rationalist
Member
In order to say that some function is understood, every relevant step in the process must be elucidated. The relevant steps in biological processes occur ultimately at the molecular level, so a satisfactory explanation of a biological phenomenon such as sight, or digestion, or immunity, must include a molecular explanation. It is no longer sufficient, now that the black box of vision has been opened, for an ‘evolutionary explanation’ of that power to invoke only the anatomical structures of whole eyes, as Darwin did in the 19th century and as most popularizers of evolution continue to do today. Anatomy is, quite simply, irrelevant. So is the fossil record. It does not matter whether or not the fossil record is consistent with evolutionary theory, any more than it mattered in physics that Newton’s theory was consistent with everyday experience. The fossil record has nothing to tell us about, say, whether or how the interactions of 11-cis-retinal with rhodopsin, transducin, and phosphodiesterase could have developed step-by-step. Neither do the patterns of biogeography matter, or of population genetics, or the explanations that evolutionary theory has given for rudimentary organs or species abundance.
If you can't answer the questions below, you can't explain the REAL mechanisms of biodiversity. As such, your answer is PSEUDO-scientific and inadequate.
That is commonly the case, when someone shows a nice phylogenetic tree, and claims to have provided supportive evidence for evolution.
Explaining organismal form depends on explaining how organs, tissues, and cells form and gain shape. On the lowest level of the hierarchy, the formation of cells in a multicellular organism depends on the specification of:
1. Morphogenesis of various eukaryotic cells, structures, and shapes
2. Cell fate determination and differentiation ( phenotype, or what cell type each one will become )
3. Cell growth and size
4. Development and cell division counting: cells need to be programmed to stop self-replicating after the right number of cell divisions
5. Mechanisms of pattern formation
6. Hox genes
7. Position and place in the body. This is crucial. Limbs like legs, fins, eyes, etc. must all be placed at the right place.
8. What communication it requires to communicate with other cells, and the setup of the communication channels
9. Sensory and stimuli functions of cells
10. What specific new regulatory functions do cells have to acquire
11. When will the development program of the organism express the genes to grow the new cells during development?
12. Change regulation in the composition of the cell membrane and/or secreted products.
13. Specification of the cell-cell adhesion proteins and which ones will be used in each cell to adhere to the neighbor cells ( there are 4 classes )
14. Apoptosis: programming of the time period the cell keeps alive in the body, and when is it time to self-destruct and be replaced by newly produced cells of the same kind
15. Set up each cells specific nutrition demands
16. Cell shape changes
17. Cell proliferation which is the process that results in an increase of the number of cells, and is defined by the balance between cell divisions and cell loss through cell death or differentiation.
If you can't answer the questions below, you can't explain the REAL mechanisms of biodiversity. As such, your answer is PSEUDO-scientific and inadequate.
That is commonly the case, when someone shows a nice phylogenetic tree, and claims to have provided supportive evidence for evolution.
Explaining organismal form depends on explaining how organs, tissues, and cells form and gain shape. On the lowest level of the hierarchy, the formation of cells in a multicellular organism depends on the specification of:
1. Morphogenesis of various eukaryotic cells, structures, and shapes
2. Cell fate determination and differentiation ( phenotype, or what cell type each one will become )
3. Cell growth and size
4. Development and cell division counting: cells need to be programmed to stop self-replicating after the right number of cell divisions
5. Mechanisms of pattern formation
6. Hox genes
7. Position and place in the body. This is crucial. Limbs like legs, fins, eyes, etc. must all be placed at the right place.
8. What communication it requires to communicate with other cells, and the setup of the communication channels
9. Sensory and stimuli functions of cells
10. What specific new regulatory functions do cells have to acquire
11. When will the development program of the organism express the genes to grow the new cells during development?
12. Change regulation in the composition of the cell membrane and/or secreted products.
13. Specification of the cell-cell adhesion proteins and which ones will be used in each cell to adhere to the neighbor cells ( there are 4 classes )
14. Apoptosis: programming of the time period the cell keeps alive in the body, and when is it time to self-destruct and be replaced by newly produced cells of the same kind
15. Set up each cells specific nutrition demands
16. Cell shape changes
17. Cell proliferation which is the process that results in an increase of the number of cells, and is defined by the balance between cell divisions and cell loss through cell death or differentiation.
