Re: News: Humans and sponges may share a slimy ancestor

On Feb 3, 2:23=A0pm, d...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (DK) wrote:
In article <gm58en$el...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Lorentz <drosen0...@yahoo.=
com> wrote:
On Jan 29, 4:04=3DA0pm, "Robert Karl Stonjek" <rston...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

WTF?

Okay, I know what confused you. When I said " complicated
feature," I was not referring to the irreducible complexity of the
protein. I was referring to the mere number of units in the protein.
If the protein had a large number of units, it could evolve by a
mutation at a time by connecting units together. When I said
"primitive," I was referring to the mere common ancestry of cnidarians
and triblastic animals. A protein can have lots of units, and still be
shared by a common ancestor. The common ancestor may have used that
protein a different way from any of its descendants.
The first hypothesis is that the most recent common ancestor
(MRCA) of diblastic and triplastic animals used acetylcholine exactly
the same way as their descendants, which is as a neurohumor for nerve
cells. The second hypothesis, raised by Stonek, is that the MRCA used
acetylcholine for an entirely different purpose than the use of nerve
cells. The third hypothesis, that I was proposing, is that the
synthesis of acetylcholine in one branch resulted from lateral gene
transfer. All three hypotheses are inconsistent with the idea that
acetylcholine is irreducibly complex.
The proposed MRCA in each hypothesis came hundreds of millions of
years after the first eukaryotic cell evolved. During this time, some
cells evolved to generate acetylcholine. The evolution of
acetylcholine was probably very slow, involving the step by step
fusion of small peptide molecules. There is no inconsistency, or at
least no inconsistency acknowledged, with a complex protein like
acetylcholine existing in the MRCA of diblastic and triblastic
animals. The question is did the function unchanged, transferred, or
changed? The reducibility of the complex protein is a precondition to
all three hypotheses. There is no logical inconsistency.

.

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