Monday, November 28, 2011

New Finding: Perhaps Food Comes With Its Own Instructions

New research from the PRC is lending credence to those nutty health-food advocates who have suspected all along that food is more than your daily intake of carbon-carbon bonds and vitamins and minerals, that oats are better than Cheerios, and that the food chain is far more complex than evolution would have it.

Background


Because evolution was supposed to use mutations in the DNA’s genes, evolutionists focused heavily on the genes. Wasn’t the remaining 98% of the genome pretty much junk anyway? But much to the evolutionist’s surprise DNA is far more complex. As one writer put it:

Few predicted, for example, that sequencing the genome would undermine the primacy of genes by unveiling whole new classes of elements. … Biology's new glimpse at a universe of non-coding DNA — what used to be called 'junk' DNA — has been fascinating and befuddling.

As one evolutionist admitted:

We fooled ourselves into thinking the genome was going to be a transparent blueprint, but it's not.

And another echoed this sentiment:

The more we know, the more we realize there is to know.

An important function of non-coding DNA is regulation. The coding DNA contains the information to construct proteins and the non-coding DNA helps to regulate that construction. For instance, short snippets of transcribed DNA called microRNA (miRNA), about twenty nucleotides long, can halt the protein construction process. These recently discovered regulators are one example of the immense complexity of biology at the molecular level. But there’s more.

New research suggests new role for microRNA

PRC researchers have now shown that our genes are not only regulated by our microRNA, they are also regulated by the microRNA in the food we eat. In other words, food not only contains carbohydrates, proteins, fat, minerals, vitamins and so forth, it also contains information—in the form of these regulatory snippets of miRNA—which regulate our gene production.

There is much to learn, but this could be a hint of a much more complex, cross-species web of information in the biological world. Here’s how one writer summarized the findings:

The finding is obviously very thought-provoking; for instance, it would indicate that in addition to eating "materials" (in the form of carbohydrates, proteins, etc), you are also eating "information" (as different miRNAs from distinct food sources could well bear different consequences on the regulation of host physiology once taken by the host due to potential regulation of different target genes as determined by the "information" contained within the miRNA sequence), thus providing a whole new dimension to "You are what you eat." Furthermore, the potential significances of this finding would be:

1. has significantly expanded the functions of miRNAs;

2. is an extremely intriguing and novel idea that has far-ranging implications for human health and metabolism;

3. shed new light on our understanding of cross-domain (such as animal-plant) interactions, or perhaps even the 'co-evolution', and to open new ways of thinking about regulation of miRNAs, and about the potential roles of exogenous miRNAs such as those from food, plants and insects in prey-predator interactions;

4. provides evidence that plant miRNAs may be the seventh "nutrient" in the food (the six others are: H2O, protein, FFA, carbohydrate, vitamins and real elements);

5. provides a novel mechanism of development of metabolic disorder.

6. provides evidence that plant miRNAs may represent essential functional molecules in Chinese traditional herb medicine,

It is curious that evolution, which evolutionists insist is a fact, is so often surprised by the evidence.

9 comments:

  1. Quote: We fooled ourselves into thinking the genome was going to be a transparent blueprint, but it's not.

    And this falsifies the underlying explanation presented by evolution how? Please be specific.

    This is yet another instance when you've illustrated ignorance of evolutionary theory, how science works or both.

    Quote: The more we know, the more we realize there is to know.

    Problems are inevitable. Problems get solved. When they do, they reveal more problems to solve. This is how science works. It's unclear how or why you'd expect otherwise.

    There is little difference between having a divine revelation-shaped hole in one's scheme of things and believing that divine revelation is a valid means of justifying conclusions.

    CH: PRC researchers have now shown that our genes are not only regulated by our microRNA, they are also regulated by the microRNA in the food we eat. In other words, food not only contains carbohydrates, proteins, fat, minerals, vitamins and so forth, it also contains information—in the form of these regulatory snippets of miRNA—which regulate our gene production.

    Here's a perfect example. Are you claiming the knowledge found in the sequence of these regulatory snippets of miRNA were not created by a form of conjectural variation and testing? If not, then I fail to see how this somehow falsifies evolution.

    This is simply more of the same handwaving we see here all the time.

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  2. CH -

    "...the food chain is far more complex than evolution would have it."

    How complex WOULD ToE have it? I really don't see why ToE would be falsified by a complex food chain. And indeed, the rest of the blog fails to illuminate this point.

    "But much to the evolutionist’s surprise DNA is far more complex."

    Yet again you are taking new discoveries and treating them like devastating bodyblows to ToE. They are nothing of the kind! They are merely interesting new biological discoveries. You try this trick over and over, and utterly fail to realise the fallacy. It would be like finding a new Roman city and claiming that, because we did not anticipate it, our belief in the existence of the Roman Empire itself has been thrown into doubt.

    "It is curious that evolution, which evolutionists insist is a fact, is so often surprised by the evidence."

    Which just reinforces how little scientific understanding you have. Of course we are surprised by the evidence. It is science's job to investigate the unknown and discover new things! That is exactly what it is meant to do. Though I appreciate this may be a new concept to you seeing as Creationism and ID are totally scientifically barren, and their "scientists" (ha ha) never actually do any work.

