The empire of the gene restored?

 Genes Rule? The Evidence of Identical Twins

Denyse O Leary

For some decades, we heard claims from studies of identical twins (formed when one fertilized egg splits) that everything from exam results to homosexuality might hinge on genetics. Therefore, any similarity in later choices or behavior might be due to genetic factors (read “predetermined” or “inevitable” here). How has that assumption held up, especially in the age of genome mapping?

Identical twins comprise roughly 1 in every 250 births. Studies of twins who were separated at birth have been especially prized because the twins were assumed to grow up in different environments. Thus any significant similarities pointed to genetic influences.

Several problems emerged, though. For one thing, what about the assumption that separation at birth means that twins experience different environments? Children may be born into practically any environment but they are generally adopted into middle-of-the-road ones. Twins separated at birth may also be aware of each other’s existence; they may even know each other. Plus, the psychological tendency we have when encountering twins is to notice similarities more readily than differences so similarities, rather than differences, tend to be socially reinforced. But the critics who raised these issues were typically ignored in the rush to see genetics behind every similarity. 

Meanwhile, there were two bigger problems.

Identical Twins Diverge Genetically as They Age

Genome mapping has changed the picture a good deal. The fact that twins diverge as they age was reported in Nature back in 2005. A 2021 study found that about 15 percent of identical twins vary from each other significantly in genetics. In any event, a 2022 UC Berkeley open-access Study found that “age plays a more important role than genetics in determining which genes in our bodies are turned on or off, influencing our susceptibility to disease”:

                 In other words, while our individual genetic makeup can help predict gene expression when we are younger, it is less useful in predicting which genes are ramped up or down when we’re older — in this study, older than 55 years. Identical twins, for example, have the same set of genes, but as they age, their gene expression profiles diverge, meaning that twins can age much differently from each other.

YAMAMOTO, R., CHUNG, R., VAZQUEZ, J. M. ET AL. TISSUE-SPECIFIC IMPACTS OF AGING AND GENETICS ON GENE EXPRESSION PATTERNS IN HUMANS. NAT COMMUN 13, 5803 (2022)

So, it turns out, even if we didn’t start out that way, we all end up being unique.

The Effort to Prove that Genes Rule! Involved Some Avoidable Lapses

In an article published at Aeon last month, science writer Gavin Evans, author of Skin Deep: Journeys in the Divisive Science of Race (OneWorld 2019), who follows twin studies, looks back on an era when the haste to establish genetic explanations for human behavior involved throwing ethics aside.

In the mid 20th century, Sir Cyril Burt (1883–1971), a British psychologist and eugenics enthusiast, claimed to have participated with colleagues in studies on separated identical twins that established the importance of heredity. But then, as Britannica decorously puts the matter:

After Burt’s death, striking anomalies in some of his test data led some scientists to reexamine his statistical methods. They concluded that Burt manipulated and probably falsified those IQ test results that most convincingly supported his theories on transmitted intelligence and social class. The debate over his conduct continued, but all sides agreed that his later research was at least highly flawed, and many accepted that he fabricated some data. However, the soundness of his earlier work justified his reputation as the foremost pioneer of educational psychology in Britain.

BRITANNICA, THE EDITORS OF ENCYCLOPAEDIA. “SIR CYRIL BURT”. ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA, 27 FEB. 2023. ACCESSED 8 JULY 2023

Evans tells the same story a bit more colorfully:

Shortly after he died in 1971, Burt’s records and notes were all burnt, after which his reputation imploded. Two of his researchers, whose names appeared as co-authors on his papers, could not be traced (when asked about them, Burt had said they’d both ‘emigrated’ — but he didn’t know where) and a third he clearly invented. In The Science and Politics of IQ (1974), the American psychologist Leon Kamin noted that in 1955, when Burt claimed to have tested 21 separated identical twins, he put the correlation between their IQs at 0.771, yet in the 1960s, when his twins cohort numbered 53, he gave the identical three-decimal figure, which Kamin said had a statistically minuscule chance of occurring. Some circumstantial details that Burt claimed to have found among his twins also raised eyebrows: of a pair born to a wealthy mother and then adopted, he claimed one was raised in splendour on a Scottish country estate, and the other was left to a shepherd (like Perdita in The Winter’s Tale). The killer blow was delivered by his approved biographer, Leslie Hearnshaw, a one-time Burt enthusiast who in 1979 concluded that all of Burt’s twin studies were invented. 

