Re: Scientific Discoveries That Suggest Evolution Is False?

On Tue, 9 Jul 2024 16:39:42 -0500, RonO <rokimoto557@gmail.com> wrote:

On 7/9/2024 3:23 AM, jillery wrote:

MSN has been posting a lot of nonsense from Creationists and cdesign
proponentsists recently.  The following is an example:
 
<https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/mind-and-soul/scientific-discoveries-that-suggest-evolution-is-false/ss-BB1oN5KV?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=c43911ee82944a5598ad288c0bead685&ei=19#image=1>
 
<https://tinyurl.com/4na2jfrp>
 
 From the article:
 
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For example, Darwin’s theory does a good job with the finch birds,
explaining how variations in weather patterns result in changes in the
shape and structure of the finch beaks. However, that mechanism does
not do a good job of explaining the origins of birds or other major
animal groups in the first place. So basically, innovation, no but
modification, yes.
**************************************
 
The above should sound very familiar to regular T.O. readers, as it's
boilerplate from "Darwin's Doubt".
 
The following is a good example of the "innovation" which Darwin's
theory explains just fine, no intelligent designer required or
necessary:
 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitroplast>
 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endosymbiont>
 
<https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(24)00182-X.pdf>
 
<https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk1075>
 
 
To my knowledge, nitroplasts haven't been mentioned in T.O. before.
They are a newly-discovered organelle in some algae, likely evolved
from endosymbiotic bacteria, just as are mitochondria and
chloroplasts.

>
Nitroplasts haven't seemed to have garnered much scientific interest.
The bacteria seems to have been identified in 1998 and classified as an
endosymbiont in 2013.  Wiki claims that they are researching how to
transfer the endosymbiont to crop plants.  Some crop plants (legumes)
can produce nitrogen fixing root nodules that protect nitrogen fixing
bacteria.  The nitrogen fixing bacteria are anaerobic and have to be
protected against oxygen.  Photosynthetic cyanobacteria can fix
nitrogen, and supposedly could fix nitrogen before they evolved aerobic
photosynthesis, and they had to adapt the anaerobic nitrogen fixing to
their oxygen generating carbon compound production.  Apparently they fix
nitrogen at night when photosynthesis is turned off and not producing
oxygen.  The nitroplasts, must do the same thing.  It will likely be
tricky to adapt them to crop plants.  You don't want them taking up
space in the leaves that need to be packed with chloroplasts, so they
would need to be reverse regulated.  Then need to be fully formed and
active in the roots (chloroplasts exist in root cells, but they are not
fully formed and functional) and need to be limited in number in the
leaves, and somehow you need to keep oxygen away from them in the root
cells.  This will be hard to do because root cells are still aerobic and
need oxygen.  Some plants like rice that can survive flooding can
tolerate lower oxygen levels, but most plants can't.
>
Ron Okimoto

IIUC the recent newsworthy bit about nitroblasts is their existence as
organelles, using proteins from the hosts' nuclear DNA.

Also, according to this:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atelocyanobacterium_thalassa>
************************************
Unlike many other cyanobacteria, the genome of A. thalassa does not
contain genes for RuBisCO, photosystem II, or the TCA cycle.
Consequently, A. thalassa lacks the ability to fix carbon via
photosynthesis. Some genes specific to the cyanobacteria group are
also absent from the A. thalassa genome despite being an evolutionary
descendant of this group.  With the inability to fix their own carbon,
A. thalassa are obligate symbionts that have been found within
photosynthetic picoeukaryote algae.
***********************************

--
To know less than we don't know is the nature of most knowledge