Genome complexity: most important article ever! (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, May 10, 2015, 22:15 (3270 days ago) @ dhw
edited by David Turell, Sunday, May 10, 2015, 22:28

dhw: Perhaps you could explain what they mean by a random walk along a web of neutral mutations.
> Thank you for your explanation, which I shan't reproduce. A random walk doesn't sound much like pre-planning to me, and I still don't see how neutral mutations can lead to innovations, but perhaps we should leave it at that.-But that is exactly the point. What you can't see about 'neutral mutations' no one else can either, so the point of the article that the 'innovation process' is a big black box is correct.
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> dhw: If we reject random mutations, innovation implies a mind, but life, Nature and evolution are not terms we normally associate with a mind. Your answer is God, but many experts say that organisms also have some sort of mind. The question then is whether the ability to respond inventively to environmental change comes from outside the organism (God) or inside.-How did it develop inside without planning?- 
> dhw: It's not unimaginable that all innovations are brought about by certain individual organisms having a greater degree of awareness than others - just as individual humans vary enormously in their degree of intelligence, inventiveness etc.-I wouldn't ever compare bacteria to human variation in mental ability.-
> dhw: By coincidence, today's Sunday Times reviews a new book by a biochemist named Nick Lane: THE VITAL QUESTION: 
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> “For two billion years, earth was populated by busy but boring bacteria and archaea, single-cell life forms known as prokaryotes [...] An archaea and a bacteria, against all the odds, mingled in a process known as endosymbiosis, and started a whole new process from which eukaryotes - cells with nuclei - emerged.”-And this week an article on just that subject, finding eukaryote genes in Archaea:-"In this weeks' edition of Nature, researchers from Uppsala University in Sweden, along with collaborators from the universities in Bergen (Norway) and Vienna (Austria) report the discovery of a new group of Archaea, the Lokiarchaeota (or 'Loki' for short), and identify it to be a missing link in the origin of eukaryotes.-"'By studying its genome, we found that Loki represents an intermediate form in-between the simple cells of microbes, and the complex cell types of eukaryotes", says Thijs Ettema.- "'Loki formed a well-supported group with the eukaryotes in our analyses", says Lionel Guy, one of the senior scientists involved in the study from Uppsala University.-"'In addition, we found that Loki shares many genes uniquely with eukaryotes, suggesting that cellular complexity emerged in an early stage in the evolution of eukaryotes", says Anja Spang, researcher at Department of Cell and Molecular Biology , Uppsala University, and one of the lead-authors of the study.-"The name Lokiarchaeota is derived from the hostile environment close to where it was found, Loki's Castle, a hydrothermal vent system located on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between Greenland and Norway at a depth of 2,352 meters.-"Hydrothermal vents are volcanic systems located at the ocean floor. The site where Loki is heavily influenced by volcanic activity, but actually quite low in temperature", says Steffen Jørgensen from the University of Bergen in Norway, who was involved in taking the samples where Loki was found." - Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-05-link-evolution-complex-cells.html#jCp-Also: http://www.sci-tech-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=0220026MHQU8
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> dhw: God preprogramming these two little critters? God dabbling? Sheer luck? Two autonomous little explorers deciding to experiment? We should remember that every single innovation afterwards entails a similar process of "mingling", or perhaps we should call it cooperating.-Well, we all know the current theory of mitochondria starting out as being engulfed energy organisms.-
> dhw: My post is not a complaint. I am merely pointing out that your insistence on pre-planning runs into difficulty when you are confronted with the 99% of apparent failures.-How do you know the 99% failure rate was not planned? That is your human view of poor planning, just like the funny-looking retina objections.