New Information

There was a thread in the News and Current Events section that veered off topic onto information. ( http://www.baptistboard.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/topic/1/2360.html ) I thought it might be a good idea to take up the information part here in keeping with the spirit of the news forum. This just seems like a better place.

A little history.

On page two Gup 20 posted:

I responded with a list** of examples of new information I had given on another recent thread.

Gup20 responded

and

To which I responded

Which led to the challenge that will start as the subject of this thread. Gup20 offered that if I would purge my current list of over a dozen to one, he would research it and refute it. I offered to meet him about 3/4ths of the way there and trim it to 3. That will be the next post.

There are other reasons to have such a dedicated thread on information. For example Helen recently made the statement that "I do know that not all mutations are apparently harmful. I am willing to go out on this limb, however, -- all changes involve a loss of function in one way or another." ( http://www.baptistboard.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/topic/66/15.html#000012 ) The items here have a direct bearing on such statements.

 

The challenge...

I'll make it easier on you. Since you said that you looked at the first several already and found them refutable, then let's do the first three since they are three separate mechanisms. OK?

First.

"Selective sweep of a newly evolved sperm-specific gene in Drosophila," Nurminsky DI, Nurminskaya MV, De Aguiar D, Hartl DL, Nature. 1998 Dec 10;396(6711):572-5.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=9859991&dopt=Abstract

You have two genes that are beside each other. They get duplicated. In one of the copies, some of the sequence between the two genes gets deleted. This allows the genes to combine into one chimeric gene. You have the two original genes intact and you have a new gene.

Second.

"Adaptive evolution after gene duplication," Hughes AL, Trends Genetics, 2002 Sep.18(9):433-4.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=12175796&dopt=Abstract

In this case a gene, RNASE1, was duplicated such that we had a new gene, RNASE1B. These genes occur in the colobine monkey, douc langur and make pancreatic ribonuclease. Through a change in diet, the conditions within the digestive tract of the monkey were altered. Through delective pressure, the B copy of the gene mutated until it was adapted to digest single stranded bacterial RNA.

Again, we have new information. The original gene still exists to perform its original function. The gene was duplicated. When the copy mutated, then there was information that was not there previously, namely the new DNA sequence. The second copy eventually mutated until it performed a new digestive process.

Third.

"Syncytin is a captive retroviral envelope protein involved in human placental morphogenesis," Mi S, Lee X, Li X, Veldman GM, Finnerty H, Racie L, LaVallie E, Tang XY, Edouard P, Howes S, Keith JC Jr, McCoy JM, Nature 2000 Feb 17;403(6771):785-9.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=20155476&dopt=Abstract

In this case, a retrovirus inserted a section of DNA into the genome. In this case, humans have co-opted the gene to serve an important role in the area of human placental morphogenesis. The purpose of the original gene was as the envelope gene of the virus. So humans gained a gene and a function which they previously did not have. The information of the human genome was thus increased.

-------

A few more clarifications were added in later posts.

and

There were also a few other topics that were hinted at such as Snowball Earth and the presence of the same retroviral inserts in humans and the other apes and primates.

 

**The list of items posted recently.

"Selective sweep of a newly evolved sperm-specific gene in Drosophila," Nurminsky DI, Nurminskaya MV, De Aguiar D, Hartl DL, Nature. 1998 Dec 10;396(6711):572-5.

"Adaptive evolution after gene duplication," Hughes AL, Trends Genetics, 2002 Sep.18(9):433-4.

"Accelerated protein evolution and origins of human-specific features: Foxp2 as an example," Zhang J, Webb DM, Podlaha O, Genetics. 2002 Dec;162(4):1825-35.

"Syncytin is a captive retroviral envelope protein involved in human placental morphogenesis," Mi S, Lee X, Li X, Veldman GM, Finnerty H, Racie L, LaVallie E, Tang XY, Edouard P, Howes S, Keith JC Jr, McCoy JM, Nature 2000 Feb 17;403(6771):785-9.

"Origin of antifreeze protein genes: A cool tale in molecular evolution," John M. Logsdon Jr. and W. Ford Doolittle, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, USA,Vol. 94, pp. 3485-3487, April 1997.

DeVries, A. L. & Wohlschlag, D. E. (1969) Science 163, 1073-1075.

"A carrot leucine-rich-repeat protein that inhibits ice recrystallization," Worrall D, Elias L, Ashford D, Smallwood M, Sidebottom C, Lillford P, Telford J, Holt C, Bowles D, Science. 1998 Oct 2;282(5386):115-7.

"Recruitment of a double bond isomerase to serve as a reductive dehalogenase during biodegradation of pentachlorophenol," Anandarajah K, Kiefer PM Jr, Donohoe BS, Copley SD, Biochemistry 2000 May 9;39(18):5303-11.

"The Tre2 (USP6) oncogene is a hominoid-specific gene," Paulding CA, Ruvolo M, Haber DA, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science U S A 2003 Mar 4;100(5):2507-11.

