Darwin, Then and Now

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While evoking images of Frankenstein-like scientific tinkering, this week J. Craig Venter of the Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Md said,

We’re here to announce the first synthetic cell.

Venter told reporters that the new species — dubbed Mycoplasma mycoides JCVI-syn1.0 — is similar to one found in nature, but each cell is controlled only by a single million-base pair chromosome assembled from the bio-computer laboratory. The research is reported in the May 20 issue of Science.

The new species, Venter said, started with researchers digitizing the genetic code for the new species on computers, and then assembling the nucleotides using “four bottles of chemicals” into sections of DNA. The DNA sections were assembled in yeast cells to form a synthetic chromosome, which was then transferred to a related species of bacteria, M. capricolum.

Late in March, the researchers told reporters, the modified cells began replicating and formed a “blue colony” of the new species. Venter said,

This is the first self-replicating species that we’ve had on the planet whose parent is a computer.

Indeed, he and his colleagues consistently used computer language to describe the work. The new chromosome is like an operating system, they said, and it reprograms the M. capricolum cells to become M. mycoides.

The result comes after 15 years of research — and some $40 million — aimed at finding what Venter has called the minimal genome: the smallest set of genes that can support a living creature. But it could quickly have spinoffs, the researchers said.

This process has enormous commercial potential, including new tools for developing future vaccines, pharmaceuticals, biofuels, biochemicals, and perhaps synthetic algae to cope with oil spills such as the one currently threatening the Gulf Coast of the U.S.

Describing the new species as “synthetic” may be going too far, according to some experts. It’s “synthetic in the sense that its DNA is synthesized, not in that a new life form has been created,” according to molecular biologist Jim Collins of Boston University writing in the Nature. “Its genome is a stitched-together copy of the DNA of an organism that exists in nature, with a few small tweaks thrown in.”

Mark Bedauv of Reed College in Portland, Ore., also writing in the Nature commentary called the new species “a normal bacterium with a prosthetic genome.”

The prosthetic genome had some problems, however. Venter and colleagues were stalled for several months because one of the pieces of DNA they painstakingly crafted had a typo – a single base-pair deletion – that means the whole chromosome could not function.

“So accuracy is essential,” Venter said. “There’s parts of the genome where it can’t tolerate even a single error and there’s parts where we can put in large blocks of DNA and it can tolerate all kinds of errors.”

Molecular geneticist Georgia Purdom from Ohio State University noted that this kind of genetic engineering is “like taking the hard drive of computer #1 and putting it into computer #2 that has had its own hard drive removed. So effectively computer #2 becomes computer #1.”

Regardless of the inference to molecules-to-man evolution, even Venter noted that they “didn’t create life from scratch.”

Frances Arnold, synthetic biologist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, emphasized “[w]e can write anything we want,” said Arnold. “The problem is that we don’t know what to write.”

This historical event highlights the fact that writing genetic information has an absolute requirement—intelligence with perfection.

Jonathan Wells of the Discovery Institute explains further what’s going on behind the headlines at Evolution News & Views:

In the wake of the article published in Science on May 7, 2010, entitled “A Draft Sequence of the Neanderthal Genome”, the Smithsonian Institute is definitely destined for a very busy summer updating the fiasco at the Human Origins exhibit.

The reason is the research team led by geneticist Svante Pääbo at the Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany that wrote the article has discovered that the Neanderthals are indistinguishable from humans—Neanderthals and humans are the same species. John Hawks, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin, told BBC News: “They’re us. We’re them.”

Geneticist Gregory Hannon commenting on the historical event noted – the “publication of the full Neandertal genome is a watershed event, a major historical achievement.” The evidence from “A Draft Sequence of the Neanderthal Genome,” clearly contradicts the Human Origin exhibit at the Smithsonian Institute.

 The now evident fiascos at the Smithsonian Human Origin exhibit destined for updating include the following statements:

The Neanderthal sequences were substantially different from modern human mtDNA.

These results confirmed the earlier study that showed that Neanderthals were unlikely to have contributed to the modern human genome.

Neanderthals and modern humans were separate species.

“[T]he really surprising thing for many of us,” noted Professor Chris Stringer, research leader in human origins at London’s Natural History Museum, “is the implication that there has been some interbreeding between Neanderthals and modern humans in the past.”

By definition, different species cannot develop interbreeding populations, therefore the Neanderthals can no longer be considered ancestral to humans – because they are simply humans.

Clearly, the Smithsonian exhibit had presented Neanderthals as a missing link to humans not on scientific evidence, but on an evolutionary paradigm—a saga that continues as a ubiquitous plague.

 In using logic rather than scientific evidence, the Smithsonian exhibit theorized that humans and Neanderthal represents the missing link to humans because they were not interbreeding populations—a gamble that was lost.

More glaring fiascos destined for updating at the Smithsonian include the following statements:

They did not find a match between derived alleles or gene forms in modern humans and those in Neanderthals, which is evidence against interbreeding.

The preliminary sequence shows no evidence that Neanderthals and modern humans interbred.

Also, since studies show that Neanderthal mtDNA and Y chromosomes are very different, it is unlikely that Neanderthals and modern humans were interbreeding.

The exhibit exemplifies a greater fiasco to the evolutionary movement in which ideology has replaced science. With a long legacy of wrong theories and fraud, hopefully the Smithsonian will update the Human Origin exhibit based on scientific evidence—not an ideological agenda.

The immediate addressing of the Neanderthal fiasco will avoid the “fraud” label and not become the U.S. version of the Piltdown man.   

