| You Are Very Skeptical |
 Your personal motto is: "Prove it." While some ideas, like life after death, may seem nice... You aren't going to believe them simply because it feels good. You let science and facts be your guide... Even if it means you don't share the beliefs of those around you. |
Blattner,F.R., Plunkett,G., Bloch,C.A., Perna,N.T., Burland,V., Riley,M., ColladoVides,J., Glasner,J.D., Rode,C.K., Mayhew,G.F., Gregor,J., Davis,N.W., Kirkpatrick,H.A., Goeden,M.A., Rose,D.J., Mau,B., and Shao,Y. (1997) The complete genome sequence of Escherichia coli K-12. Science 277:1453-1474.©Laurence A. Moran (2007)
Drake,J.W., Charlesworth,B., Charlesworth,D., and Crow,J.F. (1998) Rates of spontaneous mutation. Genetics 148:1667-1686.
Ochman,H., Elwyn,S., and Moran,N.A. (1999) Calibrating bacterial evolution. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. (USA) 96:12638-12643.
Tago,Y., Imai,M., Ihara,M., Atofuji,H., Nagata,Y., and Yamamoto,K. (2005) Escherichia coli mutator Delta polA is defective in base mismatch correction: The nature of in vivo DNA replication errors. J. Mol. Biol. 351:299-308.
Vogel,F. and Motulsky,A. (1997) Human Genetics: Problems and Approaches. (Berlin, New York: Springer-Verlag).
Vogel,F. and Rathenberg,R. (1975) Spontaneous Mutation in Man. Adv. Hum. Genet. 5:223-318.
Over on the Discovery Institute website there's an important announcement [John West's Forthcoming Book] ...Next Fall ISI Books will release CSC associate director Dr. John West's important book, Darwin Day in America: How Our Politics and Culture Have Been Dehumanized in the Name of Science.Fascinating. Given that "Darwinism" has been so fiercely resisted in America its success in degrading American culture is all that more remarkable.
Darwin Day in America tells the disturbing story of scientific expertise run amuck, exposing how an ideological interpretation of Darwinian biology and reductionist science have been used to degrade American culture over the past century through their impact on criminal justice, welfare, business, education, and bioethics.
The biochemical controversy over neutralism is concerned with the interesting and important question of whether all gene substitutions have phenotypic effects. The adaptationism controversy is quite different. It is concerned with whether, given that we are dealing with a phenotypic effect big enough to see and ask questions about, we should assume that it is the product of natural selection. The biochemist's 'neutral mutations' are more than neutral. As far as those of us who look at gross morphology, physiology and behaviour are concerned, they are not mutations at all. It was in this spirit that Maynard Smith (1976b) wrote: "I interpret 'rate of evolution' as a rate of adaptive change. In this sense, the substitution of a neutral allele would not constitute evolution ..." If a whole-organism biologist sees a genetically determined difference among phenotypes, he already knows he cannot be dealing with neutrality in the sense of the modern controversy among biochemical geneticists.In 2007 Dawkins would probably admit to some neutral examples of "genetically determined differences among phenotypes" but his position hasn't changed very much from 1982. For example, in The Ancestor's Tale (2005) he writes,
Contrary to my rather ludicrous reputation as an "ultra-Darwinist" (a slander I would protest more vigorously if the name sounded less of a compliment than it does), I do not think that the majority of evolutionary change at the molecular level is favoured by natural selection. On the contrary, I have always had a lot of time for the so-called neutral theory associated with the great Japanese geneticist Motoo Kimura, or its extension, the "nearly neutral" theory of his collaborator Tomoko Ohta. The real world has no interest in human tastes, of course, but as it happens I positively want such theories to be true. This is because they give us a separate, independent chronicle of evolution, unlinked to the visible features of the creatures around us., and they hold out the hope that some kind of molecular clock might really work.Pluralists believe that all kinds of alleles are neutral or nearly neutral and are fixed in a population by random genetic drift. This includes alleles that produce a visible phenotype. Pluralists do not believe that there is a major distinction between the mechanisms of evolution at the molecular level and the mechanisms at the morphological level.
