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New genes required for the Cambrian explosion

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  • #16
    Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
    And it isn't something that took place during the last year or so, so not being aware of that cannot be excused on those grounds

    From 2012: Bilaterian Burrows and Grazing Behavior at >585 Million Years Ago

    From 2008: Precambrian trace fossils and the rise of bilaterian animals

    Also 2008: The Ediacaran emergence of bilaterians: congruence between the genetic and the geological fossil records

    From 2003: Early Evolution of the Bilateria

    From 2000: Age of Neoproterozoic Bilatarian Body and Trace Fossils, White Sea, Russia: Implications for Metazoan Evolution

    From 1997: The Late Precambrian fossil Kimberella is a mollusc-like bilaterian organism

    From 1994: Late Precambrian bilaterians: grades and clades


    And Spriggina, which were discovered way back in the late 1950s clearly displays a bilateral body plan and Kimberella, discovered in 1964, is usually considered the earliest bilateral (555 to 558 myo -- which would predate confirmed Spriggina fossils by 5 to 8 million years and the beginning of the Cambrian by 14 to 17 million years), although Vernanimalcula is considerably older (600 to 580 million years ago), it's classification as a bilateral is controversial.
    Lee, now that you've been clearly shown that bilaterals evolved well before the Cambrian "explosion" and that this has been shown to be true for quite some time, are you ever going to start questioning the veracity of the sources that you use when you write up an OP?

    I'm always still in trouble again

    "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
    "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
    "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

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    • #17
      Originally posted by TheLurch View Post
      All this quote says is that genetic changes must have happened...
      As opposed to oxygenation etc., which implies that the latter were not enough.

      I hadn't heard of Yilingia before, though this is only about 10 million years before the Cambrian explosion, so late Ediacaran.

      As far as i can infer what the author is positing through his poorly written text, he's basically claiming that evolving an entirely new pathway is wildly improbable. But if parts of the pathway aren't entirely new, then that claim is completely bogus.
      Well, again, I'm sure he's not claiming that each gene is entirely new, this is a straw man.

      Yes, but the fact that neither you nor the author knew about those two is rather telling, don't you think?
      There may indeed be more genes like this in the 157, but speculation is not demonstration!

      "Here we show that the physical linkages among protein domains often differ between M. brevicollis and metazoans, suggesting that abundant domain shuffling followed the separation of the choanoflagellate and metazoan lineages."

      Abundant domain shuffling is suggested, but this would need demonstration, as in plausible pathways from one gene to another, preferably selectable pathways.

      The difference between bilaterians and everything else is their development. So, you'd expect most of the genes distinct to bilaterians to be involved in regulating development, which means that they're going to be involved in overlapping processes, and thus are more likely to interact.
      Which makes it much more difficult to generate such networks of genes, now we get into the area of irreducible complexity, how many of these networks and subnetworks have a selectable path to the ultimate result?


      … and an obvious selective pressure (operating in overlapping process) for retaining interaction domains.
      But how about generating new interaction domains? If I’m understanding your point here.


      Blessings,
      Lee
      "What I pray of you is, to keep your eye upon Him, for that is everything. Do you say, 'How am I to keep my eye on Him?' I reply, keep your eye off everything else, and you will soon see Him. All depends on the eye of faith being kept on Him. How simple it is!" (J.B. Stoney)

      Comment


      • #18
        Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
        And it isn't something that took place during the last year or so, so not being aware of that cannot be excused on those grounds

        From 2012: Bilaterian Burrows and Grazing Behavior at >585 Million Years Ago

        From 2008: Precambrian trace fossils and the rise of bilaterian animals

        Also 2008: The Ediacaran emergence of bilaterians: congruence between the genetic and the geological fossil records

        From 2003: Early Evolution of the Bilateria

        From 2000: Age of Neoproterozoic Bilatarian Body and Trace Fossils, White Sea, Russia: Implications for Metazoan Evolution

        From 1997: The Late Precambrian fossil Kimberella is a mollusc-like bilaterian organism

        From 1994: Late Precambrian bilaterians: grades and clades


        And Spriggina, which were discovered way back in the late 1950s clearly displays a bilateral body plan and Kimberella, discovered in 1964, is usually considered the earliest bilateral (555 to 558 myo -- which would predate confirmed Spriggina fossils by 5 to 8 million years and the beginning of the Cambrian by 14 to 17 million years), although Vernanimalcula is considerably older (600 to 580 million years ago), it's classification as a bilateral is controversial.
        I am aware of Kimberella, it's debatable!

