In the News: A Complex Tail, Simply Told - talk.origins

Message from discussion In the News: A Complex Tail, Simply Told

Steven J.

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More options Apr 18 2007, 8:11 am

Newsgroups: talk.origins

From: "Steven J." <steve...@altavista.com>

Date: 17 Apr 2007 22:11:10 -0700

Local: Wed, Apr 18 2007 8:11 am

Subject: Re: In the News: A Complex Tail, Simply Told

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On Apr 17, 9:46 pm, Jason Spaceman <notrea...@jspaceman.homelinux.org>
wrote:

> From the article:
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> By Jennifer Cutraro
> ScienceNOW Daily News
> 17 April 2007

> One of evolutionary biology's greatest challenges is deciphering the origins
> of complex structures. Now, scientists have unraveled the steps in the
> evolution of the bacterial flagellum, a tiny, whiplike structure used in
> swimming and host invasion. A new study shows the flagellum is the result
> of successive duplications of a single gene in the ancestor of today's
> bacteria, a finding that not only answers an important question about the
> evolution of complex structures but also provides additional ammunition to
> counter arguments from evolution's foes.
> ------------------------------------------------------------------

> Read it athttp://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2007/417/3

> J. Spaceman

Nick Matzke has an article on what appears to be the same paper at the
Panda's Thumb. He sounds a note of caution, noting that, based on
what he knows, the claim that the entire flagellum (as opposed to
significant parts of the flagellum) originated from duplications of a
single gene is not tenable at all, and that while this is an important
piece of researching confirming some earlier ideas about flagellar
evolution, it seems to over-hype the significance of these results.

<http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2007/04/
flagellum_evolu_1.html#more>

-- Steven J.

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