GAVIN EVANS, “THE MYTH OF MIRRORED TWINS,” AEON, JUNE 27, 2023

Evans found similar, though less dramatic, problems with Thomas J. Bouchard ’s research at the Minnesota Center for Twin and Family Research:

his methods and conclusions did not impress other researchers. One problem was self-selection. His identical twins had known each other for an average of nearly two years before contacting him; some had known each other as young children; and it seems likely that those who were most alike were most likely to contact him. Kamin, the professor who rumbled Burt’s fraudulent studies, and his colleague said there was pressure on the twins to come up with cute stories, and that Bouchard’s studies had ‘a number of serious problems in the design, reporting, and analyses’.

“THE Myth OF MIRRORED TWINS,” AEON, JUNE 27, 2023

What Is It About Twins?

Is there something existential about twins that draws (and maybe, skews) research? Evans thinks so:

Much of the magic evaporates when we lift the lid on the sensational tales of parallel lives. What emerges in place of this seductive mirror myth of the hidden double are more mundane tales of everyday difference, revealing the unique selfhood that is part of the inheritance of all people — including those with genetic doppelgängers.

“THE MYTH OF MIRRORED TWINS,”. AEON, JUNE 27, 2023

Yes, it seems we are all condemned to just be ourselves, even if we are one of a set of twins.

Yet more on tiny houses

 

Merodach: the Watchtower society's Commentary

 MERODACH

Insight on the scriptures

The Hebrew form for Marduk, the most important Babylonian god, whose downfall was foretold to coincide with Babylon’s overthrow.—Jer 50:2.

The Babylonian Kings Merodach-baladan (Isa 39:1) and Evil-merodach (2Ki 25:27) were undoubtedly named after this god. With the rise of Babylon to prominence, because of King Hammurabi’s making it the capital of Babylonia, Merodach likewise increased in importance. The attributes of earlier gods came to be assigned to him, and it is thought that the Babylonian priests altered the mythological accounts to make Merodach the slayer of Tiamat and the creator of the world and of man. Babylonian texts identify Marduk (Merodach) as the son of Ea (the god presiding over the watery element), the consort of Sarpanitu, and the father of Nebo.

The kingship over Babylon was closely associated with the image of Merodach at his temple, Esagila, for the rulers of Babylon were not installed by coronation but became kings by taking hold of the hand of Merodach. The ceremony was repeated each year at the New Year’s festival. Even during the time that Assyria controlled Babylonia, the kings of Assyria were required to come to the city of Babylon each year for the New Year’s festival and legalize their claim to the throne by taking hold of Merodach’s hand.

Jeremiah the prophet, with respect to Babylon’s fall, foretold that Merodach would “become terrified.” This came true in the sense that Merodach proved to be unable to preserve the dignity of the Babylonian World Power, and since the conquerors of Babylon were worshipers of other deities, his future became very uncertain, filled with foreboding.—Jer 50:2; 

Ancient humans and the case for devolution/revolution.

 Our Ancestors Are Evolving, Just to Keep Up!

Denyse O Leary

Recently, archeologists came up with an interesting find from 30,000 years ago in what is now Moravia, part of the Czech Republic: Ravens lived among humans.

over 30,000 years ago, during the Pavlovian culture, ravens helped themselves to people’s scraps and picked over mammoth carcasses left behind by human hunters.

Ravens live in human settlements today, of course, with one notable difference:

The archeologists from the University of Tübingen and the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution noted that “The large number of raven bones found at the sites suggests that the birds, in turn, were a supplementary source of food, and may have become important in the culture and worldview of these people.”

