ID - Bacterial Flagellum

[BGoodForGoodSake]

I'm here thinker, you don't have to speak for the skeptics anymore.
=)

The self organizing nature of the flagellular fillament may be a clue to the development of this system.

Perhaps the flagellar base was originally a channel to expell extraneous proteins. The protein to be expelled may have eventually taken the current form in which the self assembly of the filament occurs.

The original expulsion channel possesed excitory action which would have made this a rough mode of transport.

Once this is in place the flagellar base may have been tweaked over time.

But to return to the question, what is irreducible complexity? Are there any real examples and how can you prove it?

[BGoodForGoodSake]

Irreducibly complex systems are in principal unevolvable thunker.

At least by any gradual evolution. Which I suppose is "evolving" in the truest sense unlike Gould's punctuation which is more of a "leaping" than "evolving" kind of change.

Kurieuo

Gould's punctuated evolution is phenotypic, such as radical changes in body plan. The flagellum cannot be a product of punctuated evolution, which does not deal with biochemistry.

Most of the development of biochemistry has already been completed before the first appearance of multicellular organisms.

Afterwards the changes mostly occured in organization of multicellular colonies.

[sandy_mcd]

Sandy, I think it's a little misleading to say anti-evolutionists...

I apologize if I offended or mislead you or anyone else. What word(s) should I have used ?

[Byblos]

I'm here thinker, you don't have to speak for the skeptics anymore.
=)

The self organizing nature of the flagellular fillament may be a clue to the development of this system.

Perhaps the flagellar base was originally a channel to expell extraneous proteins. The protein to be expelled may have eventually taken the current form in which the self assembly of the filament occurs.

The original expulsion channel possesed excitory action which would have made this a rough mode of transport.

So to put it in more simple terms, what you're saying is that it was even more complex than it is today as it had dual functions: 1. as a waste expulsion system and 2. a transport system as a byproduct of the expulsion. Later on the transport system evolved into a full transport and the waste expulsion was discarded. Would that not mean another waste removal system should have evolved to replace the one that turned into a transport system?

Once this is in place the flagellar base may have been tweaked over time.

Such as what I described above?

But to return to the question, what is irreducible complexity? Are there any real examples and how can you prove it?

I don't know how they can be proven but the bacterial flagellum is certainly a good candidate as an IC system.

Good to see you're still around BGood.

[Kurieuo]

But to return to the question, what is irreducible complexity? Are there any real examples and how can you prove it?

Unless related specifically to the Flagellum, please keep the topic of irreducible complexity in general to one of the many other threads where it has in the past been discussed. I do not want this one to go off-topic to debate IC in general (which I frankly feel has been hashed out by both sides quite fully in other threads already).

Kurieuo

[sandy_mcd]

I do not want this one to go off-topic to debate IC in general

But doesn't entropy guarantee that will happen ?

[BGoodForGoodSake]

I do not want this one to go off-topic to debate IC in general

But doesn't entropy guarantee that will happen ?

lol

[AttentionKMartShoppers]

I do not want this one to go off-topic to debate IC in general

But doesn't entropy guarantee that will happen ?

lol

Are you saying we ourselves are natural processes?

[BGoodForGoodSake]

So to put it in more simple terms, what you're saying is that it was even more complex than it is today as it had dual functions: 1. as a waste expulsion system and 2. a transport system as a byproduct of the expulsion. Later on the transport system evolved into a full transport and the waste expulsion was discarded. Would that not mean another waste removal system should have evolved to replace the one that turned into a transport system?

Once this is in place the flagellar base may have been tweaked over time.

Such as what I described above?

But to return to the question, what is irreducible complexity? Are there any real examples and how can you prove it?

I don't know how they can be proven but the bacterial flagellum is certainly a good candidate as an IC system.

Good to see you're still around BGood.

Thanks Byblos, I would never leave without saying goodbye.
=)

Back to the point however. Its too simplistic to see things as having a purpose. A man born with deformaties either perishes or lives with them, he does not learn to live with them because he has not know anything else. Our behaviour is a result of our given bodies.

In the hypothesis above the defective bacteria will either perish or live with the deformity. As bacteria do not procreate sexually any new traits will definitely pass on to progeny. Defective or not bacteria tend to gather useless and debilatating mutations. Of course overall the bacteria population remains healthy.

[Byblos]

So to put it in more simple terms, what you're saying is that it was even more complex than it is today as it had dual functions: 1. as a waste expulsion system and 2. a transport system as a byproduct of the expulsion. Later on the transport system evolved into a full transport and the waste expulsion was discarded. Would that not mean another waste removal system should have evolved to replace the one that turned into a transport system?

Once this is in place the flagellar base may have been tweaked over time.

Such as what I described above?

But to return to the question, what is irreducible complexity? Are there any real examples and how can you prove it?

I don't know how they can be proven but the bacterial flagellum is certainly a good candidate as an IC system.

Good to see you're still around BGood.

Thanks Byblos, I would never leave without saying goodbye.
=)

I certainly hope not.

Back to the point however. Its too simplistic to see things as having a purpose. A man born with deformaties either perishes or lives with them, he does not learn to live with them because he has not know anything else. Our behaviour is a result of our given bodies.

