If one believes in evolution, it is important to know what is required for life. Not just what environmental conditions are needed, but also what biochemical conditions.
It is often quoted that there are 250 essential proteins required for basic life. To have life, you need 250 proteins so it was thought. While those were previous guesses it is now possible to determine what parts of DNA are essential for life. A study released in the journal Molecular Systems Biology provides a method of testing just that. Not only do they give a method they also performed the test on a “simple” bacterium (Caulobacter crescentus).
The complete genome of this bacterium was sequenced in 2001. Which helps tremendously with the task of determining which parts are essential for its survival. It is important to know that just because the genome was sequenced does not mean that the function of all the pieces is known, just that the nucleobase sequence that makes up the DNA is known.
With the bacteria in hand, these researchers from the Standford University School of Medicine took a close look at exactly what parts of DNA are required for this bacteria to live in the lab.
“This work addresses a fundamental question in biology: What is essential for life?” said Beat Christen, PhD, one of the co-first authors of the new paper and a postdoctoral scholar in developmental biology. “We came up with a method to identify all the parts of the genome required for life.”(1)
What is essential for life from a biochemical standpoint? They came up with some interesting conclusions which dwarf the previous estimates.
In total, the essential Caulobacter genome was 492,941 base pairs long and included 480 protein-coding genes that were clustered in two regions of the chromosome. The researchers also identified 402 essential promoter regions that increase or decrease the activity of those genes, and 130 segments of DNA that do not code for proteins but have other roles in modifying bacterial metabolism or reproduction. Of the individual DNA regions identified as essential, 91 were non-coding regions of unknown function and 49 were genes coding proteins whose function is unknown. (1)
We are told, “that 12 percent of the bacteria’s genetic material is essential for survival under laboratory conditions.” (1) Sounds like a small percentage overall, but keep in mind that this essential genome was 492,941 base pairs long. These are base pairs that are needed for life in this bacterium. This means that 985,882 amino acids were needed in the correct arrangement to allow life for this bacterium. The implications this has for the unaided formation of the first life are staggering. (While we could stop here and calculate the apparent overly absurd odds of this happening, such a calculation would serve little purpose. As a side note, creationist literature often attempts to calculate the absurd odds of things happening the way evolutions claim. Many set up straw men with these types of processes. I think that more often than not those types of calculations oversimplify the problems and ashamedly make a caricature of the opponents position. This type of “argumentation” is best left off the table if any real headway is to be made with this issue. While I do believe that such odds could be calculated at a rudimentary level, it could never be done to complete satisfaction without knowing all the factors involved. We do know, however, that the improbability is greatly increased because of the sheer number of correctly sequenced amino acids needed.) The researches did find 480 protein coding regions that are essential. This nearly doubles the previous estimates of how many proteins are needed for life. While is is a bit of an extrapolation to say that all of those 480 proteins are needed for life I think we can say that if that part of the DNA is needed it stands to reason that so are those proteins. They also found 91 essential coding regions and 49 coding regions that have unknown function.
“There were many surprises in the analysis of the essential regions of Caulobacter’s genome,” said Lucy Shapiro, PhD, the paper’s senior author. “For instance, we found 91 essential DNA segments where we have no idea what they do. These may provide clues to lead us to new and completely unknown bacterial functions.” Shapiro is a professor of developmental biology and the director of the Beckman Center for Molecular and Genetic Medicine at Stanford. (1)
These 91 essential DNA segments that are of unknown function were still found to be essential to life! This reminds me of the old vestigial organs argument often used in support of evolution. That is right, just because we don’t know the function does not means there isn’t one. See the previous discussion on pseudogenes for another example of that type of thinking.
This new research helps to contribute to our (mis)understanding of an evolutionary origin of life, and, I think, push us toward accepting that the transcendent creator did not use evolution to bring about life.
1. Digitale, E. “New method reveals parts of bacterium genome essential to life”. Stanford School of Medicine news release, August 30, 2011, http://med.stanford.edu/ism/2011/august/shapiro.html
Yes, yes, yes, very complex stuff. So to aid us in revisiting our “(mis)understanding”, Dr. Carlson will show us how god did it.
Drum roll, please…
POOF!.
There. All fixed now. Our new improved understanding is profoundly changed.
If you are serious please explain
The goal of these is not to change your understanding of science, but your interpretation. Science is descriptive, explanatory…empirical. We then try to add meaning or cause to explanations, such as a Darwinian interpretation of the facts. This blog/article offers a good point on another interpretation (errors aside) from a creationist interpretation. Specifically, that it is very difficult to align even a small amino-acid sequence into a functional shape by random processes.
