Genome complexity: what genes do and don't do (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, February 16, 2019, 13:37 (1897 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I am allowed to admit your possibilities are possible in view of the facts we know, But I have consistent conclusions which I feel are better. I will consider mine better until proven otherwise. Be content with my admission.

I am content with your admission. I am not content when you make admissions one day, and then rescind them the next, as with the various evolutionary hypotheses, survival as a driving force, and your rejection of cellular intelligence.

dhw: […] Self-control, decision-making, autonomy, semi-autonomy, semi-independent are not synonymous with “automatic”. Thank you again for providing scientific evidence that contradicts your view of automaticity […]

DAVID: [..] I view the final steps in reaching a connection are automatic molecular reactions. This earlier steps are as you describe.

dhw: The “earlier steps” are the processing of information, the taking of decisions, and the issuing of instructions. Then of course the final steps are automatic – otherwise the decisions and instructions would not be implemented! Thank you for at last accepting the possibility that the earlier steps are not automatic but are the product of cellular self-control and autonomous decision-making.

DAVID: I think the decision-making is coded into the genome of each neuron cell. Information/ instructions all prepared for use by the designer.

In other words, you do not think the earlier steps are as I describe, but your God provided the first cells with a library of information and instructions for every undabbled innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder in life's history, including instructions to bacteria on how to resist new antibiotics.

DAVID: Are you disputing science finds one percent are already resistant before the antibiotic is given?

dhw: Are you disputing science when it finds that cells learn, create instructions on the hoof, create instructions de novo?

DAVID: No answer to my statement. Science finds one percent are resistant to start with in many cases! In other cases they use gene transfer. How can that happen if the bacteria have to invent resistance by your favorite theory. Because antibodies are natural in nature and bacteria, molds and fungi use them all the time, resistance has naturally developed in the past. Penicillin, discovered in 1927 by Fleming, comes from the blue cheese mold!

Of course resistance has naturally developed in the past, as bacteria have learned to change themselves in accordance with new conditions! And of course they can use gene transfer to pass the new solutions on. Here is an (edited) article which seems to me to explain your one per cent and to support the view that bacteria work out their own ways of survival. I have bolded the bits that need no comment:

Some Bacteria Completely Immune To All Antibiotics
https://naturalon.com/some-bacteria-completely-immune-to-all...

A new study out of China had some very scary results. Some types of bacteria have actually breached our last walls of antibiotic defense. This study found that one gene in a strain of Escherichia coli (known to most of us as E. Coli) had no reaction to one of the last antibiotics that we have available to fight it.

Please note that the study refers only to one gene in one strain of E. coli. It is, therefore, an exception.

Researchers in this study found this gene, called mcr-1, in samples that were taken from infected people, pork products, and pigs. This gene protects the bacteria from the one antibiotic we have that still works against E. coli called colistin.
Mcr-1 was the most common gene found in samples taken from animals, which suggests that this mutation began in livestock. In China, it is common to administer the antibiotic colistin to their livestock animals.

Please note the proposal that the mutation had a beginning. The researchers are not suggesting that the beginning was instructions from 3.8 billion years ago.

Unfortunately, by giving animals antibiotics constantly, bacteria have learned to mutate and are no longer responding as they used to in the past.

Scientists have known for quite some time, and have been warning the public, that the overuse of antibiotics only stimulates bacteria to do what they have done for the past 3 billion years: Mutate and survive.

Yes indeed, the purpose or driving force of all these mutations is survival – whether your God designed the mechanisms or not.

The ability of bacteria to change and evolve outpaces our ability to create new antibiotics, says Dr. Amesh Adalja, who is an infectious disease specialist at the University of Pittsburg Medical Center.

When it comes to protecting themselves, bacteria are really good at what they do. Bacteria has been around for billions of years and they have been fine-tuning their defenses against other microbes that could harm or destroy them. Many of the antibiotics we have created began as microorganisms, which means that we are playing in the stadium owned by bacteria.

No mention of automaticity, or of a 3.8-billion-year old library of information and instructions. Bacteria fine-tune their defences, and even the one example (a strain of E.coli) that is already resistant to new bacteria is believed to have originated on a farm in China.