You know me, I like to keep things simple. However, purpose is exactly what this is all about. The man with defotmities is the exception rather than the rule.

In the hypothesis above the defective bacteria will either perish or live with the deformity. As bacteria do not procreate sexually any new traits will definitely pass on to progeny. Defective or not bacteria tend to gather useless and debilatating mutations. Of course overall the bacteria population remains healthy.

I'm not sure where you're coming from with the 'defective' argument. You had suggested that the flagellum could have evolved from a more simple expulsion system that had some crude and secondary transport capability. The expulsion system was not a deformity. By your reasoning, it was a primary system that was discarded and replased by the secondary one. Sort of like a shift in priorities. My question is, would it not have been necessary to keep the expulsion system as well since it had a vital function?

[sandy_mcd]

So to put it in more simple terms

Here's an abstract and first part of a paper which says that secretion systems (apparently to inject proteins into other cells in order to infect them) and bacterial flagella have many similarities:

[Please direct any questions to BGoodForGoodSake; I am not quite sure if this paper is in English or Japanese.]

PNAS | March 18, 2003 | vol. 100 | no. 6 | 3027-3030

Type III secretion systems and bacterial flagella: Insights into their function from structural similarities

Ariel Blocker * , Kaoru Komoriya * and Shin-Ichi Aizawa

Abstract
Type III secretion systems and bacterial flagella are broadly compared at the level of their genetic structure, morphology, regulation, and function, integrating structural information, to provide an overview of how they might function at a molecular level.

Type III secretion systems (TTSS or secretons), essential determinants of the interaction of many Gram-negative bacteria with animal or plant hosts, serve to translocate bacterial proteins into eukaryotic host cells to manipulate them during infection. These devices perform regulated posttranslational and cotranslational protein translocation across three biological membranes, involving novel pathways of protein targeting. Sequence similarities exist between components of TTSSs and those of the flagellar assembly machineries in prokaryotes (1). We explore functional parallels between these systems to gain mechanistic insights about TTSSs and flagella alike.

TTS is characterized by (i) host contact-mediated TTSS induction, (ii) energy requirement for protein secretion and translocation into host cells, (iii) secretion-regulated expression of genes encoding proteins secreted downstream in the pathway, and (iv) dedicated cytoplasmic chaperones for some secreted proteins. It differs from other secretion pathways in Gram-negative bacteria by the absence of (i) primary sequence conservation in regions of secreted proteins involved in targeting except within some species (2), (ii) a cleaved signal sequence in secreted polypeptides, and (iii) a periplasmic secretion intermediate (3). TTSSs and flagella share all but the first characteristic and the ability to translocate proteins into eukaryotic cells.

Structure
Old and New Sequence Homologies. TTS apparatuses are encoded by 25 genes (4), nearly all essential for function. About 10 TTSS proteins are similar in sequence or membrane topology to cytoplasmic or inner membrane proteins of flagellar hook-basal bodies (HBBs; refs. 5 and 6). Others show no significant sequence homology. However, they show "functional conservation" because when knocked out, they lead to similar phenotypes in assembly or function of the apparatuses. By matching biochemical characteristics and biological information about each protein (see Supporting Text, which is published as supporting information on the PNAS web site, http://www.pnas.org), we propose the functional homologs shown in Fig. 1.
...

[AttentionKMartShoppers]

lol

[Byblos]

So to put it in more simple terms

Here's an abstract and first part of a paper which says that secretion systems (apparently to inject proteins into other cells in order to infect them) and bacterial flagella have many similarities:

[Please direct any questions to BGoodForGoodSake; I am not quite sure if this paper is in English or Japanese.]

LOL! Thank you Sandy for the Bio 102 lesson. But I do hope you see the 'simple terms' was in reference to paraphrasing what BGood said, not to the 'simplicity' of the subject matter, in which I am a novice and the questions I ask are in an effort to learn rather than to present a counter-argument.

Although since you did post it, I would like to ask you to highlight what the differences are between the secretion systems and the bacterial flagella.

[sandy_mcd]

Hi Byblos; your words just made a nice juxtaposition with the article.

I don't claim to know any more than you. I do not know what many of the words mean and have no biology background.
The article seems to be saying that one bug has a device for injecting material into other cells and another (most likely) bug has a means for propelling itself with flagella. About 40% of the types of components (proteins) used for building the the injector are similar in composition and/or shape to parts used in the flagella. There are also some other shared characteristics in the formation of both (didn't understand any of that).
The unstated implication is that both devices are derived from some common or similar starting point. If true, this would undermine the use of the flagella as an example of irreducible complexity.
I know you asked for differences to be highlighted. There are undoubtedly many differences (presumably more than similarities) but it is the similarities which are important since they would indicate some degree of relationship.
Warranty: the validity of this interpretation is worth precisely what I was paid for it.

[AttentionKMartShoppers]

lol

Well, Behe has took this into account. It was put in at the beginning-in Darwin's Black Box...he's dealt with it back then. And it, like Ken Miller's toy chest of strawmen, does not undermine Behe's position...but I'm trying to use superposition...so can't really find something about it online for everyone at the moment.