Jerry A. Coyne, one of the leading evolutionists at the University of Chicago, in his new book entitled Why Evolution is True (2009) writes “much confusion and misunderstanding surrounds evolution” even though “the modern theory is easy to grasp.” The question is how can a theory be “easy to grasp” and still be surrounded by “much confusion”?

But what could the confusion be over? Here are some examples.  Charles Darwin wrote in The Origin of Species - “There is no logical impossibility in the acquirement of any conceivable degree of perfection through natural selection”. Coyne contradicts Darwin by stating – “natural selection does not yield perfection”. Over a trivial issue, confusion reigns over whether natural selection can or cannot produce perfection in nature.

Presumably, to show how easy the theory of evolution is to understand, Coyne features what he calls the six basics of evolution: “evolution, gradualism, speciation, common ancestry, natural selection, and nonselective mechanisms”. For Coyne, natural selection is not the exclusive driving force of evolution.

Niles Eldredge, evolutionary biologist and curator of the American Museum of Natural History, disagrees. Niles Eldredge, architect  and designer of the museum’s currently touring Darwin exhibit in the companion book Darwin, Discovering the Tree of Life (2005), credits Darwin with discovering the actions of natural selection—the essence of evolution: “When [Darwin] formulated the principle of natural selection, he had discovered the central process of evolution.”

Unlike Coyne, Eldredge envisions evolution acting exclusively through the process of natural selection: “A century and a half ago, Charles Darwin offered the world a single, simple scientific explanation for the diversity of life on Earth: evolution by natural selection.” Unlike Coynes six basics of evolution, Eldredge uses a VISTA acronym for natural selection that stands for Variation, Inheritance, Selection, Time, and Adaptation.

Differences in approach even between Coyne and Eldredge, exemplify why evolution theory continues to be confusing—even on the basics. The teaching of evolution is in chaos. Coyne pines “most of my university students who supposedly learned evolution in high school, come to my courses know almost nothing about this central organizing theory of biology.” Could it be because a unified theory of evolution simply does not exist?

Even university science major graduates seem to be no better. T. Ryan Gregory and Cameron A. J. Ellis, in their paper entitled “Conceptions of Evolution Among Science Graduate Students” published in BioScience 59(9):792-799 (2009), surprizingly found that less than 30% of students pursuing advanced science degrees could correctly identify even the basic principles of evolution.

The reason is—a comprehensive theory of evolution simply does not exist. Even with the convening of the most respected evolutionary scientists at the Altenberg Summit in 2008, no consensus was reached on a comprehensive theory of evolution.

Given the flood of available evidence, in the wake of Crick’s Central Dogma collapse, evolution is a theory that remains in chaos—now more than ever.

Evolution is a theory in crisis. Even students pursuing advanced degrees in science cannot grasp the basics of evolution, according to a new study by University of Guelph researchers.

The finding reveals evolutionary teaching is in chaos from elementary school up, said Ryan Gregory, a professor in Guelph’s Department of Integrative Biology, who conducted the research with former student Cameron Ellis.

The study was published in BioScience and is particularly timely, given that this year is the bicentennial of Charles Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of publication of On the Origin of Species, which underpins understanding of the diversity of Earth’s organisms and their interrelations.

“Misconceptions about natural selection may still exist, even at the most advanced level,” Gregory said.

“We’re looking at a subset of people who have spent at least four years, sometimes even six or seven years, in science and still don’t necessarily have a full working understanding of basic evolutionary principles or scientific terms like ‘theories.’”

Many previous studies have assessed how evolution is understood and accepted by elementary, high school and undergraduate students, as well as by teachers and the general public, Gregory said. But this was the first to focus solely on students seeking graduate science degrees.

The study involved nearly 200 graduate students at a mid-sized Canadian university who were studying biological, physical, agricultural, or animal sciences. When the students were asked to apply basic evolutionary principles, only 20 to 30 per cent could do so correctly, and many did not even try to answer such questions. Of particular interest to Gregory was the finding that many students seem less than clear about the nature of scientific theories.

“This is telling us that traditional instruction methods, while leading to some basic understanding of evolution, are not producing a strong working knowledge that can be easily applied to real biological phenomena.”

The outcome underscores the failure of single cohesive theory of evolution to emerge since the collapse of evolution’s Central Dogma at the turn of the century. Ryan Gregory’s study further demonstrates that education on an non-cohesive theory leads to chaos in the schoolhouse.  

A British film about Charles Darwin has failed to find a US distributor because his theory of evolution is too controversial, according to its producer. 

The film entitled Creation, starring Paul Bettany, details Darwin’s “struggle between faith and reason” as he wrote On The Origin of Species. It depicts him as a man who loses faith in God following the death of his beloved 10-year-old daughter, Annie.

The film was chosen to open the Toronto Film Festival and has its British premiere this Sunday, September 20. Creation was developed by BBC Films and the UK Film Council. US distributors, however, have resolutely passed on the film. The film has sparked fierce debate because of Darwin’s known influence on the wave of twentieth century social engineering struggles, and more simply, the convergence physical of evidence has failed to support Darwin’s theory after 150 years. 

Movieguide.org, described Darwin as the father of eugenics and denounced him as “a racist, a bigot and an 1800s naturalist whose legacy is mass murder”. His “half-baked theory” directly influenced Adolf Hitler and led to “atrocities, crimes against humanity, cloning and genetic engineering”, the site stated. According to a Gallup poll conducted in February, only 39% of Americans believe in the theory of evolution.

Had pre-production marketing not been so far off-target, Jeremy Thomas, the Oscar-winning producer of Creation, would not have been so stunned and left wondering why “People have been saying this is the best film they’ve seen all year, yet nobody in the US has picked it up.”