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  3. You mean that we don't know everything about biology? But then how can we be sure about what we think we already know? If we can't be absolutely certain, then we clearly don't know anything at all!

    There's only one solution to this problem: assume we actually do know everything and then we don't have to worry about it ever again.

    But how do we do that? Hmmm...Oh! I know! Let's assume that some guy did it! That guy can do anything, so anything that we find is something that he could have done and therefore we know with absolute certainty that he did it. There, now there's nothing that we can't already know because even though we don't know everything we know the guy that does and so by extension we actually do kind of know everything.

    Whew! Licked that whole biology thing for you guys. I can't believe people go to school for years to learn about something that took me like 5 minutes to figure out.

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  4. I think you guys miss the point. Evolutionists are always saying that evolution is the grand underlying theory of biology which ties everything together, but the more we learn about how living organisms work the less important evolution sounds. So-called macro-evolutionary theory is only relevant if one believes in common descent (rather than common design, as any piece of information used as evidence for common ancestry could just as easily be used as evidence for common design).

    So large-scale, "macro"-evolution is a theory to explain a phenomenon (common descent), which is not a fact but an interpretation of the facts based on a naturalistic philosophy. And that's okay, but recognize that somebody could look at all of the evidence used for common descent and say "well look, this all points to a common designer using the same methods, the same designs, the same forms, the same genes, etc., just how a computer programmer uses the same templates, uses existing components to build new ones, layers new objects onto existing ones, etc."

    But evolutionists look at the same facts and come to a different conclusion: common descent.

    I just wish more evolutionists would admit that common descent and common design are two interpretations of the same set of facts. Which one you favor seems to be based on how comfortable you are with leaving open the question of who or what the designer is.

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  5. Really, Cornelius, this is so bad I thought Denyse wrote it. You know functions some functions of non-coding DNA were known way before the human genome project, and you know that some geneticists are to blame for naive gene-centrism, this is nothing specific of evolutionary biologists (would a "design perspective" have done any difference?)... and I'd expect you to know what the meaning of "food chain" is.

    Hayek:

    I just wish more evolutionists would admit that common descent and common design are two interpretations of the same set of facts.

    I "admit" it, but that doesn't mean both of them are equally good. We know populations diverge in time, and we learn more and more about how this happens. "Design" has no known mechanism (yeah, we have developed artificial selection and DNA recombination technology, but this doesn't happen in the wild, right?), can fit absolutely every conceivable character distribution (very different designs can be conceived by the same intelligence, so "common design" doesn't necessarily imply a tree-like distribution of diversity), and there's no further insight we can get from it. Common ancestry in evolutionary theory beats common design on parsimony, falsifiability, and as a framework for a research programme.

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  6. Hayek -

    "I just wish more evolutionists would admit that common descent and common design are two interpretations of the same set of facts."

    Geoxus has it perfectly. I'll 'admit' this too. And of course, not all interpretations are equally good.

    ToE is highly falsifiable, demonstrable, scientifically productive and entirely naturalistic. ID is none of these things. And therefore, fails to qualify as science. It might be theology, or philosophy at a stretch, but it is not science, and should be kept out of the science classroom.

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  7. Milton Hayek said...

    I just wish more evolutionists would admit that common descent and common design are two interpretations of the same set of facts.


    Sorry Milton, but 'common design' is a meaningless claim that doesn't come close to explaining the current data set the way common descent does.

    For example, common design doesn't explain the temporal distribution of the fossil record, a record for multi-cellular life going back over 600 million years. Unless you want to claim anthropods were first designed 570 MYA, and fish first designed 500MYA, and land plants first designed 475 MYA, and amphibians first designed 360 MYA, and mammals first designed 200 MYA.

    Then, inside of each family the designer had to keep creating new examples. Take cetaceans - was Ambulocetus designed 49 MYA, and Basilosaurus designed 40 MYA, and Squalodon designed 30 MYA?

    You need to account for all the data, not just offer an ad hoc explanation for a tiny bit.

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  8. Because evolution was supposed to use mutations in the DNA’s genes, evolutionists focused heavily on the genes. Wasn’t the remaining 98% of the genome pretty much junk anyway? But much to the evolutionist’s surprise DNA is far more complex.

    It may suit you to believe this, but there was a range of views about the degree of junkiness of the human genome prior to it being sequenced. Some serious people were predicting 150,000 genes! And many wrote off the idea of junk DNA. However, there were other views on junk DNA. An upper limit of 30,000 genes for mammals (given the known mutation rate) was described by Ohno (1972). Any more than this, and the deleterious mutation rate would see any species evolve to extinction. This left 90% of the genome as "junk". Ohno's view prevailed, we have ~21,000 genes, not 100,000 or 150,000 genes.

    I wonder, whoever said 98% of the genome was junk? Structural and regulatory roles for non-coding DNA have been known for a long time. Current estimates are that 85-90% of the genome is junk - i.e. lacks a biologically important function and sequence conservation. This range for junk DNA is well supported.

    In addition to Ohno's mutational load argument, there is also a population genetics argument for junk, I have written about it elsewhere.

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  9. Paul:

    It may suit you to believe this, but there was a range of views about the degree of junkiness of the human genome prior to it being sequenced.

    Agreed, I didn't say otherwise.

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