“…the amino acid sequence that makes up the DNA…”
Wait, what?
Is this a joke?
Please explain this reference. I have thoroughly searched this article and can not locate “the amino acid sequence that makes up DNA”.
Perhaps you meant to cite from this article, “.the nucleobase sequence that makes up the DNA is known.”
Unfortunately for the Christian Apologetics Alliance, this is very easy to explain: Philip Carlson genuinely did not know what DNA was made out of, and conflated the old creationist “amino acids required for (modern) life” argument with “minimum number of genes required for (modern) life”, which this paper addresses.
I pointed this out here and in a (censored) comment on his blog.
Last night I checked back, and found that he had changed the passage I quoted, without acknowledging the mistake, or acknowledging the change. Weirdly, his whole second paragraph now makes no sense with respect to the rest of the article, but he left it in anyway!
Christians, are you okay with this? Are you okay with being represented by people who make basic scientific mistakes and then clumsily try to cover their tracks by erasing the evidence? How would you react if you saw an atheist behaving this way?
I can not condone anyone erasing evidence without commenting they had made an error and were correcting it while leaving the original statement in the text. Neither can I prove or disprove such an action occurred in this article.
p.s. Wow. Just, wow.
He corrected just that one sentence, but left the same mistake later in the article!!!!
“…keep in mind that this essential genome was 492,941 base pairs long. These are base pairs that are needed for life in this bacterium. This means that 985,882 amino acids were needed in the correct arrangement to allow life for this bacterium.”
Words fail.
I assume using amino acids and base pairs is for simplicity in the context and scope of this article. The field of protein folding and
stability has been an important area of research for years,
and remains today, unsolved. It is, however,
being actively investigated, and progress is being made.
As we learn about amino acids, it is important to keep in mind that one
of the more important reasons to understand amino acid structure and properties
is to be able to understand protein structure and properties. The complex characteristics of even a small protein are a composite of the properties of the amino acids which
comprise the protein. It is critical to know well the structure
and chemistry of the amino acids and other building blocks of biological
molecules. Otherwise, it is impossible to think or talk sensibly about
proteins and enzymes, or the nucleic acids.
I assume using amino acids and base pairs is for simplicity in the
context and scope of this article. The field of protein folding and stability has been an important area of research for years, and remains today, unsolved. It is being actively investigated, and progress is being made. As we learn about amino acids, it is important to keep in mind that one of the more important reasons to understand amino acid structure and properties is to be able to understand protein structure and properties.
The complex characteristics of even a small protein are a composite of
the properties of the amino acids which comprise the protein. It is critical to know well the structure and chemistry of the amino acids and other building blocks of biological molecules. Otherwise, it is impossible to think or talk sensibly about proteins and enzymes, or the nucleic acids.
I assume using amino acids and base pairs is for simplicity in the context and scope of this article. The field of protein folding and stability has been an area of research for years, and remains today, unsolved. It is being investigated and progress is being made. As we learn about amino acids, it is important to keep in mind that one of the more important reasons to understand amino acid structure and properties is to be able to understand protein structure and properties. The complex characteristics of a protein are a composite of the properties of the amino acids which comprise the protein. It is critical to know well, the structure and chemistry of the amino acids and other building blocks of biological molecules. Otherwise, it is impossible to think or talk sensibly about proteins and enzymes, or the nucleic acids.
No, it couldn’t possibly be “for simplicity”. DNA is not made of amino acids, period. He literally does not know what he’s talking about.
Is there any particular reason you felt compelled to cut and paste your reply from here?
For lack of knowledge, can you suggest a better source
Apparently your information is different than what I have been taught.Most DNA molecules are double-stranded helices, consisting of two long biopolymers made of simpler units called nucleotides—each nucleotide is composed of a nucleobase (guanine, adenine, thymine, and cytosine)
DNA plays a crucial role in protein production. When a cell wants to manufacture a certain protein, it has to go find the recipe for that protein. The recipe is stored in the form of DNA. Combinations of three nucleotides correspond to different amino acids. For example, CCT codes for proline and CGT codes for arginine. During protein
synthesis, DNA turns into the instruction for making a protein.
http://www.biology.arizona.edu/biochemistry/problem_sets/aa/aa.html
I agree and am…well as you said-“Words fail.” As a Christian, no I am not alright with this. I only just started reading over various articles on this sight, and the previous three were descent enough, but perhaps the reason he is backwards and wrong in the particulars is because he is a physical chemist. We need to stick to our strengths??