Just in case the point is misunderstood, I must emphasize that the neutral theory does not in any way denigrate the importance of selection in nature. Natural selection is all-powerful with respect to those visible changes that affect survival and reproduction. Natural selection is the only explanation we know for the functional beauty and apparently "designed" complexity of living things. But if there are any changes that have no visible effect—changes that pass right under natural selection's radar—they can accumulate in the gene pool with impunity and may supply just what we need for an evolutionary clock.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1928.
Adolf Otto Reinhold Windaus (1876-1959) won the Nobel Prize in 1928 for his work on the structure of sterols and their functions. One of the most common sterols is cholesterol and Windaus was able to show that it is synthesized in many different species although he was not able to determine its function. (We now know that it is an important component of membranes.)Your Majesty, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen.
We hear continually that today science, in particular natural science, is becoming increasingly more specialized, that scientists are delving deeper and deeper into specialized studies difficult to survey, that the deep stream of research is turning into ever-shallower brooks and channels, and that in this way the unity that exists between the different branches of science is in danger of being destroyed. Indeed, most people have wondered with some disquiet where this apparently unrestricted specialization will eventually lead. The answer to this question is that, while the question itself is completely justified, the disquiet is in most cases unjustified or at least unduly great.
A stage is reached sooner or later in the development of every natural science, when research, after dealing with problems of more general importance, has of necessity to apply itself to problems of detail of apparently more limited interest. It is simply that the continuous increase in scientific knowledge necessitates a corresponding continuous increase in the division of work. Many fields of science which could once be handled by a few or even one investigator, may only one generation later provide enough or more than enough work for whole hosts of students and their attendants. However, specialization is, or should be, not an end but a means. Even at the stage of the division of work, for the true investigator the end is, and will remain, that of determining the inner connection between the changing phenomena, and, depending on the extent to which this end is achieved, the special researches will gradually merge into greater units; the detail then ceases to be an isolated thing, more or less unimportant as regards the whole, but becomes a necessary link in a connected chain of knowledge.
The work which has been awarded Alfred Nobel's Chemistry Prizes this year by the Academy of Sciences, provides an instructive example of this process.
We are dealing here with several fields of work, which are separate from the start.
First we have biles. As is well-known, biles and hence their specific constituents, bile acids, are of major importance in the digestion process. Now these bile acids have been for almost a hundred years the object of active study by a large number of prominent investigators. In this way a large amount of material was accumulated from observations, but despite this, little was known concerning the connection between the various bile acids, and almost nothing concerning the details of their structure, when Wieland began his work in this field.
Then we have the cardiac poisons. Of animal cardiac poisons chemists were acquainted in particular with so-called bufotalin, which is present in the skin secretion of certain species of the toad genus Bufo. In therapeutics, on the other hand, vegetable cardiac poisons have long been used, especially those belonging to the glucoside group and obtained from species of the plant genera Digitalis and Strophantus. But the production of these substances in the pure state and the determination of the chemical relationships between them had long remained an unresolved problem.
The so-called sterols are also an extremely interesting group from the physiological viewpoint. They too occur both in vegetation and in animals. Most numerous are the vegetable sterols, the so-called phytosterols, but the best-known is certainly cholesterol, which occurs in the animal organism, and which was first found about 150 years ago in gall stones. This substance occurs not only in bile but also in the brain, in nerve substance, in the egg, in blood, and presumably in all cells. Thus we can conclude that it plays an extremely important part in the life process of man and the animals, just as the phytosterols play an extremely important part in the life process of plants. These sterols were however an isolated group for a long time. The difficulties associated with investigation of their chemical constitution were so great that it is only during the last few decades, above all through Windaus's investigations, that a clearer picture has been obtained thereof.
Finally, we come to a group of compounds which have only been known for a relatively short time, but which during this short time have attracted very considerable attention, both from chemists and from the public at large. Who today is unacquainted with vitamins, these mysterious substances which are of such immense significance for life, vita, itself and which have thus justifiably taken their name from it? But compared with those mentioned above, the difficulties which here confronted the investigator were far greater, and in most cases it had to be regarded as sufficient to characterize these substances on the basis of their physiological effects.
