It does not ignore natural selection because in the information producing arena, natural selection is not a factor.
It does ignore natural selection.
The calculation is all those bases to assemble into the right DNA in a single go. That is NOT evolution.
What is the probability of being dealt a royal flush (the top five cards in one suit) in a game of poker? About 1 in 650. How about if I can keeping drawing a card and discarding one, for as long as I like until I get a royal flush? Now the probability is 1 in 1!
Still random cards. But - just like evolution - it is stepwise and there is a selection step in there too. And that makes a
huge difference.
NS can select the information but can not produce it. Your argument that small steps provided by random mutations can be selected by natural selection to produce a full folding protein that is functional and which has been capped off with a start and stop codon to indicate to the polymarase and ribosome a functional protein, fades away when you consider that NS does not know which why to go to produce a folding protein or when to stop when it gets there. What this calculation represents is the sheer magnitude of information required to get there and the obstacles that RMNS has to overcome.
How many random mutation events have there been in four billion years? A big chunk of that time there was only single-celled organisms, with about 20 minutes a generation, and lots of them.
There is estimated to be 5,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 on earth (see
here). If we say one random mutation per bacterium per generation, then in a billion years (that is, 20,000,000,000,000 generations), that works out to 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 random mutation events. That seems a lot to me. Plenty of opportunity to randomly hit upon functional proteins - remembering that at each mutation event the bad ones are culled.
Just like in the poker example above you get to discard the card you do not like. Selection is an integral part of the process.
Or maybe I am one of those ignorant creationists who believes in a Creator.
To be frank, I am more worried you are an intelligent creationist who is deliberately spreading misinformation.
"...nylonase was a variant of a pre-existing β-lactamase fold, not a novel protein fold." - Ann Gauger
"From Kato et al. (1991):
Exactly!
It was just
one mutation that produced bacteria that could digest nylon. What is the probability of that? For one bacterial cell, pretty low. For the vast population of bacterial cells, over countless generations, it is pretty much a certainty. In fact the evidence suggests it has happened on four separate occasions.
Wait, this is supposed to be evidence
against evolution? How does that work?
“Our studies demonstrated that among the 47 amino acids altered between the EII and EII’ proteins, a single amino acid substitution at position 181 was essential for the activity of 6-aminohexanoate-dimer hydrolase [nylonase] and substitution at position 266 enhanced the effect.”
So. This is not the story of a highly improbable frame-shift producing a new functional enzyme. This is the story of a pre-existing enzyme with a low level of promiscuous nylonase activity, which improved its activity toward nylon by first one, then another selectable mutation. In other words this is a completely plausible case of gene duplication, mutation, and selection operating on a pre-existing enzyme to improve a pre-existing low-level activity, exactly the kind of event that Meyer and Axe specifically acknowledge as a possibility, given the time and probabilistic resources available. Indeed, the origin of nylonase actually provides a nice example of the optimization of a pre-existing fold’s function, not the innovation or creation of a novel fold."
Right. Evolution is action. Each step is trivial. Each step is low probability for the individual, but inevitable for the population given enough time.
A lot of steps add together to create great change. A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. I guess in this case we are seeing the last step.
So what was your point?
"The scientific inference would be that the bacteria developed the nylonases because those chemicals they metabolize were present in the environment. In other words, directed adaptation.
Why is the bacteria so bad at it? The enzyme has just 2% the efficiency of a regular enzyme. That is what we might expect with evolution - it is just starting the journey to metabolising nylon. But not what we would expect if God had intervened to gift the bacteria with this new ability.
The evidence fits evolution. It does not fit creationism.
Indeed, this is precisely what researchers in the field have concluded. They hypothesize that the new metabolism capability is a stress response, an adaptation to a challenging environment. In other words, the environment influenced the adaptation. This is not a case of evolutionary change. The nylonase enzymes did not arise from a random search over sequence space until the right enzymes were luckily found and could be selected for. That would have required eons of time, and is far beyond evolution’s capability, as we have seen. Instead, cellular structures rapidly formed new enzymes, due to the environmental change." - Cornnelius Hunter
Does Hunter quote the researchers? Of course not. It is all in his head. And the article he links to is behind a paywall. I bet you have not actually read it, have you? Did you even read the abstract?
Through selective cultivation with 6-aminohexanoate linear dimer, a by-product of nylon-6 manufacture, as the sole source of carbon and nitrogen, Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO, which initially has no enzyme activity to degrade this xenobiotic compound, was successfully expanded in its metabolic ability. Two new enzyme activities, 6-aminohexanoate cyclic dimer hydrolase and 6-aminohexanoate dimer hydrolase, were detected in the adapted strains.
What this is talking about is bacteria going into hyperevolution under stress conditions. This is a known phenomenum, see
here for example. The researchers that Hunter cites put the bacteria into a stress condition, the bacteria produced much more random mutations than they would otherwise, and consequently hit upon the nylonase enzymes as a random mutation.
Hunter is simply wrong when he says "
The nylonase enzymes did not arise from a random search over sequence space until the right enzymes were luckily found and could be selected for. " He is relying on ignorant creations not bothering to check the facts.
You just posted "
This is the story of a pre-existing enzyme with a low level of promiscuous nylonase activity, which improved its activity toward nylon by first one, then another selectable mutation." Now you want say that this would take eons!
So you see that nylon-eating bacteria are a result of adaptation which I described earlier and not newly sequenced random mutations which would have required a much longer time period according to your own theory.
Wrong. Nylon-eating bacteria is a perfect example of evolution in action.
Hence you are trying to argue that this is a trivial change to the genetic sequence, and yet also claim it "
would have required eons of time, and is far beyond evolution’s capability"! The fact you you have to contradict yourself should be a warning to you that there is something awry with your claim.
