Biological complexity: teaching bacteria new tricks (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, April 28, 2016, 11:39 (3132 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Regardless of the meaning of “behaviour”, perhaps you could briefly explain how manipulating the genome to enable a bacterium to swim (an athletic activity) strongly supports your contention that ALL bacterial behaviour is automatic (i.e. bacteria are incapable of any autonomous mental activity, such as decision-making or problem-solving). - DAVID: Changing a sessile bacteria to a motile bacteria for that bacteria is a monster change in function, which automatically occurs when the genome is manipulated. This is direct proof that the genome can automatically dictate a movement response. It is no stretch to understand that a bacteria senses a chemical which implies a food source and automatically moves toward it, all mediated by automated chemical reactions. Humans smell a delicious aroma and automatically feel hungry without intervening thought. As you like to point out there are similarities from bottom to top of evolution. - Smelling an aroma and feeling hungry are automatic actions. If there is a barrier between me and my chocolate, however, I'll need to work out how to overcome it, and that is when we have “intervening thought”. But according to you, bacteria do not work out how to overcome barriers. God "guides" them over each and every one.
 
The beginning of your post describes an innovation: scientists deliberately tinkered with the genome to produce a new function (the bacterium was able to swim). This was a deliberate intervention, and of course if you deliberately engineer a change from a known function A to a known function B you will automatically get function B. However, this takes us back to the whole evolutionary process. If a sessile bacterium is suddenly able to swim by way of a change in its genome, and if there is no scientist around to manipulate the genome, how might such an innovation take place? Your answer: God is the scientist, preprogramming or personally intervening in order to manipulate the genome. Darwinian answer: chance mutation. My hypothesis: conditions changed, and some intelligent bacteria - with their intelligence possibly God-given - worked out the internal engineering for themselves (perhaps horizontal gene transfer plays a role here?). These hypotheses must apply to all innovations throughout the history of evolution. They produce the same results, though there is no evidence for any of them, and nobody knows how any of them would actually work. - Finally, your response still doesn't explain how the researcher's manipulation of the genome, enabling bacteria to swim, supports your contention that bacteria can't think for themselves (take their own decisions, work out their own solutions to problems). If your God intervened and changed my legs into flippers, would that mean I couldn't think for myself? I see no connection between the two processes.