Biological complexity: no life if no enzymes (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, April 18, 2018, 15:01 (2193 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTE: "'We hoped to determine its structure to aid in protein engineering, but we ended up going a step further and accidentally engineered an enzyme with improved performance at breaking down these plastics," said NREL's lead researcher Gregg Beckham."

DAVID’s comment: This was study in a lab run by designing minds, but Darwin asks us to accept that nature does this by accident all the time. I don't accept that. Only design fits.

dhw: The papers have been full of this discovery, as a possible method of solving the enormous problems plastic has created. I read one comment to the effect that evolution would probably have created the same improvement, but it would have taken far longer. I agree with you that this is no accident. It is living proof of the manner in which bacteria adjust themselves to new environments and new opportunities. I do not believe that 3.8 billion years ago they were preprogrammed to eat plastic, or that your God has come along to teach them. Do you?

No I don't. A shift in one amino acid does the trick. Bacteria have thousands of enzymes in which this could happen. Nylonase is one recent example.