"The human genome contains many types of chimeric retrogenes generated through in vivo RNA recombination," Anton Buzdin*, Elena Gogvadze, Elena Kovalskaya, Pavel Volchkov, Svetlana Ustyugova, Anna Illarionova, Alexey Fushan, Tatiana Vinogradova and Eugene Sverdlov, Nucleic Acids Research, 2003, Vol. 31, No. 15 4385-4390.

"The narrow sheath Duplicate Genes: Sectors of Dual Aneuploidy Reveal Ancestrally Conserved Gene Functions During Maize Leaf Development," Michael J. Scanlona, K. David Chenb, and Calvin C. McKnight, IV, Genetics, Vol. 155, 1379-1389, July 2000.

"The maize duplicate genes narrow sheath1 and narrow sheath2 encode a conserved homeobox gene function in a lateral domain of shoot apical meristems," Judith Nardmann1, Jiabing Ji, Wolfgang Werr, and Michael J. Scanlon, Development 131, 2827-2839 (2004).

 

The challenge is not met, but I thought I would add another, general method of creating new information. There are genes called long interspersed elements, or LINEs, that can have sections easily copied into other sections of DNA forming new sequences. They also have the ability to take sections of other DNA and insert them into new regions creating new genetic sequences.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&list_uids=10742098&dopt=Citation

"Human LINE retrotransposons generate processed pseudogenes," Esnault C, Maestre J, Heidmann T, Nature Genetics 2000 Apr;24(4):363-7.

 

Here is another general study revolving aroung gene duplications and the different ways that they can eventually lead to new, functional genes.

“The Structure and Early Evolution of Recently Arisen Gene Duplicates in the Caenorhabditis elegans Genome “, Vaishali Katju and Michael Lynch, Genetics, Vol. 165, 1793-1803, December 2003

 

I had at least a dozen. I have reduced it to three. That is meeting you 3/4ths of the way there. To be fair, you should have to refute each and every one of the original list. You said you had already researched the first several and knew how to refute them. I think I am being more than fair by reducing it to three. Each of the three gives a very different method. This would at least let you critique three different methods. If you cannot do this then just pick one of the three. The challenge will NOT be met but maybe I can still get out of you a concise and specific definition of information that could be used to judge the other cases without you, a hypothetical and reasonable case of what you think would qualify as new information and a specific and factual reason why the chosen case is not new information. That would be a start.

I think others have previously given you your non-literal verse-by-verse reading of Genesis. My position has long been that you cannot get the details of the creation from Genesis so you should not expect me to pull out a verse that says "I'm God and I used evolution to create the life froms you see." Genesis is meant to establish God as the Creator among other issues it deals with and is not meant to give a blow by blow account. At that, Genesis does say that God commanded the earth and the waters to bring forth life. That is at least a hint towards evolution in my book. I am not disagreeing with Genesis. I think it is silent on the methods of creation. I am disagreeing with your interpretation. I think your request is the equivilent of asking me to give you the verse in the Bible that supports general relativity or the kinetic theory og gasses. It is silent on those issues just as it is silent on evolution and the details of the geologic history of the earth or on the details of the astronomical history of the universe.

 

First

I am unclear about your objections here. It hurts that you never give us the definition of information that we will be judging the examples by.

First off, it was not one copy being combined with an existing gene. The annexin and dynenin genes were duplicated together, then the intervening sequences deleted to form a single new gene. So you initially had two genes. Then you had four, but two were duplicates. Then the two were combined to form a new gene with a new function. So where you initially had two, you now have three. None of the specified complexity of the two original genes were lost. And new, complex specified information was generated.

I am not quite sure what the purpose was in going into dynein, chrysanthemums, and Epulopiscium fishelsoni.

"For example, if I had two copies of a book, and I tore pages out of one book and then glued the two books together - How much more information would I gain from reading this 'new book'? "

You continue to use a faulty analogy. Genes are not like the pages in a book. The very thing which you say is not new information ["In the same way genetically, we can combine mutated forms of genes... or proteins we have never seen before ... but these are simply mutated forms of the originals - they are originals that have lost information. Their content is limited to what was available to work with at the start. You can continue combining "page after page" of the same, or of altered/mutated genes, but they all specify the same thing, or try to specify the same thing (depending on the severity of the mutation, some will specifiy that thing better than others). You still have failed to create any new information."] is the very way that genetics works in evolution. New genes are not hypothesized to just appear from out of the clear blue. Things get duplicated. Things get combined. Things get swapped from other organisms. Things get deleted. Things get mutated. But it all happens to what exists. New genes from the sky is not part of evolutionary theory. So you can define such things as not being new information if that makes you happy. But you should realize that in that case, new information is not needed for evolution to proceed.

The first example is judged as having failed to meet the burden of proof to show that no new information was generated.

 

Second

"Here you have a specific line in our "book of copied pages" that is fucntional and useful being singled out for mass production."