        Blessings,
        Lee
        "What I pray of you is, to keep your eye upon Him, for that is everything. Do you say, 'How am I to keep my eye on Him?' I reply, keep your eye off everything else, and you will soon see Him. All depends on the eye of faith being kept on Him. How simple it is!" (J.B. Stoney)

        Comment


        • #19
          Originally posted by lee_merrill View Post
          I am aware of Kimberella, it's debatable!

          Blessings,
          Lee
          No it is not. Document your claim with peer reviewed scientific literature
          Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
          Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
          But will they come when you do call for them? Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, Act III:

          go with the flow the river knows . . .

          Frank

          I do not know, therefore everything is in pencil.

          Comment


          • #20
            Let's just step back and focus on how phenomenally stupid some of these arguments are, shall we? I'll go into some of the details in a separate post.

            Originally posted by lee_merrill View Post
            As opposed to oxygenation etc., which implies that the latter were not enough.
            This is just an amazing one. First off, you're saying the argument is that environmental changes don't directly cause the mutations that enable adaptations to those conditions. Which is one of the central points of the theory of evolution - demonstrating that it is correct helped win two people Nobel Prizes. Yet you're trying to use that fact as an argument against evolution. I'm at a loss for the adjective that appropriately describes just how incoherent that is.

            But the icing on the cake here is that the example you're giving is an exception! Higher levels of oxygen mean more oxygen radicals, and oxygen radicals are mutagens - it's one of the reasons they think antioxidant consumption correlates with better health. So in this case, you're giving an example where the environmental conditions do cause some of the mutations.

            So, to summarize, you're attacking something that's not a feature of evolution, and thinking it's an attack on evolution. And in doing so, you're using an example that negates the premise behind your attack. You're not just shooting yourself in the foot; you're searching the foot for major arteries before aiming.

            But the stupidity doesn't end there.

            Originally posted by lee_merrill View Post
            I hadn't heard of Yilingia before, though this is only about 10 million years before the Cambrian explosion, so late Ediacaran.
            I'm glad you can accept facts, like the fact that bilaterians clearly originated in the pre-Cambrian. But you're trying to do so while ignoring the implications of those facts. One of those is that this means that the Cambrian saw a diversification of bilaterians, but not their origin. And the piece you used to start this discussion was about the origin of bilaterians, which means it should be talking pre-Cambrian. Yet every example of the arguments it uses is about the Cambrian.

            It's just laughably wrong, and there's no point in discussing anything further about it. These people should be embarrassed for publishing something this stupid, and they're making you look like an utterly gullible idiot for echoing their words.

            So i'm going to echo Rogue's words: if you can't acknowledge they're a bunch of misleading hacks given examples like this, what would cause you to acknowledge that?
            "Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from trolling."

            Comment


            • #21
              Originally posted by lee_merrill View Post
              There may indeed be more genes like this in the 157, but speculation is not demonstration!
              I've already pointed out that the piece you are favoring presents no evidence whatsoever. And now you're trying to get picky about whether arguments against it have sufficient evidence when i've already presented some?

              Please have some consistent standards.

              Originally posted by lee_merrill View Post
              Abundant domain shuffling is suggested, but this would need demonstration, as in plausible pathways from one gene to another, preferably selectable pathways.
              So, we have a known, demonstrated mechanism that produces things that look exactly like this. And you're saying we can't assume that said known physical process produce the outcomes we've seen them produce?

              This is the equivalent of arguing that we have to re-demonstrate that gravity applies to every single exoplanet orbit before accepting that exoplanets exist. It's ascientific nonsense.

              Originally posted by lee_merrill View Post
              Which makes it much more difficult to generate such networks of genes, now we get into the area of irreducible complexity, how many of these networks and subnetworks have a selectable path to the ultimate result?
              Something you won't have noticed because, well, you're you. I shifted from the origin of bilaterians to the origin of metazoans, because i remember details of the choanoflagellate genome, but less so on the genomes of non-bilaterian metazoans like comb jellies and sponges (yes, i am that much of a geek). But in the mean time i had a moment to go back and look into the sponge genome.