Thanks to the work which this year has been found before others worthy of recognition through the award of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, the inner connection between all these apparently isolated fields of research has been very strikingly demonstrated. Of course the way in which this took place can only be described very briefly here.
Wieland succeeded in producing from bile a saturated acid which can be regarded as the mother substance or parent acid of the bile acids, and which he studied and characterized in detail. When Windaus then produced this same parent acid, cholanic acid, from cholesterol by means of a complicated and very ingenious series of experiments, this indicated very clearly the close relationship between cholesterol and the bile acids. It should be pointed out in this connection that Wieland's investigations into bile acids themselves gave a deeper insight of the mechanism of the action of the bile in the resorption of food in the intestines.
But this is not all. As a result of patient and skilful work, Windaus succeeded in producing several of the digitalis glucosides and their components in the pure state. In this way it was shown that these vegetable cardiac poisons are directly related on the one hand to cholesterol and the bile acids, and on the other hand to the animal cardiac poison bufotoxin, which Wieland studied with great success.
Another sterol which Windaus has studied in detail, is ergosterol, which occurs partly in ergot and partly in yeast. The research carried out in recent years, in which Windaus himself has also played a leading part, has revealed the very important fact that, on being irradiated with ultraviolet light, this ergosterol assumes exactly the same properties as the antirachitic vitamin, "vitamin D", i.e. it will cure rachitis (rickets). For example, it has been found that 5 mg of irradiated ergosterol has the same action in this respect as 1 litre of good cod-liver oil. It can be considered proved, therefore, that ergosterol, or possibly a sterol, the physiological effects of which correspond completely with those of ergosterol, constitutes the antirachitic provitamin, i.e. the mother substance of vitamin D.
All the investigations which we have had to summarize so briefly here, have one thing in common with each other. They were all designed to explain the internal structure of organic materials, their relationships with one another and their transitions into each other. For this reason they are of fundamental importance for our knowledge of a number of processes occurring both in the healthy and in the diseased organism, and therefore of greatest significance not only for chemistry as such, but also for its sister sciences, physiology and medicine. But in order to reach this vantage point of knowledge, where the dividing walls separating the various special researches no longer obstruct vision, where the connection between extensive parts of organic chemistry can be surveyed and where in fact the fields of three main disciplines appear to connect and merge with each other - all this has taken years of hard, diligent, and resourceful work in the deep mines of detailed research. These are the researches which are to be rewarded here.
Professor Wieland. The decision of the Royal Academy of Sciences to award you the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for your work on bile acids and related substances, is only a just recognition of the solution of a problem which is without doubt one of the most difficult which organic chemistry has had to tackle.
The complex composition of the compounds investigated, the large number of atoms contained in the molecules of these compounds, the fact that the material was often very difficult to produce, even in small quantities, these were obstacles which could only be overcome with such striking success through a remarkable skill in experimentation and a rare capacity for finding new ways and means.
In gratitude for what you have achieved for science in this connection, and with hearty congratulations on your well-deserved distinction, the Academy asks you to accept the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the year 1927 from the hands of his Majesty the King.
Professor Windaus. If the Royal Academy of Sciences had had only one Nobel Prize in Chemistry to award on this occasion, and had had to present it to one person, it would have been in a very difficult position.
For there is no doubt that your work on sterols, vegetable cardiac poisons and other closely related substances merits in the same high degree such an award as the work which we have just recognized.
Moreover, it is clear that your work and that of your colleague in Munich are so interrelated and supplement each other in such a way that it would have been extremely difficult to award the Prize to the one while passing over the other.
In addition, both researches display the same assiduity, the same remarkable capacity for overcoming even the greatest experimental difficulties, and the same lucidity in interpreting the results obtained, that it would obviously have been impossible to give precedence to one investigator over the other.
The fact that two Prizes were available for award this year, has fortunately freed the Academy from this quandary. For this the Academy congratulates itself no less than you, and asks you now to take the last few steps which separate you from the external symbols of the Prize.
