On Thursday I wrote about a new paper reporting the reconstruction of a 450-million year old hormone receptor, and experiments indicating how it evolved into two receptors found in living vertebrates such as ourselves.

On Friday I took a look at the initial response to the paper from intelligent design advocates at the Discovery Institute. They claim that there exist biological systems that show “irreducible complexity,” which could not possibly have evolved. In response to the new research, intelligent design advocates claimed that hormones and their receptors do not actually make the cut as irreducibly complex systems. But to do so, they had to ignore their own published definition of irreducible complexity.

Continue reading “The Final Adventures of the Blind Locksmith” →

Yesterday I blogged about a new study in which scientists reconstructed 450 million year old proteins in order to trace the evolution of some receptors for hormones. The paper itself does not comment on the implications these results have for intelligent design, which claims that some biological systems are too complex to have evolved. But in the accompanying commentary, Chris Adami does. (Adami is the brains behind Avida, an artificial life program that I wrote about in Discover in 2005.) He writes,

Continue reading “The Blind Locksmith Continued: The Mushy Definition of Complexity” →

Over the last few years, scientists have figured out how to recreate biological molecules that were last seen on Earth hundreds of millions of years ago. Until now, scientists have reconstructed ancient proteins to gather clues about life was like long ago. But now some scientists at the University of Oregon have done something new with these old proteins: they used them to figure out how evolution produces complex systems–exactly the sort of systems that creationists would have us believe cannot evolve.

Continue reading “The Blind Locksmith” →

Mark Siddall , the leech hunter, is on another quest. He’s posting updated from his journeys through Australia in search of new leeches. Read them at Blood Lust II. 

Originally published April 6, 2006. Copyright 2006 Carl Zimmer.

My blog had some serious troubles while I was away for a few days, but I should have everything up and running smoothly today, including comments (aside from those concerning poker and drugs). 

Originally published April 6, 2006. Copyright 2006 Carl Zimmer.