full of crap (yes, that’s a paraphrase).<\/p>\n But this post is about a specific claim of Behe’s and a specific refutation of that claim.\u00a0 I’ll throw in a section on another claim of ID proponents as well, think of it as a freebie.<\/p>\n Michael Behe, in his bookEdge of Evolution states that it is impossible for four mutations to happen in a gene to result in a improvement in the resulting protein.\u00a0 He uses the example of resistant malaria, where there are two mutations and states that this is the edge of evolution because there’s <some huge number> probability that these two mutations can’t happen in the same gene at the same time. Let’s see what Behe says:<\/p>\n The Darwinian magic works well only when intermediate steps are each better (“more fit”) than preceding steps, so that the mutant gene increases in number I the population as natural selection favors the offspring\u2026Yet its usefulness quickly declines when intermediate steps are worse than earlier steps and is pretty much worthless if several required intervening steps aren\u2019t improvements). Basically, Behe is saying that if something bad happens, then it’s more likely that the gene is forever broken than it could improve.\u00a0 Well, I’m here today to show you just how wrong Behe is.\u00a0 Darwinian Evolution on a Chip<\/a> is our reference paper today.\u00a0 This is a very approachable paper, I encourage you to read it.\u00a0 But here’s the highlights.<\/p>\n Gerald Joyce and his team set up an automated evolution lab.\u00a0 They used very small amounts of an RNA enzyme that bonded to a particular substrate. The polymerase enzymes were attracted to RNAs that had bonded with the substrate.\u00a0 This was the reproduction part. By continually transferring the population of RNA to work cells with less and less substrate, they were able to select for RNAs that were very efficient at bonding.\u00a0 This is the selection part.<\/p>\n Now, if you are talking to a well informed (hah!) Intelligent Design proponent, then they will stop you and say “But the experiment was intelligently designed, therefore the results are intelligently designed.”\u00a0 Which is utter BS if you think about it.\u00a0 If the results of any intelligently designed system were put into place before hand (front-loading) or somehow known to the designers, then the entire concept of the casino is wrong.\u00a0 From roulette<\/a> to pachinko<\/a>, there are many intelligently designed systems that are effectively unknowable when it comes to results.\u00a0 Sure, the results are constrained, but so is life.\u00a0 If a mutation results that allows an organism to utilize nylon waste as an energy source, to be useful that organism must be in a place that has nylon waste.<\/p>\n In fact, an experiment has to be intelligently designed.\u00a0 The ability to reduce variables, account for error, and come to a valid conclusion require that an experiment be very intelligently designed.\u00a0 I usually note at this point that intelligent design proponents don’t do experiments.\u00a0 So what does that say about them?<\/p>\n Anyway, back to our RNA on a chip.\u00a0 The results of this experiment were absolutely amazing.\u00a0 In 70 hours (500 ‘generations’), the RNA had increased it’s efficiency at bonding to the substrate 92 fold.\u00a0 Eleven (11) mutations had occurred which were grouped into four broad categories M1, M2, M3, and M4.<\/p>\n That part right there just blows Behe’s entire argument out of the water. Eleven point mutations which resulted in a 92 fold improvement.<\/p>\n The RNA started in a solution concentration of 1 micromol and was binding at a rate of .6\/minute.\u00a0 At the end of the experiment (70 hours), the concentration was down 0.005 micromols and the binding rate was above 20\/minute.<\/p>\n Here’s the next awesome part.\u00a0 Joyce and his team, took samples of each generation and sequenced them looking for the various mutations.\u00a0 Then they could purposefully insert those mutations to see what affect it had on the binding rate.<\/p>\n M1, by itself, resulted in a 9 fold increase.\u00a0 M2, by itself, was about the same.\u00a0 M3, by itself, resulted in a 24 fold increase.\u00a0 M4, by itself, resulted in a 2 fold decrease<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Yes, M4 was a harmful mutation.\u00a0 By itself, M4 decreased the RNA’s ability to bind to the substrate.\u00a0 So why was M4 in the final population at all?\u00a0 Because M4 is what I call a potentiating mutation.\u00a0 Even though, by itself, it’s bad.\u00a0 When combined with the other mutations, it rapidly increased the binding rate of the RNA.<\/p>\n So that neatly defeats part of Behe’s claim as well.\u00a0 Bad mutations aren’t always bad.\u00a0 The classic example, of course, is sickle cell anemia.\u00a0 One sickle cell allele causes a mild form of the anemia, while two alleles results in early death.\u00a0 So, why does this condition even exist if the homozygous condition kills children?\u00a0 Because the heterozygous condition provides an advantage if one lives in an area with malaria.\u00a0 In this case, the heterozygous condition (1 allele) has a higher fitness than either homozygous condition.\u00a0 Of course, if you don’t live in a high malaria area, then the homozygous non-sickle cell condition is more advantageous.<\/p>\n So, any time anyone points out these two claims A) that more than two mutations can’t happen to improve fitness or B) bad mutations always result in the breaking of the protein.\u00a0 Just discuss this article and show them that actual experiment trumps thought experiment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of the things that I’ve really enjoyed about the creationism war is learning new things.\u00a0 It’s especially fun when…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,8,6],"tags":[42,939,938,25],"class_list":["post-57","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creationism","category-evolution","category-science","tag-biochemistry","tag-creationism","tag-evolution","tag-intellignet-design"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n(Michael Behe, The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism<\/em>, pg. 112, (Free Press, 2007).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n