Posted by Sam Chen on Uncommon Descent [IDURC Announces 2007 Casey Luskin Graduate Award].The Intelligent Design Undergraduate Research Center (IDURC) is proud to present the 2007 Casey Luskin Graduate Award, presented annually to a deserving college graduate for excellence in student advocacy of intelligent design.I wonder if the winner will list the prestigious award on his/her CV?
The recipient of the 2007 Casey Luskin Graduate Award will remain anonymous for the protection of the recipient.
Today's molecule is complex. The short common name of this molecule is sufficient but you're more than welcome to supply the IUPAC name if you know it. There's a direct connection between this Monday's Molecule and Wednesday's Nobel Laureate. (Hint: this molecule is not mentioned in the description of the award but the class of molecules to which it belongs is mentioned.)
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1937."for his discoveries in connection with the biological combustion processes, with special reference to vitamin C and the catalysis of fumaric acid"
Albert von Szent-Györgyi Nagyrapolt (1893 - 1986 ) received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on the biochemistry of combustion, or respiration as we now know it. In most cases when we read the presentation speeches for past Nobel Prizes we recognize the seminal insights that have led to a better understanding of science. This recognition is usually even more obvious when we review the Nobel Lecture of the prize winner [Szent-Gyorgyi Lecture].Your Majesty, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen.
The Staff of Professors of the Caroline Institute, pursuant to the task devolving upon them by the terms of the will of Alfred Nobel, have awarded the Prize for Physiology or Medicine for the year 1937 to Professor Albert von Szent-Györgyi, in recognition of his discoveries concerning the biological combustion processes with especial reference to vitamin C and to the fumaric acid catalyst. The wording of the above sentence indicates that the mechanism of biological oxidation has been investigated beyond the great discoveries in this field made by Otto Warburg, Heinrich Wieland, and their successors. Their systems of catalysts for oxidation have been shown to be dependent on Szent-Györgyi's new catalysts.
It was generally known before that combustion liberates energy in living cells which can be employed there without loss - directly for the building up of new substances - for storage or for the building of functioning cell structures. The building up of living organisms then is dependent in essential respects on combustion, which is guided by catalyst systems. Thus catalyst systems are conditional for the building up of living organisms. Consequently in the unknown period during which organic life originated, the formation of these and other catalyst systems must have preceded the completion of the living animal organisms.
Preferably I should wish to confine my remarks to the new conquistador from Szeged. The survey is however of higher importance on this occasion, and moreover the course of the events is dramatically concentrated. Each one of the three has conquered new ground by intuitive daring and skill. Szent-Györgyi's greatest achievement has intimately linked up the accomplishments of the two others and of their successors, giving us for the first time a picture of a coherent oxidation process - of the interplay of three catalyst systems and the oxidation thereby in metabolism.
Warburg, who always stood alone with some few faithful co-workers, is the foremost pioneer, and he had to overcome the greatest difficulties. At this day there is none who can any longer throw doubt on his discoveries, but that was not so, when in 1931 underestimated by the majority, he was awarded the Nobel Prize by the Caroline Institute. He has shown that the inert oxygen, with which the red blood corpuscles are fully loaded, is taken up from them by a catalyst system to which many red pigments belong (for brevity's sake called «the red system»). These are related to the red blood pigment. They contain as active groups (for the most part) iron and specific proteins. In this system the oxygen combines with the iron during varying periods of time. In the case of the most rapid catalysts, it combines with the iron, is converted into a lively, reactively disposed form and is delivered - all at a speed that gives a flowing stream of active oxygen from the catalyst system. One thought that this active oxygen oxidized directly. That is not the way however. On the contrary, the active oxygen meets hydrogen - but that is another story, belonging to Szent-Györgyi's great discovery. The manner in which the life-giving active oxygen's dramatic encounter in the darkness of the cells ensues, had been unknown ever since the morning of time until, in 1933, Szent-Györgyi carried out some experiments which proved to be the prelude to the revelation of the secret.