UNIVERSITY OF TÜBINGEN, “RAVENS IN PREHISTORY: SCIENTISTS UNEARTH A 30,000-YEAR-OLD RELATIONSHIP WITH HUMANS,” SCITECHDAILY, JUNE 29, 2023. ONE OF THE PAPERS IS OPEN ACCESS.

Today we barbecue chickens instead of ravens…

Famed for Their Smarts

We are also told, “Ravens have a very wide food spectrum, and are curious and flexible in their behavior.” They are also famous for their intelligence. One consequence is that they likely figured in the culture of that day, as the researchers suggest, just as they do in many modern cultures. But this is a much more complex picture of an early society than we are accustomed to hearing about.

Another recent find has been Neanderthal cave engravings from 57,000 years ago:

Research in recent decades has revealed a great deal about the cultural complexity of Neanderthals. However, relatively little is known about their symbolic or artistic expression. Only a short list of symbolic productions are attributed to Neanderthals, and the interpretation of these is often the subject of debate. In this study, Marquet and colleagues identified markings on a cave wall in France as the oldest known Neanderthal engravings… Based on the shape, spacing, and arrangement of these engravings, the team concluded that they are deliberate, organized and intentional shapes created by human hands.

PUBLIC LIBRARY OF SCIENCE, “NEANDERTHAL CAVE ENGRAVINGS IDENTIFIED AS OLDEST KNOWN, MORE THAN 57,000 YEARS OLD,” PHYS.ORG, JUNE 21, 2023. THE PAPER IS OPEN ACCESS.

Some of us can remember when Neanderthal artwork was an “academic Bombshell.”

Why a Bombshell?

Because materialists need to maintain the idea that the human mind arises purely from animal instincts. That’s hard to establish unless researchers can find human forms with less-than-human minds. Therefore some group must be co-opted into the role. And, while many of us have Neanderthal genes, Neanderthals no longer exist as a separate group. So they can’t lobby against such treatment.

Nonetheless, the weight of evidence will eventually force a confrontation with a stark fact: The human mind has no evolutionary history. It appears suddenly and invents technologies with increasing speed over time. More than that we don’t really know and maybe can’t know. The history was made up, not dug up.

For some, it’s a hard swallow. As paleobiologist Rui Diogo, associate professor at Howard University, notes, negative biases of all kinds about our forebears have long been part of science, education, and popular culture.

One example of how biased narratives are still present in science today is the numerous depictions of human evolution as a linear trend from darker and more “primitive” human beings to more “evolved” ones with a lighter skin tone. Natural history museums, websites, and UNESCO heritage sites have all shown this trend.

RUI DIOGO, “HOW POWER PERVADES PORTRAYALS OF HUMAN EVOLUTION,” SAPIENS, 20 JUN 2023.

David Coppedge made the same Observation — about evolution as a “path to whiteness” — at Evolution News back in 2021.

Professor Diogo quite properly singles out racist and sexist portrayals. But an overarching theme has been the need to promote the idea of a gradual development of human-like intelligence. As it happens, ancestors way stupider than their descendants are just not what paleontologists have been digging up. And histories that are made up rather than dug up tend to collapse.

Black history month a brief history.

 

Even yet more primeval tech vs. Darwinism.

 How the “Other” ATP Synthase Saves the Planet

David Coppedge

ATP synthase has been featured here many times because of its exquisite rotary mechanism and efficient operation. Viewers of animations like ours on YouTube usually need little convincing that it looks designed. And when they learn more details, like its 6,000-rpm speed, its crankshaft, and three-part ATP manufacturing center, the intuition becomes difficult to dislodge, even when evolutionists insist it emerged by chance. It’s a well-deserved icon of intelligent design.

The one most often referred to is the F-type of ATP synthase shown in the video. But there’s another one — the V-type ATPase — that is no less wondrous. It looks similar to the F-type, but V-type ATPases (let’s call them VHA) work in reverse: instead of using the proton motive force generated by the electron transport chain to manufacture ATP, they spend the ATP “energy currency” molecules to pump protons into organelles, thereby increasing the acidity. They are often found on the membranes of vacuoles that need H+ ions to lower the pH for phagocytosis or other types of digestive or recycling functions. Scientists have now shown they are more widely distributed in the cell than thought.