              The entire TGF-beta signaling pathway is present in the sponge. Nodal is a TGF-beta signaling molecule. Nodal signaling's origin is therefore simply a duplication of an existing pathway. No need to generate any novel genes; you can just make copies of existing ones. End of argument.

              Originally posted by lee_merrill View Post
              But how about generating new interaction domains? If I’m understanding your point here.
              My point is that, while new interacting domains had to evolve at some point, this wasn't that point.
              "Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from trolling."

              Comment


              • #22
                Originally posted by lee_merrill View Post
                I am aware of Kimberella, it's debatable!

                Blessings,
                Lee
                And proceeded to ignore the other examples.

                And just because you think that the Discovery Institute disagrees that Kimberella isn't an example of bilateralism does not make it debatable any more than the Flat Earth Society claiming that the earth is flat makes the shape of the earth debatable.

                Moreover, if you actually read what they claim you would have noticed that the boys at DI actually admit that Kimberella does represent an example of bilateralism but then argue that it since it might represent an extinct side branch that then somehow in some way they don't explain means it does not count.

                You are being played by your sources Lee. As I clearly demonstrated that we have known about bilaterialism developing well before the Cambrian for several decades going back to the mid 20th cent. and yet your go-to source somehow missed that.

                You really need to be more careful and stop being what the Soviets used to call a useful idiot because you are not an idiot.

                I'm always still in trouble again

                "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
                "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
                "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

                Comment


                • #23
                  Originally posted by TheLurch View Post
                  First off, you're saying the argument is that environmental changes don't directly cause the mutations that enable adaptations to those conditions.
                  No, I would say that they are saying that mutations due to oxygenation are not sufficient to account for the changes seen in the Cambrian explosion.

                  And the piece you used to start this discussion was about the origin of bilaterians, which means it should be talking pre-Cambrian. Yet every example of the arguments it uses is about the Cambrian.
                  Well, the 157 new genes still stand, that is the essence of the argument.

                  Originally posted by lee_merrill
                  Abundant domain shuffling is suggested, but this would need demonstration, as in plausible pathways from one gene to another, preferably selectable pathways.
                  So, we have a known, demonstrated mechanism that produces things that look exactly like this. And you're saying we can't assume that said known physical process produce the outcomes we've seen them produce?
                  It's about probabilities, gene shuffling is possible, but is it probable? Selectable pathways would demonstrate that.

                  Originally posted by lee_merrill
                  Which makes it much more difficult to generate such networks of genes, now we get into the area of irreducible complexity, how many of these networks and subnetworks have a selectable path to the ultimate result?
                  The entire TGF-beta signaling pathway is present in the sponge. Nodal is a TGF-beta signaling molecule. Nodal signaling's origin is therefore simply a duplication of an existing pathway. No need to generate any novel genes; you can just make copies of existing ones. End of argument.
                  But we are talking about 157 new genes, not duplications of existing ones.

                  My point is that, while new interacting domains had to evolve at some point, this wasn't that point.
                  No comprendo, sorry.

                  Blessings,
                  Lee
                  "What I pray of you is, to keep your eye upon Him, for that is everything. Do you say, 'How am I to keep my eye on Him?' I reply, keep your eye off everything else, and you will soon see Him. All depends on the eye of faith being kept on Him. How simple it is!" (J.B. Stoney)

                  Comment


                  • #24
                    Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
                    And proceeded to ignore the other examples.
                    Well, Spriggina is also debatable...

                    Source: Evolution News

                    Second, the authors mention that “Spriggina, for example, does not possess bilateral symmetry, but instead has a marked offset along the midline, and this alone is sufficient to reject a euarthropod affinity … No euarthropod claim from the Ediacaran biota can therefore be substantiated.”

                    Source

                    © Copyright Original Source



                    ... if you actually read what they claim you would have noticed that the boys at DI actually admit that Kimberella does represent an example of bilateralism but then argue that it since it might represent an extinct side branch that then somehow in some way they don't explain means it does not count.
                    Could you fish up the quote you mean? The article is titled "Bechly Series: No Ancestors for Cambrian Animals; Darwin’s Doubt Remains".

                    Blessings,
                    Lee
                    "What I pray of you is, to keep your eye upon Him, for that is everything. Do you say, 'How am I to keep my eye on Him?' I reply, keep your eye off everything else, and you will soon see Him. All depends on the eye of faith being kept on Him. How simple it is!" (J.B. Stoney)

                    Comment


                    • #25
                      Originally posted by lee_merrill View Post
                      Well, Spriggina is also debatable...