For the moment I will leave oxygen, and direct the attention to the first, apparently unimportant, experiments carried out by Wieland. These led him to the conception of an idea, which was destined to carry him on to the disclosure of an extensive part of the mechanism of oxidation. A large number of investigators were soon attracted by Wieland's opinion. This seemed to be at variance with the oxygen activation - at any rate that was the view of a majority. This apparent inconsistency was never considered by Szent-Györgyi, nor by Warburg.
Wieland had observed that palladium is capable of absorbing hydrogen from certain organic compounds, which means their partial combustion or oxidation. Through the cooperation of many investigators the presence was revealed of extensive metal-free catalyst systems, the effect of which was shown to consist in the removal of hydrogen from metabolic substances, in agreement with Wieland's concept. These catalysts were given a name in common: dehydrogenases (hydrogen-removers, hydrogen-absorbers, or hydrogen-transporters) and the idea was held pretty generally that the hydrogen activated by this system would be capable of reacting directly with the inert oxygen molecules. Hydrogen superoxide was supposed to form an intermediate product. That is not the highway of oxidation however. On the contrary, the hydrogen first meets Szent-Györgyi's catalyst system from a different side to the one where the activated oxygen flows into it from the «red system». That again is another story, which also belongs to Szent-Györgyi's great discovery. From 1925 onwards he had been investigating a number of hydrogen-absorbers. Previously to anyone else he formed the view of these as members of a catalyst system in the service of oxidation (in other quarters loosely conceived of as being auxiliary catalysts of some kind for fermentation). He was also occupied with experiments on a yellow substance, termed flave by him, while his investigation regarding vitamin C was being completed, and conducted on to the isolation of that substance, enabling him later to insert it in the catalyst system of certain hydrogen-removers. Vitamin C and another substance, containing sulphur as a hydrogen-removing group and defined by Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins and others, were however until 1934 the only substances belonging to the hydrogen-transporters in the oxidation-chain that had been isolated. The rank that they possess as catalysts is dependent on the velocity of the hydrogen-transportation and the degree of the activation of the hydrogen - problems that still await a satisfactory solution. On the other hand, Hugo Theorell succeeded in 1934 in isolating, in Warburg's laboratory, the first really rapid hydrogen-transporter, called «the yellow enzyme». He could also show that it was a phosphoric-acid ester of vitamin B2, linked to a specific protein. Warburg and Christian, in 1935, defined the nature of the active group in two other dehydrogenases, colourless and metal-free (co-ferment and co-zymase), which had long frustrated the attempts of other investigators. One of them was the catalyst that Szent-Györgyi had placed in this section of the oxidation-chain.
The magnificent series of Szent-Györgyi's discoveries commenced in 1933. They were carried out and pursued at Szeged with extraordinary rapidity and precision. His clear vision for essentials induced him, in spite of his isolation of ascorbic acid and of his identification of it with the so-termed vitamin C - a feat that was justly hailed with enthusiasm - to hand over to others for the time being the tempting pursuit of the further development of that discovery, and to devote the whole of his energy to the problem of combustion, notwithstanding the difficulties it presented. Many investigators had been working at the so-called plant acids in the muscular system, and had observed their capacity for intensifying oxidation in that tissue. The readiest explanation however of how that came about, viz. that they are easily combusted themselves, simply did not fit in with Szent-Györgyi's intuitive perception. By elaborating reliable methods of analysis for the substances in question, and by means of consistent experiments, he and his co-workers proved that the plant acids were not consumed by combustion, were not ordinary nutrient substances, but were on the contrary themselves active groups of catalysts which served to maintain the combustion without themselves suffering any diminution thereby. The process involves a peregrination of hydrogen more intricate than the adventurous journeys of Odysseus, though more rapid. Hydrogen is released out of the metabolic substances, probably through cooperation between Szent-Györgyi's and Warburg's co-ferment and Theorell's yellow enzyme, and encounters the plant acids, entering in that way Szent-Györgyi's's system. These acids transfer the system into the order: oxalacetic acid, malic acid, fumaric acid, and succinic acid, then, in the form of active hydrogen, to encounter the active oxygen from «the red system» and form water and free energy - a series of providentially subdued explosions which I alluded to before as a dramatic encounter. The plant acids act as catalysts by cooperation with specific proteins, and the effect of the yellow enzyme probably extends some way into this Szent-Györgyi's intermediate system.
