Biological Information and Intelligent Design: Evolving new information

Faith & Science Conversation
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The concept of “degrading genetic information” is not one I am comfortable with as a consequence of a random process of mutation. The information in any sequence that is mutated is not degraded or improved, it is simply changed. The consequences of that change are usually not apparent, sometimes for millions of years. Yes, the change can destroy the activity of the gene product, so that might be considered degradation, but thanks to purifying selection, such changes dont last long.

I think its important to not think of any genome or sequence as ideal, which can then only get worse with change. That has never been true, and it still isnt.

The generation of some new features is becoming less mysterious. Two whole genome duplication events occurred around the appearance of vertebrates, which provides an important clue, as an example.

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Hi Sy
While I agree with most of your points, I cannot see mathematically that random change will not over time move the genome from away from function. I we look at Szostak’s experiment that tests for the frequency of 80 randomly generated AA’s binding to ATP the results showed 100 billion more ways it did not bind then it did. With odds like this I don’t see any way that a randomly changing genome won’t move away from function.

I don’t see any way that a true evolutionary mechanism can function with its change mechanism random because of the sequential space of the genome. Given the conference in London, it looks like mainstream thought is moving in this direction.

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Bill

That sounds like a reasonable argument, and it would be anywhere else but in biology. The problem is that in biology, math sort of doesnt count as much as it does elsewhere. If you have a billion cells living in a petri dish (admittedly a large dish) with a toxic chemical and a very strong mutagen, some fraction, lets say 1% will mutate, and the rest will be killed. Among the 10 million mutated cells, 99.9999% will also die, because the mutations they underwent did nothing to prevent the toxic effects of the chemical. But 10 of the original cells (or 0.000001% of the original billion cells) had an extremely rare (obviously) mutation in a transporter gene that prevented the chemical from entering the cells. Those 10 lived. And reproduced. And pretty soon the dish was full again.

Is this a fairy story? No, Most of the biologists here (including myself) have done experiments like this. Does it have any relevance to real world biology? Probably yes, since when we look at the kinds of mutations that have occurred in the history of life, some of them are pretty amazing, and likely extremely rare. And yet from those very lucky organisms, many many life forms came to be.

I agree that the London conference (there is a thread about that here on Biologos) indicates a very positive movement of mainstream biological thought, but not away from random mutations as a potent evolutionary driving force. What the EES postulates, (and which I enthusiastically agree with) is that the kinds of mutations that drive evolution are probably far more complex (and even non random on occasion) than was previously thought, and also that some of the mechanisms involved in evolution may involve a two way interaction between genome and cellular and outside environments.

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Hi Si
I think that we have common ground here that there is more to evolution then random genetic change and selection or drift.

I also agree there is a role for RMNS in adaptive evolution especially in large bacterial populations.

Where we may disagree is how much can be explained by these mechanisms. Especially as organisms become more complex, functional sequences become more precise and new complex feature innovations are observed. Also where genome variation is minimized by cell cycle functions such as DNA repair.

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@Billcole…

If you believe in an Old Earth, and you believe that Australia was once connected to the rest of the continents, everything predicted by mutation and natural selection is found in Australia, compared with the evolutionary paths of placental mammals.

If you want to attribute the long sequence of evolutionary events in Australia to God… that’s fine. But at some point, you probably have to agree that God designed evolution to do much of what God wanted to happen.

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Hi George
Yes. The evolution of life on earth does not look random to me, however how it was unfolded by God is not clear.

If it turned out to have lots of random elements I am totally ok philosophically. The data will speak for itself.

The data, however, looks very different to me than an unguided process.

Early life (presumably bacteria) have a simpler structure with DNA direct transcription to RNA to proteins. The major transition to Eukaryotic’s have a much more complex architecture that include a cell nucleus splicing etc.

This required significant new genetic information.

As we move up in complexity we keep needing new genetic information and how this got inserted is a big mystery to me. The idea that these new sequences came from lucky mutations followed by selection or drift is almost certainly wrong in my mind. There are just too many ways to arrange the genome and the amount of ways to arrange it grows exponentially as genes get longer with time.

These sequences that build proteins and complex body plans are very sophisticated designs, orders of magnitude more complex than man has ever produced.

My opinion is ultimately driven by how the data unfolds. What a fascinating mystery :slight_smile:

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@Billcole

I think you misunderstood the point of my last post.

The fossils and span of marsupial mammals in Australia are not random to me. They look like they were deliberately left isolated in Australia by God, to work out Australia’s own unique plan of evolution.

So, what is my point?

You can have God guiding and controlling all the transcription you want … it still leaves BioLogos with the best explanation of what went on in the hundreds of millions of years of God-Guided Evolution on Earth!

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Hi George
This is an interesting idea. Do you have any recommended references on this subject. I agree common descent has occurred the question is how much. The study of flightless birds (paleognaths) is also interesting and relevant to Australia (kiwi’s). How did these birds get placed all over the globe?

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Hi Bill,

Land animals got all over the globe. Why would paleognaths find it more difficult?

Advent blessings,
Chris

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@Billcole,

So how is it that I can raise the issue of Marsupial and Placental mammals, with no comment from you, while you raise the issue of the Kiwi bird?

