Darwin re-visited

[Biochemist]

I'll give you that but the real question for me is why so few phyla have evolved since then not why so many formed at the beginning.

To me, both issues are interesting (i.e., why so many so quickly, and why did they stop). The most common view (I think) is that the Cambrian explosion was a by-product of one or more cataclysms that resulted in small populations of individuals. Smaller populations are more likely (arithmetically) to select for recessive alleles (ergo, cousins shouldn't marry). So the net of the Cambrian cataclysms was that small populations have more frequent recessive alleles expressed. Subsequent to the Cambrian, there were fewer macro cataclysma, hence fewer recessive expression events.

 

My problem is that the recessive alleles existed at all. It does not seem that they were "selected" in this model. It looks more like existing, unexpressed recessive alleles were expressed and produced dramatic changes. It looks more like prior coding in the parent DNA than small serial changes based on selection.

[Moontanman]

To me, both issues are interesting (i.e., why so many so quickly, and why did they stop). The most common view (I think) is that the Cambrian explosion was a by-product of one or more cataclysms that resulted in small populations of individuals. Smaller populations are more likely (arithmetically) to select for recessive alleles (ergo, cousins shouldn't marry). So the net of the Cambrian cataclysms was that small populations have more frequent recessive alleles expressed. Subsequent to the Cambrian, there were fewer macro cataclysma, hence fewer recessive expression events.

 

My problem is that the recessive alleles existed at all. It does not seem that they were "selected" in this model. It looks more like existing, unexpressed recessive alleles were expressed and produced dramatic changes. It looks more like prior coding in the parent DNA than small serial changes based on selection.

 

It is true that almost all DNA sequences are thought to have existed by that time, even bacteria share a large proportion of their genetic material with us. It doesn't take much a change to make a huge difference depending on how the genes are expressed.

[Michaelangelica]

I now know why most Chaos Theory Physicists work in the stock market and not in biology.

:winter_brr:

[Biochemist]

It is true that almost all DNA sequences are thought to have existed by that time, even bacteria share a large proportion of their genetic material with us.... It doesn't take much a change to make a huge difference depending on how the genes are expressed.

I don't think this is a commonly held view. (Anyone disagree?) And it is probably untrue that the actual alleles existed. There may have been a propensity in the Precambrian DNA to generate alleles to be expressed at a future date. But there are lots of genes in higher phyla that are missing in lower phyla. And there is certainly a lot of non-transcribing DNA in higher phyla that does not exist in bacteria.

 

And I suspect the non-transcribing DNA (often called "junk" DNA) has a number of important unelucidated purposes.

[Moontanman]

I don't think this is a commonly held view. (Anyone disagree?) And it is probably untrue that the actual alleles existed. There may have been a propensity in the Precambrian DNA to generate alleles to be expressed at a future date. But there are lots of genes in higher phyla that are missing in lower phyla. And there is certainly a lot of non-transcribing DNA in higher phyla that does not exist in bacteria.

 

And I suspect the non-transcribing DNA (often called "junk" DNA) has a number of important unelucidated purposes.

 

I don't disagree either, I totally missed the boat on that one.

[Biochemist]

I don't disagree either, I totally missed the boat on that one.

Ah. A man of honor.

[Moontanman]

Ah. A man of honor.

 

Maybe, maybe just too lazy to go back and see where I read it or misinterpreted it from. It looked right when I typed it but when the flaws were pointed out it didn't look that good anymore!

[Thunderbird]

This photo represents an emerging eukaryote system that crystallizes though successive stages from higher to lower order iteration matrices, while being shaped by an internal and external fluid dynamics.

An attractor in the form geometrically enfolded microbial mass and oolitic scaffolding constructed in a circular flow of reversing tide cycles. After it comes to rest the higher frequency water waves pulses is drawn inwardly by right left logarithmic apertures. Once the flow cycle is internalize the structure begins a cyclical winding pulse just as a watch spring. This internal recursive concentric spiraling form is built by the much longer tide pulse. Then utilized as a recursive flow pattern drawing inward, and expelling sea water, and materials from the microbial community that it is still connected, But will eventually bifurcate from.

This internalized flow inside the micro-environment is therefore captured as a heterodyning vortex, representing the merger of two wave frequencies , and further substantiated by the over all shrinkage and tightening of from the dissolution of the oolitic scaffolding, and the subsequent emergence of complex eukaryote on the extra-cellular connected mass around internal dynamic fluid system. The cellular symbiotic relationships formally existing as auto catalytic loops within the X-axis of the microbial mat, are now caught within the dynamic boundary of a chaotic attractor, or more precisely a dissipative structure in the process of bifurcating into a multi-dimensional phase space.