                      Source: Evolution News

                      Second, the authors mention that “Spriggina, for example, does not possess bilateral symmetry, but instead has a marked offset along the midline, and this alone is sufficient to reject a euarthropod affinity … No euarthropod claim from the Ediacaran biota can therefore be substantiated.”

                      Source

                      © Copyright Original Source




                      Could you fish up the quote you mean? The article is titled "Bechly Series: No Ancestors for Cambrian Animals; Darwin’s Doubt Remains".

                      Blessings,
                      Lee
                      As I asked before, please cite peer reviewed scientific literature and ID rags.

                      Darwin's doubt was genuine humility as to the limits of his research over 150 years ago. Misrepresenting Charles Darwin is only the beginnings of an atrocious dishonest non-scientific argument. with a religious agenda.
                      Last edited by shunyadragon; 11-20-2020, 07:32 PM.
                      Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
                      Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
                      But will they come when you do call for them? Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, Act III:

                      go with the flow the river knows . . .

                      Frank

                      I do not know, therefore everything is in pencil.

                      Comment


                      • #26
                        Originally posted by shunyadragon View Post

                        As I asked before, please cite peer reviewed scientific literature ...
                        Let us notice that the quoted part of the article is of peer reviewed scientific literature: "Second, the authors mention that..."

                        Blessings,
                        Lee
                        "What I pray of you is, to keep your eye upon Him, for that is everything. Do you say, 'How am I to keep my eye on Him?' I reply, keep your eye off everything else, and you will soon see Him. All depends on the eye of faith being kept on Him. How simple it is!" (J.B. Stoney)

                        Comment


                        • #27
                          Originally posted by lee_merrill View Post
                          Let us notice that the quoted part of the article is of peer reviewed scientific literature: "Second, the authors mention that..."

                          Blessings,
                          Lee
                          Please provide "complete" citation in context from the original source.
                          Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
                          Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
                          But will they come when you do call for them? Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, Act III:

                          go with the flow the river knows . . .

                          Frank

                          I do not know, therefore everything is in pencil.

                          Comment


                          • #28
                            Interesting fossil discovery that documents the great diversity of animal life in the pre-Cambrian/Cambrian between 600-540 million years before the 'Cambrian Explosion of life.'

                            Source: https://scitechdaily.com/answers-on-when-and-how-the-first-animals-appeared-from-500-million-year-old-microfossils/



                            Answers on When and How the First Animals Appeared From 500 Million-Year-Old Microfossils

                            When and how did the first animals appear? Science has long sought an answer. Uppsala University researchers and colleagues in Denmark have now jointly found, in Greenland, embryo-like microfossils up to 570 million years old, revealing that organisms of this type were dispersed throughout the world. The study is published in Communications Biology.

                            “We believe this discovery of ours improves our scope for understanding the period in Earth’s history when animals first appeared — and is likely to prompt many interesting discussions,” says Sebastian Willman, the study’s first author and a paleontologist at Uppsala University.

                            The existence of animals on Earth around 540 million years ago (mya) is well substantiated. This was when the event in evolution known as the “Cambrian Explosion” took place. Fossils from a huge number of creatures from the Cambrian period, many of them shelled, exist. The first animals must have evolved earlier still; but there are divergent views in the research community on whether the extant fossils dating back to the Precambrian Era are genuinely classifiable as animals.



                            A potential animal embryo, approximately 160 μm (micrometres) in diameter, from the Portfjeld Formation in Greenland. Only in the Doushantuo Formation in southern China have similar finds have come to light. Credit: Sebastian Willman

                            The new finds from the Portfjeld Formation in the north of Greenland may help to enhance understanding of the origin of animals. In rocks that are 570-560 mya, scientists from Uppsala University, the University of Copenhagen and the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland have found microfossils of what might be eggs and animal embryos. These are so well preserved that individual cells, and even intracellular structures, can be studied. The organisms concerned lived in the shallow coastal seas around Greenland during the Ediacaran period, 635-541 mya. The immense variability of microfossils has convinced the researchers that the complexity of life in that period must have been greater than has hitherto been known.

                            Similar finds were uncovered in southern China’s Doushantuo Formation, which is nearly 600 million years old, over three decades ago. Since then, researchers have been discussing what kinds of life form the microfossils represented, and some think they are eggs and embryos from primeval animals. The Greenland fossils are somewhat younger than, but largely identical to, those from China.