FIRST: I think you will find that the Kiwi bird is a denizen of New Zealand, rather than Australia.
SECOND: Kiwi’s are not found all over the globe.
THIRD: Part of the question of their distribution and evolution includes the part of their history when the ancestral population of Kiwi could fly.

So . . . are you ready to discuss flightless mammals in Australia?

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Hi Chris
Advent blessings to you :slight_smile:
The interesting issue is the age of the species sharing a common ancestor. If they are old enough then being dispersed all over the world is easier to explain based on continents land masses being connected. The paleognaths are believed to share a common ancestor and are too young have found homes globally without having to travel over large stretches of ocean. The current theory is multiple losses of flight. In my mind this raises all kinds of questions. If you are interested I can supply a paper that takes this into detail.

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Hi George
I am ready and look forward to your argument.

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@Billcole

The paragraph below comes from another thread. It focuses on the oddities of Australia’s mammals.

4) Then we have the Australian populations of mammals which until relatively recently, were all marsupials (the placental mammals that once lived there went extinct long ago). Apparently the marsupials in Australia, being isolated from placental evolution going on in the rest of the world, was protected from competition from the more robust placental mammals. And in the rest of the planet, only a handful of marsupials were able to compete against the other mammals (like the possum).

5) The YEC explanation for this pattern (Australian Marsupials vs. Placentals beyond Australia) does not exist. YEC’s would essentially have to propose the following sequence:

a) The Great Flood kills all animals in Australia and elsewhere.
b) When the animals are released from the Ark, the marsupial mammals (even the slow ones) manage to travel directly to Australia before it separates from the main continent…
c) … while the placental mammals completely ignore Australia for generations.

This, of course, is an impossible scenario.

ORIGINALLY PART OF THIS THREAD:

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Sure, post a link, I’d find it interesting.

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Hi Chris
Here it is.

Current Issue > vol. 105 no. 36 > John Harshman, 13462–13467, doi: 10.1073/pnas.0803242105

Phylogenomic evidence for multiple losses of flight in ratite birds

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Hi George
So based on this story I would assume it is backed up by global marsupial fossil records that back up this claim :slight_smile:

The young earth story is also certainly problematic.

Do you believe this is evidence of special creation?

I want to do some more reading on this subject. Thanks so much.

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Hi Bill,

I think you have misunderstood the biology here. Prior to the evidence of continental drift, ornithologists were indeed puzzled by the appearance of paleognaths on multiple continents:

Most recent studies have also strongly supported ratite monophyly (9–12, 14), suggesting a single loss of flight in their common ancestor. This puzzled biogeographers for more than a century, because ratites would be unable to achieve their current distribution on southern land masses if their common ancestor was flightless.

However, the puzzlement ended when continental drift became understood:

Continental drift provided a compelling solution. No longer was it necessary to imagine giant flightless birds crossing vast oceans; they could have rafted to their current distributions on fragments of the Earth’s crust (15). Although the proposed phyletic branching patterns for ratites do not correspond perfectly to the order of separation of land masses during the breakup of Gondwana, the convenient serendipity of continental drift as a mechanistic explanation for ratite distribution proved irresistible (10, 11, 14, 16), and it stands today as a textbook example of vicariance biogeography (17, 18).

So ornithologists weren’t scratching their heads, flapping their arms, muttering “We just can’t figure this out, how did those emus and ostriches and rheas scatter to the four winds? Oh, it must have been convergent evolution!” No, they had a highly plausible solution (continental drift) that did not require convergent evolution.

Very recently, the paper you cited announced that, based on analysis of 20 genes, there are three phyla among the paleognaths. It was only the DNA evidence that suggested that convergent evolution explained the distribution of flightlessness among paleognaths.

Convergent evolution is a concept that has been around for almost a century and a half. I do not see anything unscientific about the idea that similar natural selection pressures would favor similar adaptations. It almost seems trivial.

My $.02.

Warm Advent wishes,
Chris Falter

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Hi Chris
I am trying to understand your argument. There are two solutions you mentioned which are convergent evolution and continental drift. Are you saying these are two strong reasons for paleognath global distribution we observe and should support a common ancestor claim among paleognaths?

Do you consider universal common descent as an a priori assumption in your analysis?

How do you account for the divergence of the ostrich DNA in the Harshman et al paper?

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@Billcole

The story of Australia is inconsistent with Every scenario… except an Old Earth and Descent from a Common Ancestor.

It doesn’t jibe with YEC and makes for pretty poor corroboration with Special Creation in an Old Earth context.

Most Marsupials outside of Australia were ruined by the greater survivability of placental mammals.

Marsupials enjoyed success in New Zealand and Australia because… for reasons inexplicable to YEC’s… did not become swamped by Placental Mammals.

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Natural Selection is not random, but Variation is random.

While I agree that Natural Selection is not random, but determinative. If Natural Selection is determinative, then Evolution is determinative. If evolution is determinative, then it should be evident which direction it is moving.

MS evolutionary science has failed to identify this direction. Has EC?

It is hard to say that evolution is not random, if there Is no evidence of evolutionary direction.