Our body cells contain both types of ATPase. But why do I say that these VHA rotary engines save the planet? A report by Daniel P. Yee in Current Biology tells the story. 

 It Begins in the Ocean

Diatoms, dinoflagellates, and coccolithophores are dominant groups of marine eukaryotic phytoplankton that are collectively responsible for the majority of primary production in the ocean.

Primary production represents the bottom of the food chain, on which higher organisms depend. Photosynthetic microbes in the ocean are the major players. For present purposes, we can ignore the authors’ evolutionary story about how these marine microbes obtained their VHAs by some “selective advantage.” It suffices to focus on what the molecular machines do: 

Since intracellular digestive vacuoles are ubiquitously acidified by V-type H+-ATPase (VHA), proton pumps were proposed to acidify the microenvironment around secondary chloroplasts to promote the dehydration of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) into CO2, thus enhancing photosynthesis.

We report that VHA is localized around the chloroplasts of centric diatoms and that VHA significantly contributes to their photosynthesis across a wide range of oceanic irradiances.

More photosynthesis means more primary production, and more support for a diverse biosphere.

Based on the contribution of diatoms to ocean biogeochemical cycles, VHA-mediated enhancement of photosynthesis contributes at least 3.5 Gtons of fixed carbon per year (or 7% of primary production in the ocean), providing an example of a symbiosis-derived evolutionary innovation with global environmental implications.

Once again, the evolutionary tale is non-essential for the surprising implication: all life benefits from the enhancement of photosynthesis provided by VHA molecular motors in diatoms. The 7 percent number is undoubtedly much higher if the other dominant groups of marine phytoplankton are factored in. Additional tests showed the research team that similar VHA-mediated enhancement of photosynthesis occurs in coccolithophores, dinoflagellates, and probably in all photosynthetic organisms.

The paper’s diagram of VHA in Figure 2 looks almost identical to the F-type ATP synthase except for the direction of proton (H+ ion) flow. Both types could be described by ID proponents as irreducibly complex molecular engines based on the parts list alone:

The VHA is a holoenzyme protein complex that is composed of 16 subunits, with a membrane spanning V0-domain and cytosolic facing catalytic V1-domain (Figure 2A). Transcriptomic analysis of synchronized cultures of T. pseudonana [a centric diatom] demonstrated constitutive mRNA expression of all VHA subunits, suggesting that VHA is important throughout the cell cycle (Figure 2B). However, the VHA holoenzyme can have multiple subcellular localizations and functions.

While the familiar F-type ATP synthase is localized to the mitochondria (in animals) or chloroplasts (in photosynthetic microbes and plants), V-types are found in other subcellular locations. They perform more functions due to their proton-pumping action that can adjust pH of their surroundings. This has made them difficult to study. A few functions are known.

But How Many Others Are There?

In diatoms, VHA has been reported in the membranes of vacuoles, chloroplast endoplasmic reticulum (cER), and silica deposition vesicles (SDVs), where it is strictly required for biomineralization of the silica cell wall and cell division. The complexity and functional versatility of VHA are challenges for genetic manipulation approaches that would constitutively destabilize multiple physiological functions and confound phenotypic interpretation. They also rule out the use of transcriptomics to infer the physiological role(s) of VHA, as these analyses cannot not provide information about the subcellular localization of the VHA holoenzyme.

The authors were excited about another implication of their discovery: carbon sequestration. Because VHA machines substantially enhance photosynthesis, it means more carbon is converted into CO2 which the chloroplast needs for sugar synthesis. The slight pH decrease provided by the VHA proton pumps changes the chemistry to favor CO2 production, which would be bad; but simultaneously, it creates a gradient that favors moving the CO2 into the chloroplast instead of into the cytoplasm where it would escape into the atmosphere. As a result, more oxygen is released by photosynthesis, less CO2 is released into the atmosphere during photosynthesis, and when the diatoms die and fall to the ocean floor, they take the solid carbon with them. V-type ATPases thus perform another global function for the biosphere: a carbon-concentrating mechanism (CCM).

