Genome complexity: DNA 3-D importance in replication (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, January 03, 2019, 19:03 (2152 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTE: "'If you duplicate at a different place and time, you might assemble a completely different structure," Gilbert said. "A cell has different things available to it at different times. Changing when something replicates changes the packaging of the genetic information.'"

DAVID’s comment: Just as Shapiro shows, DNA can be edited by cells. The implication is that this ability was present when bacteria appeared early in evolution. 3-D DNA is a major key to the amazing variations in controls DNA can exert just by its own 3-D relationships and how they change. Just where are the instructions to guide DNA contortions? Probably in other parts of the specific DNA. This is obviously key evidence as to how as few as 22,000 genes make a complex human.

dhw: If different structures result from duplication at a different place and time, we have a clear indication that evolution (= changing structures) is heavily dependent on place and time (= the current environment). We then go back to your belief that all the instructions for all the undabbled changes were implanted 3.8 billion years ago, and to my alternative hypothesis that somewhere within the cell/cell community is an autonomous intelligence (as championed by the same Shapiro, and possibly invented by your God) which enables it to change itself in accordance with the needs or opportunities that arise from the current environment.

DAVID: We both now agree that DNA editing by unicellular organisms happens. I view it as part of God's information/instructions used by the cell, and you admit it is possible. We both agree about Shapiro who experimentally showed it.

dhw: The question is not whether DNA editing happens, but whether your God’s “information/instructions used by the cell” means a specific, 3.8-billion-year-old programme for every single change in the history of evolution, switched on automatically by the cell when conditions require or allow it – which seems to me extremely unlikely – or a mechanism which enables the cell to change itself autonomously, i.e. to devise its own programme as conditions change. Shapiro clearly believes in the latter.

The only issue here is I believe God gave the cells that mechanism.

DAVID (under “Gulls change wing shape”): Helps them glide and fly in different ways:
https://techxplore.com/news/2019-01-zoologists-reveal-gulls-wing-morph.html

DAVID: It is not known if the original gulls had this ability from the beginning or developed it over time. If it wasn't present in the beginning they had trouble hunting over the oceans so one can wonder how they survived until they developed these adaptations of elbow joints which require exact design.

dhw: Perhaps they initially found plenty of food close at wing (like pre-whales having plenty of food close at leg) but then conditions changed and they had to hunt further afield, which occasioned the changes made by the cell communities that constitute the wings and their connections.

You are still using environmental changes to push evolution, but some one or some thing has to do the designing for the large body changes.