Thus, the oxygen-activation in the red iron system and hydrogen-transfer from nutrients by the yellow metal-free system along with co-agents have been united by Szent-Györgyi through the discovery of this intermediate system. The interplay of «the red system»'s cytochrome-group and the yellow enzyme might probably also, according to Theorell, proceed directly. The flaws are numerous, but not of a character to constitute any essential breach in the highway of the oxidation-chain. Numerous ramifications of the latter however already begin to be discernible.
It is of especially great importance that at least two vitamins - C and B2, and possibly B1, and P - are in cooperation in the oxidation chain and are catalysts, illustrating the way in which these vitamins act in the organism. It may be that development in the near future will reveal the importance for our organism of copper concerning oxidation and of vitamin C with certain followers in plants, viz. oxidating enzyme, and oxidizable and reducible substances (Szent-Györgyi's flavonoles, termed vitamin P), which are capable of forming a sensitively attuned system with the vitamin, hydrogen-superoxide and proteins, or parts of them, with active and activating sulphur in the molecule. The sulphur of the alchemists of old, out of which everything was to radiate, is destined to experience a renaissance.
Professor Albert von Szent-Györgyi. As a representative for the Caroline Institute on this occasion, I am commissioned to give expression to our high estimation of your researches.
You never swerved from your unyielding purpose to study the primary and fundamental processes of biological oxidation. Entering upon this difficult field of biochemical research you soon became a pioneer by interpreting the position and real function of co-ferment as an important link in the chain of dehydrogenating catalysts. Not even your important discoveries regarding vitamin C could deter you from following a certain strain of thought. I am deducing now from a close observation of your work that you were drawing distinctions in your mind at this occasion between your interesting discovery of ascorbic acid and the bare possibility of some other audacious plans of yours coming true. At this early stage they must have involved the investigation of the fundamental mechanism of connecting hydrogen activation with that of oxygen activation. Your intuitive mind decided in favour of the possibility of success, and you won through. In the year 1933 the first signs became visible for outsiders, and from then on the pace set by you and your co-workers at Szeged was astonishing, and your results were fundamentally new and highly important. In the midst of fervent research work with most promising aspects you are the discoverer and idealist to the mind of Alfred Nobel.
I ask you, Professor Szent-Györgyi, to receive the prize from the hands of His Majesty, our gracious King.
That's the title of an article in today's New York times. It's written by Douglas H. Erwin, "a senior scientist at the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution and a research professor at the Santa Fe Institute." You can read the entire article here.In the past few years every element of this paradigm has been attacked. Concerns about the sources of evolutionary innovation and discoveries about how DNA evolves have led some to propose that mutations, not selection, drive much of evolution, or at least the main episodes of innovation, like the origin of major animal groups, including vertebrates.This is correct. There's a resurgence of "mutationism" that puts more emphasis on the role of mutation in evolution. This re-emphasis is not popular among evolutionary biologists but it's gaining ground.
Comparative studies of development have illuminated how genes operate, and evolve, and this places less emphasis on the gradual accumulation of small genetic changes emphasized by the modern synthesis. Work in ecology has emphasized the role organisms play in building their own environments, and studies of the fossil record raise questions about the role of competition. The last major challenge to the modern synthesis came in the 1970s and 1980s as my paleontological colleagues, including the late Stephen Jay Gould, argued for a hierarchical view of evolution, with selection occurring at many levels, including between species.Again, these new ideas are all in play in modern evolutionary theory. The first refers to "evo-devo" and there's no question that some evolutionary biologists are rethinking evolution in light of the discoveries in developmental biology. (I think they're wrong, but that's not the point here.)
Today's molecule is very simple. We don't need a long complicated name this time; the short common name will do. (But you're welcome to supply the IUPAC name if you know it.) The trick here is to recognize why this molecular is important and then connect it to Wednesday's Nobel Laureate(s). 
