Re: new creationist argument? cortical inheritance

On Feb 25, 11:08 am, John Harshman <jharshman.diespam...@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
geop...@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
On 25 Feb, 15:41, Ernest Major <{$t...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In message
<b53033c8-2331-4aa6-a010-d485d2ff6...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
geop...@xxxxxxxxxxx writes

I've recently been studying the Edinburgh Creation Group (ECG) website
(http://edinburghcreationgroup.org/) , who reformed recently and
seem to be quite organised - and, unfortunately, like all
creationists, pretending that the last few decades of rebuttals to
their old arguments didn't happen. They're strongly going for the
'look, we have REAL scientists who disagree with evolution' angle.
However, their latest video came up with an argument that I hadn't
seen before and doesn't seem to be in many other places.
The video, Fish, Fossils, and Evolution (
http://edinburghcreationgroup.org/fishfossils.xml
), features REAL and not-at-all-biased fish fossil expert Dr Arthur
Jones, who spends the first half an hour or so making odd statements
about the fossil record (apparently, currently living species make up
the vast majority of it), offering suspicious quotes (hey, why bother
explaining yourself when you have quotes?), and describing long,
boring lists of fish (this is quite common for the ECG: they'll spend
a LONG time in the details of irrelevancies, and only at the end of
that will they make a point, which is normally sloppily argued). Not
much new there, then.
It was only at the 00:57 mark that I came across something new. It's
actually another pretty sloppy argument, but for the sake of
completeness:
Dr Jones moves onto the subject of DNA and Inheritance. I'm always
interested to hear creationists talk about this, since this is where
most of the best evidence for evolution comes from. He describes the
state of Neo-Darwinism as 'mutations and natural selection and
inheritance result in evolution', which is not too arguable, and then
goes on to let us in on a little secret:
"Amazingly the Neo-Darwinian paradigm has been known to be false for
over 50 years!"
He goes on to add that the precise year in which this occurred was
1954.
The argument is basically this: in 1954, a little known phenomenon
called cortical inheritance was discovered. The cortex is the name for
some part of the membrane of cellular organisms.
When some ciliates were studied, it was found that the cortex is
inherited INDEPENDENTLY of DNA. Any alterations or damage made to the
structure is inherited by the descendants, without any change to the
DNA inside. It's kind of Lamarckian.
Dr Jones goes on to add three points:
1) This must be universal to all cells, not just ciliates, because the
ciliate cortex is derived from the same structures that are in all
cells (this is a pretty unreasonable argument and, from my study, is
not true: ciliates are the only known organisms to do this)
2) it must apply to multicellular organisms as well because the
process of development is the same in both
3) cortical inheritance occurs even AFTER a ciliate forms a cyst and
loses all its surface structure.
The last one is the only one I lack the information to confirm or
refute, and it's on the basis of this that Dr Jones speculates the
existence of an unknown mechanism of inheritance.
Google tells me that if I could get through the paywall
<URL:http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1550-7408.2000.tb
00054.x> would confirm that ciliate cortical structure is retained over
encystment.

He wraps it up by concluding that because DNA is no longer the only
mechanism of inheritance, Neo Darwinism as it was formulated before
1954 is dead. And he's probably right, but of course he's lying for
Jesus about the death of the paradigm since he must know fully well
that science updates its ideas all the time, and that evolutionary
science has carried on to the present day.
I did a little Googling and found descriptions of cortical
inheritance, and guess what? It's not only known about, but described
in a lot more detail than Dr Jones did. He tries to make it sound
magical, but in fact it's simply a result of two ciliates joining to
exchange genetic information, and not separating cleanly. It's like
two pages of a book being stuck together, and in fact, the cilia that
are transferred often end up pointing the wrong way (as you'd expect)
and cause the ciliate to swim badly. It also sometimes happens when
ciliates divide.
When I read about this (IIRC, in one of Dawkins' books) I came away with
the impression that the cause was microsurgical intervention by human
experimenters. (I may have been misled by the use of the term "graft".)

No, Dawkins was talking about experimental manipulation. But apparently
it happens naturally on occasion too.





OT1H, "This cortical inheritance has not yet been observed in
non-ciliate cells ..."

     http://8e.devbio.com/article.php?ch=2&id=11

OTOH, "... but the phenomenon of structural inheritance is not confined
to (Ciliates)."

     http://mmbr.asm.org/cgi/reprint/69/4/544.pdf

I forgot to add that it's not exactly as amazing as Dr Jones wants to
claim - that close to the molecular level, organisms can do all kinds
of crazy stuff, including such non Darwinian acts as directly swapping
DNA.

I'm not sure why but the ECG have really gotten on my bad side,
perhaps because they and I are both British.

The normal scholarship-so-bad-it-may-as-well-be-lies, then. Since I
haven't seen a new argument in a long time, I'm recording it here just
in case it needs rebutting in future.

This is a simple phenomenon. When cells divide, they don't magically get
all-new proteins and other molecules. Each new cell gets half the
content of the old cell. Some molecules are very stable and can last for
many generations, and so it's possible for a cell to have a protein that
is different from its genotype, simply because a parent many generations
ago had that genotype (or a conjugate partner, or the cell an
experimenter got the transplant from). If any cases are more complicated
than that, I would like someone to explain them.

As far as ciliates regrowing the unusual cilia, I suspect that's because
it's the base of the cilia, which isn't lost, is the relevant structure.
Tubulin is tubulin.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

From googling, it sounds slightly more complicated.
http://www.lifesci.ucsb.edu/~genome/Tetrahymena/genetics.htm#Other%20non-Mendelian

"Overall orientation of a ciliary row is perpetuated through cell
division because a) a new ciliary unit always differentiates
anteriorly (i.e. along the meridian) and in tandem orientation with
regard to the local organization of a preexisting ciliary unit and b)
fission occurs in the equatorial plane "

New cilia align to the old cilia. Still not earth-shattering or a
threat to the TOE.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: new creationist argument? cortical inheritance
    ... Dr Jones moves onto the subject of DNA and Inheritance. ... some part of the membrane of cellular organisms. ... This must be universal to all cells, not just ciliates, because the ... Each new cell gets half the content of the old cell. ...
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  • new creationist argument? cortical inheritance
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  • Re: new creationist argument? cortical inheritance
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