 

 

A very useful abstraction to describe the evolution of a system in time is that of a "phase space". Our ordinary space has only three dimensions (width, height, depth) but in theory we can think of spaces with any number of dimensions. A useful abstraction is that of a space with six dimensions, three of which are the usual spatial dimensions. The other three are the components of velocity along those spatial dimensions. In ordinary 3-dimensional space, a "point" can only represent the position of a system. In 6-dimensional phase space, a point represents both the position and the motion of the system. The evolution of a system is represented by some sort of shape in phase space.

 

The shapes that chaotic systems produce in phase space are called "strange attractors" because the system will tend towards the kinds of state described by the points in the phase space that lie within them.

 

The program then becomes that of applying the theory of nonlinear dynamic systems to Biology.

 

To more easily visualize this layered pattern, take a pencil, tape the center length of a ribbon around the pencil now wrap the ribbon tightly three or four times in a clockwise direction. Now reverse the direction counterclockwise do this about 7-8 times. Now tape down the outside all the way around tightly. now wrap your thumb and forefinger around the ribbon in a circle. Take the end of the pencil and turn in a ratcheting motion. You will get a rough idea of the internal cyclical dynamics. A series of recursive rotating di chi’s or paisleys, a fractalized Yen Yang symbol turning in unison with the surrounding layers resembling a circulating Taoist Mandela , contained in a torus structure. This recursive pattern would wind like a watch spring that was built by reversing back on itself at every tide cycle thus providing the constructed pattern.

This internal concentric recursive logarithmic pattern is then utilized as a rudimentary respiratory system. At every breath or flow cyclical the structure would wind inward as the oolites in the layers dissipate Calcium Carbonate.

 

This basic cyclical recursive concentric logarithmic dissipative system could be the origin for many complex body plans of the higher taxon that emerged during the Cambrian, By forward engineering the micro fossil structure. This particular scenario reflects one of a fish, the most perfect of all the emerging attractors. differing body plans would result from differing perturbations of separately emerging attractors. As the eukaryote system develops, the layered structure begins to differentiate as the oolitic matrix shrinks. A tension emerges throughout the system and starts to divide into three main domains. The still open heart cavity, the outer layers conforming around external dynamics. The domain of loosely bound middle layers that will form into some of the internal organs, but at the moment only contain a developing symmetrical circulatory system powered by external forces.

 

As the oolites shrink the domains begin to differentiate even further. This ever increasing tension crystallizes the form in an descending order of smaller domains of connectives, until the oolites have completely dissolved leaving in there place a vast patterned array of flexible geodesic scaffolding. called the extra-cellular matrix, at this phase the connectives is on a very fine cellular level, also at this stage the central heart tissue forms by coiling connected cells inward like a watch spring, separating from the outer right and left apertures that have now become subject to their own domain of connectives, a few layers of this heart tissue will be taken by the apertures as they differentiate from the central chamber. Two very critical steps take place at this stage. A connection is maintained though this tissue between the chamber and apertures while the heart chamber is enclosed as apertures shift and redirect and access an second outer layer. The sea water is redirected into this new layer opening a second cavity. This new chamber forms the, mouth, digestive system and anus and the apertures form the gill slits. A flow is maintain throughout this process but now preexisting oxygen carring cells begin to circulate though the enclosed internal circulatory system. The yet unformed mouth acts as an placental attachment to the oolitic bed which provides a nursery food of mineral spheres and algae. This substance begins to help form the developing digestive track.

 

The developing cellular domains begins to respond to, and is further ordered by a finer flow of information now passing from the cellular microcosm to the macrocosm of the environment.

Once this synergetic vortex is opened and set in motion it becomes a self-sustain system

 

This representation is what I think this embryo would have looked like when it was alive. The right intake aperture became dominant over the left, resulting in an asymmetrical growth of extruding mineralization around the left aperture.

 

This particular attractor would have resulted in a conch, or gastropod design.

The dominant right intake would develop a gill while the left developed a spiraling shell and central axis of the [columella.]

 

This would keep spiraling until the shell enclosed the left aperture completely. If both chambers keep a symmetrical flow, which would have been very rare, the result would be a symmetrical body plan and two gills.

 

If the attractor retained the shell and a symmetrical flow though the apertures, the result would be a cephalopod. This shell is not a genetic adaptation but more precisely the a receipt from paying {Schrödinger entropy debt} "http://www.entropylaw.com/thermoevolution9.html"

 

{The oolitic mass would shrink [dissipate] during this pulse into a higher ordered state.}

 

A fish’s body plan is the most perfect of all the possible out comes, and looks as though it only occurred once. All the myriad shell designs now appear to me as beautiful attempts at a fish’s body plan. Even natures screw up’s are geometrical marvels.

[Thunderbird]

Why does a Gastropod look as though is formed in a non-linear event......Because maybe it did.

