Genome complexity: what genes do and don't do (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, February 27, 2019, 17:55 (1885 days ago) @ dhw
edited by David Turell, Wednesday, February 27, 2019, 18:08

DAVID: I present this material because it can support either view, that is chance or design, which is exactly, in a sense, equal to my 50/50 interpretation of the cells activities independent decisions or designed responses. You have chosen as a middle road, cells are intelligent in and of themselves. This is a mental compromise which allows you to stand on both pillars, chance and design all at once. In your mind this allows chance cells to appear (somehow) on the scene, develop (somehow) the ability to design for the future and therefore facilitate speciation. Nice sidestep to my thinking. You get to keep chance and design without losing either.

dhw: What a cop-out! You have persistently maintained that only a minority of scientists believe in cellular intelligence. According to the article you have presented to us, there are lots of scientists who now believe that cells are intelligent. So you switch from whether cells are intelligent to the either/or of chance and design. The context of cellular intelligence is our discussion of how evolution works: you say divine preprogramming and/or dabbling; I propose cellular intelligence, the very idea of which you have pooh-poohed. I am NOT proposing that this appeared by chance.

So how did it appear?

dhw: For the purposes of our discussion I have offered nothing but theistic hypotheses, and I have even asked you if you think your God is incapable of designing such a mechanism. But (let us now exchange personal attempts at mind-reading) you wish to change the subject because (a) you can’t explain your own combination of hypotheses,

I've explained my hypotheses so well to myself I changed from agnostic to theistic!

dhw; Apart from your final comment, the rest of your post acknowledges the appearance of cellular design, rejects chance, and categorically rejects the idea that cellular intelligence might be capable of invention (Shapiro’s “natural genetic engineering”) before this - somewhat surprising - conclusion:

DAVID: So Shapiro et al are not wrong. Their conclusions are open to debate as I've described. They offer you a safe shore to row to so as to get away from the very specific either/or approach that I follow in these discussions.

dhw: Having stated categorically that “cells cannot design their own future”, you agree that Shapiro et al are not wrong! Of course their conclusions are open to debate. So are yours. That is why we have all these discussions. But if we are discussing my hypotheses and yours concerning how evolution works, please don’t pretend that we are discussing chance v. design. My hypotheses (and Shapiro’s) simply allow for a different design from the one you have fixed in your mind, and those I have offered you are all theistic.

Without a belief in God. Shapiro is describing single cells in charge of their own fate. In our stage of evolution our cells are tightly controlled by feedback looks to achieve exact results.

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The U-M authors suggest that these genes are so important for a cell's function that their transcription is tightly regulated under normal conditions. (David’s bold)

DAVID: : 3-D DNA is a key to this. Little is 'junk'. Note my bold. Cells are tightly regulated in how the genes are activated in organisms that are as fully evolved as we are.

dhw; Of course they are tightly regulated. Once a system has been invented and is successful, it must repeat its actions – and these will only change if conditions change.

David (under “Biological complexity”): This study supports the article I presented about the place of DNA in the control of life's processes. it is a tiny part of the controls

dhw: So I’d better add the relevant quotes from earlier, to be coupled with the quote at the start of this post.

"Scientists now understand that the information in the DNA code can only serve as a template for a protein. It cannot possibly serve as instructions for the more complex task of putting the proteins together into a fully functioning being, no more than the characters on a typewriter can produce a story."

"Through the statistical patterns within the storms, instructions are, again, created de novo. The cells, all with the same genes, multiply into hundreds of starkly different types, moving in a glorious ballet to find just the right places at the right times. That could not have been specified in the fixed linear strings of DNA."

Shapiro studies bacteria which are responsible for their own survival. Our cells function at a different level. There are controls we do not know see clearly at this point. Some of that is seen in B cells making DNA instructions for new antibodies on the fly and the wild machinations of embryological development resulting in almost exact reproductions.