                            The new discovery means that the researchers can also say that these organisms were spread throughout the world. When they were alive, most continents were spaced out south of the Equator. Greenland lay where the expanse of the Southern Ocean (surrounding Antarctica) is now, and China was roughly at the same latitude as present-day Florida.


                            “The vast bedrock, essentially unexplored to date, of the north of Greenland offers opportunities to understand the evolution of the first multicellular organisms, which in turn developed into the first animals that, in their turn, led to us,” Sebastian Willman says.

                            Reference: “Ediacaran Doushantuo-type biota discovered in Laurentia” by Sebastian Willman, John S. Peel, Jon R. Ineson, Niels H. Schovsbo, Elias J. Rugen and Robert Frei, 6 November 2020, Communications Biology.
                            DOI:10.1038/s42003-020-01381-7

                            © Copyright Original Source


                            Last edited by shunyadragon; 11-23-2020, 08:53 AM.
                            Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
                            Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
                            But will they come when you do call for them? Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, Act III:

                            go with the flow the river knows . . .

                            Frank

                            I do not know, therefore everything is in pencil.

                            Comment


                            • #29
                              Many more of these diverse early Pre-Cambrian animals have been found in Mongolia.

                              https://scitechdaily.com/mongolian-m...se-of-animals/
                              Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
                              Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
                              But will they come when you do call for them? Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, Act III:

                              go with the flow the river knows . . .

                              Frank

                              I do not know, therefore everything is in pencil.

                              Comment


                              • #30
                                Sorry, been a very challenging month for me, so my presence here has been erratic.

                                Originally posted by lee_merrill View Post
                                No, I would say that they are saying that mutations due to oxygenation are not sufficient to account for the changes seen in the Cambrian explosion.
                                But that's not what you said just earlier. You're just changing your argument whenever the last one is clearly wrong. It's incredibly dishonest.

                                In any case, i'll reiterate - what is the evidence that they're insufficient? You cannot possibly have any, because we have no sense of how many mutations were generated by oxygenation and how many by other means. So you're just making this latest claim based on nothing.

                                Originally posted by lee_merrill View Post
                                Well, the 157 new genes still stand, that is the essence of the argument.
                                Well, then (yet again) it's an incredibly dumb argument. Drosophila as a genus has only existed for less than 15 million years, and yet there are hundreds of new genes in its species.
                                "After the initial screen, we acquired 169 new gene candidates in D. melanogaster, 253 in D. yakuba, and 191 shared by the D. melanogaster species complex."

                                See: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2527705/

                                So, not only do the authors have no clue how much time was involved (since they mistakenly think this is the Cambrian), but the number of genes they're hyperventilating about is far smaller than the count the comes about through mundane speciation.

                                No matter how you look at this argument, it's utter garbage.

                                Originally posted by lee_merrill View Post
                                It's about probabilities, gene shuffling is possible, but is it probable? Selectable pathways would demonstrate that.
                                What's the probability of something we've observed happening? It's 1.

                                Originally posted by lee_merrill View Post
                                But we are talking about 157 new genes, not duplications of existing ones.
                                No, we're not, and if you understood any biology, you'd recognize that.

                                The nodal pathway is a TGF-ß signaling pathway instance. The TGF-ß signaling pathway predates the existence of bilaterians. The nodal pathway is "new" in the sense that it has sequence variations that are not present in other members of the pathway. But it's not new in that the genes those variations are in are copies of an earlier pathway.

                                It's like the mantis shrimp, which has something like a dozen different photoreceptors. All of these proteins look more or less the same - 7 transmembrane structure, site for retinal linkage, site for linking to a signaling protein, etc. Obviously, a bunch of these are "new" in the sense that they're not found in other genuses. But they're also clearly copies of other photoreceptors.

                                So, we're left with three options:
                                These guys don't know biology well enough to understand the details of the paper they're writing about.
                                These guys know biology well enough, and could have looked it up (like i did), but couldn't be bothered, and didn't consider being accurate important.
                                These guys did know all of this, but decided it wasn't good for their argument, so misled you.

                                None of those are good.

                                So i'll ask you again: how bad does their behavior have to get before you'll stop using them as a source?
                                "Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from trolling."

                                Comment

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