dettus

maybe there's a thread about this, if so please point me to it

I was watching the Science Channel the other day and I saw something very interesting. Scientics were able to 'activate' the gene that causes teeth to grow in a chicken embryo. They went on to say that it really isn't about which genes you have, but about which genes are turned on. That organims have the genes of their ansestors in their genome, it's just that those genes aren't neccessarily turned on.

Just curious how theists could possibly claim creationism is valid when chickens have left over genes for teeth. Isn't this clear evidence for evolution? That chicken ancestors clearly at one point in their existance had teeth? That chickens evolved form creatures that had teeth? It is for me.

-debaser71 (can't get rid of my wife's dettus tag, can a mod help me?)

demoninho

By completely ignoring the fact they DO grow teeth and instead hammering on the fact they were induced by unnaturally grafting mouse cells and saying natural selection should have degenerated the tooth gene because there was no natural selection for the tooth gene to stay "fit":

AiG

They'll probably use it as a young earth argument too

dettus

thanks for the link

I liked this line, "What has been experimentally demonstrated is in no way inconsistent with the biblical account of creation."

I find it amazing and sad that people actually still believe that the bible is some sort of science/history book.

:banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

demoninho

No thanks,

now I wish some one with a bit more knowledge will refute the AiG article. My guess is that tooth making genes are not only involved in making teeth but also other other body parts thereby keeping them under natural selection or maybe these genes are not very susceptible for truely deleterious mutations but rather neutral ones.

Am I making sense

Oolon Colluphid

Hi debaser!
Hen�s Teeth.

Abstract of Kollar & Fisher�s original article. I can send you the full thing if you�d like.

See also Armand Hamp�s experiment on chick legs.

Cheers, Oolon

Wounded King

I still reckon that with enough mouse mesenchyme and tin foil I could turn a chick embryo into an archaeopteryx-ish.

dettus

great links thanks

now this line i really like

"These teeth were not like that of mammals. Thus, the cells of the chick pharyngeal arches, which have not made teeth for nearly 100 million years, still appear to have retained the genetic potential to respond to an appropriate inducer."

seems to discredit that creationts claim that it's the mouse tissue forming the teeth...what seems like to me is that the mouse tissue induces the chicken tissue to grow the teeth

demoninho

I wonder if they also performed it the other way around: transplanting chick epithelium into a mouse embryo and getting "bird-like" teeth

Oolon Colluphid

Yep, it does. That�s why one of my favourite questions is, why do birds contain genes for making features they do not have, and which -- unless evolution is right -- they never have had?

A similar case is the human vitamin C gene. We humans (along with the other apes, and (not) strangely, guinea pigs) require vitamin C in our diets. All other mammals, however, can synthesise their own. (How nice of the creator to leave us susceptible to scurvy!) An evolutionary prediction, then, would be that we do have the machinery in our genomes, but that it�s turned off.

This is, in fact, the case: we do have the genes for vit C synthesis, but a part of the set-up is broken.

And the really curious thing is that it is rendered non-functional by exactly the same mutation in the other great apes. So precisely the same small (frameshift iirc) mutation has independently, randomly, turned up to wreck the machinery in separate �kinds�... or god deliberately gave the genes, then broke them (but also did it to apes)... or it happened once in a common ancestor. An ancestor that generally got enough vit C in its diet -- from fruit, yeah? -- not to notice. (This is why guinea pigs are similarly unaffected, but why one needs to feed them plenty of fresh fruit and veg.)

Cheers, Oolon

demoninho

Because these genes are involved in other processes and not just teeth development...............AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRR RRRRRGGGGGGGGGH I'm starting to think like a creationist. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH
HELP ME