VHA is a universal feature of eukaryotic cells and is present in a number of organelles, including endosomes, phagosomes, macropinosomes, lysosomes, Golgi, and melanosomes. Since VHA invariably acidifies the lumen of each of these organelles to pH ≤ 6, we deduce that VHA in the cER/PP membranes of T. pseudonana must accomplish a similar effect. This is significant, because at pH ≤ 6.3, the majority of DIC [dissolved inorganic carbon] equilibrates to CO2. Hence, we propose that VHA promotes CO2 accumulation in the microenvironment external to the chloroplast. Consistent with model simulations of DIC fluxes in the diatom CCM, some of the CO2 would diffuse back into the cytoplasm (pH ∼ 7.2). However, the higher pH in the chloroplast stroma (pH ∼ 8.15) establishes a more favorable partial pressure gradient for CO2 diffusion into this compartment (Figure S3B). The next steps follow the established CCM of microalgae. In the stroma, CO2is immediately hydrated into HCO3− under catalysis by carbonic anhydrase, which is shuttled into the thylakoid lumen where pH is ≤ 6 due to H+ pumping associated with photosynthetic electron transport chain. At the acidic pH, HCO3− dehydrates into CO2 and diffuses into the pyrenoid matrix, saturating RuBisCo to maximize carbon fixation rates.

A Remarkable Synergy

This shows a remarkable synergy of molecular machines and chemistry in a highly localized microenvironment. VHAs acidify the chloroplast exterior, helping carbonic anhydrase use the excess CO2 to produce more bicarbonate ions. The pH gradient favors these negative ions to flow toward the proton motive force being generated by the electron transport chain (Complexes I-IV) that are powering the F-type ATP synthase motors (Complex V). As the bicarbonate ions dehydrate back to CO2 where the pH drops inside the chloroplast, they saturate Rubisco enzymes that convert the CO2 into nutrients for life. 

Notice this careful pH-mediated series of delicate chemical reactions. Within this microenvironment, CO2 gets utilized where needed, but is not released into the atmosphere. The products of Rubisco favor carbon compounds that will get buried in the ocean floor. The result? A carbon-concentrating mechanism that helps the atmosphere gain more oxygen but less carbon dioxide, while enriching the biosphere with nutrients. VHA, the “other” ATP synthase, saves the planet! VHA should be seen as a key player in the carbon cycle, the oxygen cycle, the food chain, and the climate. 

Nearly Unrestrained Wonder

The authors can hardly restrain their wonder at all this:

In summary, O2 production, 13C-NanoSIMS, and 14C-P-E measurements demonstrated that VHA significantly contributes to photosynthetic carbon fixation that is retained as biomass. Given that diatoms contribute nearly 50% of carbon fixation in the ocean, the component of photosynthesis that depends on VHA represents between ∼7% and 25% of oceanic primary production, or between 3.5 and 13.5 Gtons of fixed carbon per year (Table S3). These numbers can only increase after accounting for VHA-mediated photosynthesis in other secondary endosymbiotic phytoplankton (Figure 1) and photosymbiotic invertebrates. In addition, diatoms constitute about half of the biomass that sinks into the ocean’s interior. Based on our measurements of the contribution of VHA on both gross and net productivity in diatoms, VHA-mediated carbon fixation is poised to significantly contribute to the biological pump that shuttles organic carbon to the ocean’s interiorand, on a geologic time scale, to the biomass buried in the continental margin that formed fossil fuel deposits. Even by the most conservative estimate, the cooption of VHA for the enhancement of photosynthesis is a symbiosis-derived evolutionary innovation with global environmental implications.

Some future day, when biologists finally admit that evolution is incapable of innovation of complex finely tuned cooperative systems, all scientists will marvel at the intelligent design that gives us air to breathe and edible carbon to ingest under a moderate climate. Some of us are ahead of that time.

The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia: a brief history.

 

A clash of Titans again

 

Yet another clash of Titans.

 

Juneteenth a brief history.