 

 

 

 

[Moontanman]

Why does a Gastropod look as though is formed in a non-linear event......Because maybe it did.

 

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Then again becasue the first traces of multicelluar life didn't have a shel or any hard body parts, just worm trails in the mud maybe you are assuming far too much. Cephlopods didn't come around until way after complex first formed, they developed from snails. what you are talking about sounds a lot like the idea of spontanious generation. As for fish, that is really hitting the ball out of the park with no ball or bat. Fish didn't come along until well after almost everything else.

[Thunderbird]

Then again becasue the first traces of multicelluar life didn't have a shel or any hard body parts, just worm trails in the mud maybe you are assuming far too much. Cephlopods didn't come around until way after complex first formed, they developed from snails. what you are talking about sounds a lot like the idea of spontanious generation. As for fish, that is really hitting the ball out of the park with no ball or bat. Fish didn't come along until well after almost everything else.

:Glasses:

 

 

 

http://http://www.sciencenews.org/pages/sn_arc99/11_6_99/fob1.htm

 

 

 

 

 

Waking Up to the Dawn of Vertebrates

By R. Monastersky

 

 

 

Paleontologists have long regarded vertebrates as latecomers who straggled into evolutionary history after much of the initial sound and fury had fizzled. Chinese paleontologists, however, have discovered fossils of two fish that push the origin of vertebrates back to the riotous biological bash when almost all other animal groups emerged in the geologic record.

Preserved in 530-million-year-old rocks from Yunnan province, the paper clip-size impressions record the earliest known fish, which predate the next-oldest vertebrates by at least 30 million years.

The fossil finds, while not totally unexpected, thrill paleontologists who despaired of ever uncovering such evidence from Earth's dim past. "It's important because up to now the vertebrates were absent from the big bang of life, as we call it—that is, the great early Cambrian explosion, where all the major animal groups appeared suddenly in the fossil record," comments Philippe Janvier, a paleontologist at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris.

The Chinese fish come from a site near the town of Chengjiang, the world's richest locale for documenting the early part of the Cambrian period. Together with the middle-Cambrian animals found in Canada's famous Burgess Shale, the Chengjiang fossil fauna reveals the diversity of life in the seas following the Cambrian explosion.

Among the tens of thousands of animals found in these two deposits, paleontologists had previously pulled up two slender creatures that fit into the chordate phylum—the broad category that includes vertebrates. But those two species lacked well-defined heads, sophisticated gills, and other features that would provide them entrée into the vertebrate subphylum. Instead, they resemble the living invertebrate called amphioxus, a passive filter-feeding marine animal.

The new Chengjiang species have a number of features not seen in amphioxus or other invertebrate chordates. "It is practically certain that these are vertebrates," says Janvier.

Both the Chinese specimens have a zigzag arrangement of segmented muscles—the same type of pattern seen in fish today, reports Degan Shu of Northwest University in Xi'an, China, and his colleagues. The fossils, named Myllokunmingia and Haikouichthys, also have a more complex arrangement of gills than the simple slits used by amphioxus, according to the team's report in the Nov. 4 Nature.

Although the ancient Chinese animals qualify as vertebrates, they lack the bony skeleton and teeth seen in most, but not all, members of this subphylum today. Instead, these early jawless fish appear to have had skulls and other skeletal structures made of cartilage, says Simon Conway Morris of the University of Cambridge in England, who collaborated with the Chinese team.

The researchers propose that vertebrates evolved during the explosive period of animal evolution at the start of the Cambrian and only some 30 million years later developed the ability to accumulate minerals in their bodies to form bones, teeth, and scales.

"It is interesting that the gap is so big between the first [jawless vertebrates] and the first evidence of biomineralization," says M. Paul Smith of the University of Birmingham in England, who studies early fish.

The appearance of the first vertebrates marked a profound transition in the lifestyle of our ancestors, says Smith. The earliest chordates presumably resembled amphioxus in being nearly brainless animals that lacked paired eyes and fed by filtering food from the water. Evolution formed the vertebrate body by fashioning fish with distinct heads, paired eyes, and other features for hunting.

The new discoveries indicate that these swift progenitors of sharks were darting around the seas with the other animals that attended the Cambrian carnival. The festivities may have begun far earlier. Genetic evidence hints that most animal phyla evolved hundreds of millions of years before they began leaving fossil evidence, a point debated by paleontologists.

 

 

 

 

[Biochemist]

...that is really hitting the ball out of the park with no ball or bat....

Nice metaphor. I may have to steal this one, MM

 

Bio.

[Thunderbird]

Cephlopods didn't come around until way after complex first formed, they developed from snails. what you are talking about sounds a lot like the idea of spontanious generation. As for fish, that is really hitting the ball out of the park with no ball or bat. Fish didn't come along until well after almost everything else.

