Think Gene - Latest Comments in Evolution on the table top

Re: Evolution on the table top

Kevin — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 18:48:06 -0000

But he's right, a theory is higher than facts... it takes a bunch of facts and puts them together.

Re: Evolution on the table top

Andrew Yates — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 12:10:06 -0000

"Where do the initial ingredients come from?"

From the complete paper:

"A population of billions of RNA enzymes with RNA ligase activity was made to evolve continuously, with real-time monitoring of the population size and fitness."

and

"The RNA enzyme that was chosen for this study is a descendant of the class I RNA ligase, first described by Bartel and Szostak [ref]"

Further, "Ligase" is a class of enzymes that helps links two molecules together.

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Notice: Please keep discussion on topic to biology and genomics and contribute intelligently. This isn't Digg, and this isn't Thursday's evening teen Bible study in Wichita, Kansas.

Re: Evolution on the table top

Steve — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 11:35:22 -0000

Interesting. Where do the initial ingredients come from? How about making the machine start with nothing?

Re: Evolution on the table top

Josh — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 10:06:41 -0000

You seem to imply that it was in danger of being dismissed as “a theory” before this. You're right about that, but you're wrong to think this is really going to change anything. The people who reject evolution won't be swayed by more evidence. They don't care about the evidence. If they did care, they would agree that evolution is 'true.'

But more than that, evolution *is* a theory, not a fact. It's a scientific theory, which is a step higher than facts. It takes a bunch of facts and combines them together into a single explanatory and predictive description.