Ribozyme Shows Impossibility of Macro Evolution
Science Daily reports on a finding by University of California Researchers at Santa Cruz which is very difficult to reconcile with the macroevolutionary hypothesis. They have discovered a mode of gene regulation in mammals which was thought to only occur in an obscure group of plant viruses. Even more inexplicable from an evolutionary viewpoint, the structure occurs in one area in a widely diverse group of mammals, but in different areas in five other mammal types, and is absent in humans.Though the researches do not address the issue (preferring to focus on the fact that this is the first time such structures have been found in mammals), such a pattern flies in the face of the idea of accumulation of genetic structures from a common ancestor.
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posted by Mark Moore (Moderator) at Sunday, July 13, 2008
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The structure in question is called a Hammerhead Ribozyme. Ribosomes are RNA structures on which proteins are built. Normally, another type of protein, called an enzyme, must serve as a catalyst to tell the Ribosome when to begin and end production. A Ribozyme combines the function of a ribosome and an enzyme by determining without the help of an enzyme when to, for example, shut down genetic replication.
UCSC Professor William Scott has been working on Hammerhead Ribozyme research for over ten years, and he calls this find the most "remarkable and unexpected" discovery he has made in the field.
"We used to think the hammerhead ribozyme was restricted to obscure plant viruses, but it now looks like it is featured much more prominently in mammalian biological systems," Science Daily reports Scott as saying.
Now how did a specialized structure like that work its way into the mammalian line? Why hasn't it been found in any members of the animal kingdom that are allegedly between a lowly obscure plant virus and mammals in the evolutionary line? Can they demonstrate any examples of this class of obscure plant virus injecting its DNA into any class of mammal? If so, by what mechanism? While some types of viruses have been known to inject DNA into their hosts reproductive cells and thus inject their material into the host organism's line, these virus are not suspects for doing so. Remember, they did not even give their hammerhead ribosomes to the plants they infect, therefore it is extremely unlikely that they were somehow able to introduce them into the mammalian line which they don't infect (and apparently in nothing else either).
It is a well kept secret that there are a number of anomalies like this in biology. Because science has been hijacked by Naturalism, the most absurd naturalistic explanation is preferred over the most obvious Creationist explanation. For example, we might find a gene in sponges and mammals, but not any of the supposed evolutionary groups between the two. Normally in a case like this, philosophical naturalists posing as scientists have tried to explain away the evidence by hypothesizing that the common ancestor passed the genes up the line to mammals, but that all the common ancestors between sponges and mammals that had the genes died out, leaving only intermediate types without them today!
As unlikely as that explanation is (a gene so useful that it is retained in types as diverse as sponges and mammals is not likely to be discarded by fish, flies, and frogs) in most of these cases, it is even more irrational in this particular case. That is because of the location of the hammerhead ribozyme in various mammal groups.
Here is the way the Science Daily article states it, "They found the ribozyme in related genes in the mouse, rat, horse, and platypus, and in unknown genes in five other mammals."
Did you catch that? The ribozyme was in related genes in mammals as diverse as the egg-laying platypus and the rat. That would indicate (from a macroevolutionary perspective) that it had to have been inserted at the base common ancestor of those diverse mammal groups, yet five other mammal groups also had the hammerhead ribosome on different genes from the platypus and the rat! That indicates an independent origin for the ribozyme in those groups whether you are looking at it from an evolutionary perspective or an unbiased perspective.
But wait, the situation gets even more impossible (if that can happen) for those frustrated souls who may try to cobble together a plausible evolutionary scenario for this evidence. It turns out that every mammal tested had the hammerhead ribozyme except one- humans lack the structure in any gene region where any other mammal had it. "The researchers did not find the ribozyme sequence in the corresponding human genes, however, suggesting that a different mechanism regulates those genes in humans." says the article.
A Creationist or ID theorist has no problem at all with any of this evidence. There is nothing that precludes a common Designer from taking a structure used in an obscure plant virus and plugging it into various classes of mammals (in different places). There is nothing that precludes a common designer from then using a different mechanism for the same functions in the most dominant mammals on the planet- humans. A superficial look at the facts of biology does not make evolution seem implausible, but the closer one looks at the details we are now discovering in genetics, the plainer it becomes that Darwinism simply can't explain everything we see.
If it's part of, or caused by a virus (or viroid), then it would be reasonable to find it in random beings, and doesn't seem to prove anything either way.
There are only a handful of viruses that are known to inject their dna into a genome, on the rare instance they can infect a sperm or egg cell, and that means they only do it for their host. In this instance the host are certain types of plants- and the virus are not known to insert the hammerhead ribosome even in their hosts.
That being the case, it makes no sense that they are responsible for injecting it in mammals, much less multiple instances of injecting it in mammals which just happened to be in related genes for mammals as diverse as the rat, horse, and platypus but in unrelated genes in five other mammal types. Add to it, it is absent in humans. The plant virus would have had to basically make an independent insertion in the genome of each class of animal with it just happening to be in the corresponding genes in half the cases and elsewhere in the other half, whilst skipping us and not only us but apparently invertebrates, fish, amphibians, birds and reptiles too.
Biologists who study how this works have to know that "impossible" is not too unreasonable a word to use to describe the above scenario.
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