 

Wrong again, snails are Cephlopods.

[Moontanman]

:Glasses:

 

 

 

http://http://www.sciencenews.org/pages/sn_arc99/11_6_99/fob1.htm

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Ok, great artical but how does it support your point? It has no calcium carbonate parts at all!

[Thunderbird]

Ok, great artical but how does it support your point? It has no calcium carbonate parts at all!

 

 

 

Its ok for a person to be uninformed, but I do not tolerate dishonesty in a debate the post on fish was in response to this posting of yours.

Originally Posted by Moontanman . Fish didn't come along until well after almost everything

 

You were incorrect, My quote to you...

 

 

 

Paleontologists have long regarded vertebrates as latecomers who straggled into evolutionary history after much of the initial sound and fury had fizzled. Chinese paleontologists, however, have discovered fossils of two fish that push the origin of vertebrates back to the riotous biological bash when almost all other animal groups emerged in the geologic record.

Preserved in 530-million-year-old rocks from Yunnan province, the paper clip-size impressions record the earliest known fish, which predate the next-oldest vertebrates by at least 30 million years.

 

 

 

 

.

[Thunderbird]

Ok, great artical but how does it support your point? It has no calcium carbonate parts at all!

 

 

As I have said Before it would help if you actually read my post.

 

 

 

Originally posted by Thunderbird: This particular attractor would have resulted in a conch, or gastropod design.

The dominant right intake would develop a gill while the left developed a spiraling shell and central axis of the [columella.]

 

This would keep spiraling until the shell enclosed the left aperture completely. If both chambers keep a symmetrical flow, which would have been very rare, the result would be a symmetrical body plan and two gills.

 

If the attractor retained the shell and a symmetrical flow though the apertures, the result would be a cephalopod. This shell is not a genetic adaptation but more precisely the a receipt from paying {Schrödinger entropy debt} "http://www.entropylaw.com/thermoevolution9.html"

 

{The oolitic mass would shrink [dissipate] during this pulse into a higher ordered state.}

 

A fish’s body plan is the most perfect of all the possible out comes, and looks as though it only occurred once. All the myriad shell designs now appear to me as beautiful attempts at a fish’s body plan. Even natures screw up’s are geometrical marvels.

[HydrogenBond]

There is something about life that makes it different. For one thing it can gain energy potential, i.e, within chemicals. If we put wood into a fire, the energy value of the wood is converted to energy by the oxidation. Life would be analogous to a fire that burns the wood and makes a pile of wood on the other side. If we keep feeding it wood, the pile will get bigger or it will form two piles. This is not the way inanimate matter works.

 

The cell cycle is when the cell uses the most energy. The cell first builds up food reserves or gains potential energy. When this reaches a certain level, it provides the potential energy to drive the cell cycle. If we plot potential energy versus time, it starts at a max, lowers and reaches a minimum as the two daughter cells, with each having less than half of the max. They then need to gain potential energy again for another cycle. What we have is sort of an energy sine wave moving higher to lower to higher, etc,

 

The DNA only forms or duplicates at the lower energy part of the cellular energy sine wave. As the potential rises again, the DNA becomes part of the chemical process by which the potential is able to rise. Seeing the DNA gets inert during part of this energy sine wave, i.e., packed as chromosomes, it is not always leading the energy sine wave. The changing in the potential energy, within this sine wave, is far more inclusive.

 

The DNA is sort of the hard drive of the cell with all the data and programs. When the DNA is inert, we sort of take out the hard drive. But a computer can still work, using the BIOS within the mother board. This is analogous to the energy sine wave. It is better with the hard drive active, but we can also use a disk as a surrogate hard drive, until DNA gets back on-line. The two daughter cells are like starting new computers. The energy sine sort of uses a boot disk, to format the two new DNA hard drives. Since the energy sine wave is leading, due to being more inclusive, the best boot disk will format the DNA in a way that allows the sine wave to improve with time. This does not preclude mutations but gives then a sense of direction.

 

If you look at a human from conception to birth, the cells follow the energy sine wave, but the entire body is climbing an energy hill or gaining potential energy as we grow to maturity. The net affect is the sine wave of the cells are all net slanted toward the positive side, gaining energy. It is sort of a sine wave where the above zero has a bigger hump than below, so when we add it all together, the result is a net gaining of potential over time. That is the direction of evolution. Just follow the energy sine wave.

 

The energy sine wave is connected to oxidation and reduction. The reduction allows the cell to store or gain potential energy. The oxidation is what allows the cell to burn energy or reduce the potential energy within the cell. The oxidation side is easy to see and is typically based on O. The reduction side of the sine wave is less obvious but involves hydrogen bonding.