Huh? Genes are not pages in a book. Why do you think a gene that gets duplicated and then evolves a novel function is the same as a page in a book getting mass produced?

"This is exactly what creationists have been claiming and predicting - that things are going from fully informative, less specific to less informative and more specific."

Nope. You have one gene that digests one thing. It gets duplicated. The copy mutates until it digests something else. They are both fairly specific about what they digest. The old gene will not digest the single stranded bacterial RNA of the new gene.

So once again you have an increase in information. The old gene still has all of its original specified complexity and the new gene has added to the specified complexity of the organism.

"Again, there is no new information, but only what was available at the original creation. Existing genes being duplicated or re-arraged fits just fine with the YEC model."

Then fine. Evolution does not need to produce new information according to the definition you seem to be laboring under. Since duplication and rearrangment is fine with you and the rest of YE (according to your statement) then the methods of evolution must be capatible with what is acceptable to you.

The second example is judged as having failed to meet the burden of proof to show that no new information was generated.

 

Third

I am beginning to think that giving you the full citation plus a link to the abstract was not enough. I give you one abstract and you debunk something different. I am not really sure what the problem is. You cite a different abstract from a different set of authors in a different journal from a different year on a different subject. You did the same thing with the first one. I posted about one thing and you responded to another.

"Here you have one retrovirus which supposedly helps fend off another retrovirus."

Nope. The one I listed is a retrovirus gene that has been coopted to be "important in human placental morphogenesis."

The third example is judged as having failed to meet the burden of proof to show that no new information was generated largely because the example given was not even addressed.

So there we have it. We never got a definition of information that we can used to judge potential cases of new information. And for two fo the three, you did not even bother to address the examples provided to you. The one time that you did address the example given, you did not make a factual case for why it was not an increase. Of course that may be difficult to do without defining infomation.

The definition of information that you intimate does not seem to be one that has any bearing on evolutionary theory. You also state rather explicitly that the methods that evolution uses to generate novel genes is not at odds with what you as a YEer are willing to accept.

The result: evolution is not at odds with information theory.

 

"The Bible does have something to say about general relativity. It says a day with the Lord is as a thousand years. It says God is light. Today we know - according to Einstein that as you get right up close to the speed of light, one day is as a thousand years - relatively speaking. "

You really think these verses are speaking of relativity? Really?!? I don't think so. Maybe you can point the direction where some writer interpreted these verses in this manner before the publishing of "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies."

"You can get billions of years of geologic data in the space of one year with such an event."

Really? Demonstrate such. You have been asked to demonstrate all sorts of things. Like the Snowball earth thread which sits ignored. Like the sorting of animals in the fossil record. Life layers of ash of debris from asteroid impacts right in the middle of what you would call Flood layers. Like the details of fossilization (predation, scavenging, preserving of delicate parts, variety of methods of burial, etc.) The dating of the Hawaiian volcanoes and their degree of erosion. Just the Grand Canyon presents an emormous challenge to your thinking.

 

"Err... I have before. For example, when Mt. St. Helens blew in the 80's it laid down THOUSANDS upon THOUSANDS of layers (that look remarkably like Grand Canyon layers actually) in the space of 1 hour. "

So maybe you can tell me about layers in the Mt. St. Helens canyon that resembles layers in the Grand Canyon. Where are the layers that resemble the “Granite Gorges” where sedementary rock was later metamorphosed by intrusions of granite forming magma? How long do you think these layers of magma took to cool? When where they formed in your scenario?

What about the layers that appear to have been deposited in a shallow, coastal marine environment? Do you have some layers from the Mt St Helens eruption that look like these? When were these laid down in your scenario?

What about the sandstone layers? Do you see sandstone layers at Mt. St. Helens? How were the ones in the Grand Canyon formed?

What about the shale layers? Do you see sandstone layers at Mt. St. Helens? How were the ones in the Grand Canyon formed?

What about the limestone layers? Do you see sandstone layers at Mt. St. Helens? How were the ones in the Grand Canyon formed?

Does the Mt. St. Helens canyon exhibit meanders like the Grand Canyon?

Maybe you can explain the angular unconformities of the Grand Canyon. Bet you cannot!

"Furthermore, we can see canyons hundreds of feet deep (which evolution scientists say takes thousands or hundreds of thousands of years) happen in 6 days."

You know, the last time you posted something along these lines it turned out to be a tiny canyone eroded through mud that was soaked in water for days before. As we all know, you cannot get the high, sheer cliffs and meanders in such a situation.

"These are geologic events caused by catastrophism on a minute fraction of scale as to what happened to the world during Noah's Biblical world-wide flood. And Noah's Flood lasted for a year, not an hour... not 6 days."

So, can you tell us which layers are original, which are pre-flood, which are from the flood, and which are post flood?

Maybe you can tell us how the flood managed to sort all of life such that cladistic and stratigraphic data match so well.

http://palaeo.gly.bris.ac.uk/publs/Benton/1999SystBiol.pdf

The truth is that YE has NOTHING to offer along such lines.