Genome complexity: Fighting viruses speeds evolution? (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, April 09, 2016, 12:50 (2932 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Virus-fighting genes in primates appear to possibly speed their evolution:
http://phys.org/news/2016-04-primate-evolution-fast-lane.html-QUOTE: "'What is appealing is that it's an accelerated evolutionary mechanism that could generate a large change in a gene in a single generation," said Levanon. "It's like playing the lottery—it could not have an impact, or it could have a major one."-There seem to be new discoveries all the time in this field, and I can't help wondering whether eventually they will come together to confirm the existence and nature of an autonomous inventive mechanism (let's call it “the intelligent cell”) that has produced saltations throughout evolution.-David's comment: […] How did the evolutionary process find the right giant molecule quickly to fight the infection by viruses, and immediately protect the animal? If that did not happen we could not see the evidence of the advance now. Saltation vs. landscape problem.-So now we have God supervising every new viral infection (which presumably he devised in the first place) and personally providing the right giant molecule to fight it? Or preprogramming the first cells so that their descendants would come up with the right new molecules at all the right times? Or could there be another explanation, such as God providing organisms (not the evolutionary process) with a mechanism enabling them to “find” or perhaps “design” the giant molecule?