bilo je price o prirodnim motorima, pa reko da postavim sta kazu neki ucenjaci o tome
Rotary motors in the bacterial flagellum
Scientific American cites another difficult example of irreducible complexity—the rotary motors on bacterial flagellum, but it really has no answers.
15. Recent discoveries prove that even at the microscopic level life has a quality of complexity that could not have come about through evolution.
‘Irreducible complexity’ is the battle cry of Michael J. Behe of Lehigh University, author of Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution. As a household example of irreducible complexity, Behe chooses the mousetrap—a machine that could not function if any of its pieces were missing and whose pieces have no value except as parts of the whole.
What is true of the mousetrap, he says, is even truer of the bacterial flagellum, a whiplike cellular organelle used for propulsion that operates like an outboard motor. The proteins that make up a flagellum are uncannily arranged into motor components, a universal joint, and other structures like those that a human engineer might specify. The possibility that this intricate array could have arisen through evolutionary modification is virtually nil, Behe argues, and that bespeaks intelligent design. [SA 84]
Indeed, it does (see diagram below).
Bacterial flagellum with rotary motor, with the following features:
•Self assembly and repair
•Water-cooled rotary engine
•Proton motive force drive system
•Forward and reverse gears
•Operating speeds of up to 100,000 rpm
•Direction reversing capability within 1/4 of a turn
•Hard-wired signal transduction system with short-term memory
He makes similar points about the blood’s clotting mechanism and other molecular systems.
Yet evolutionary biologists have answers to these objections. First, there exist flagellae with forms simpler than the one that Behe cites, so it is not necessary for all those components to be present for a flagellum to work. The sophisticated components of this flagellum all have precedents elsewhere in nature, as described by Kenneth R. Miller of Brown University and others. [SA 84]
Miller is hardly the epitome of reliability. Behe has also responded to critics such as Miller.7
In fact, the entire flagellum assembly is extremely similar to an organelle that Yersinia pestis, the bubonic plague bacterium, uses to inject toxins into cells. [SA 84]
This actually comes from the National Center for Science Education’s misuses of the research of Dr Scott Minnich, a geneticist and associate professor of microbiology at the University of Idaho. He is a world-class expert on the flagellum who says that belief in design has given him many research insights. His research shows that the flagellum won’t form above 37°C, and instead some secretory organelles form from the same set of genes. But this secretory apparatus, as well as the plague bacterium’s drilling apparatus, are a degeneration from the flagellum, which Minnich says came first although it is more complex.8
The key is that the flagellum’s component structures, which Behe suggests have no value apart from their role in propulsion, can serve multiple functions that would have helped favor their evolution. [SA 84]
Actually, what Behe says he means by irreducible complexity is that the flagellum could not work without about 40 protein components all organized in the right way. Scientific American’s argument is like claiming that if the components of an electric motor already exist in an electrical shop, they could assemble by themselves into a working motor. However, the right organization is just as important as the right components.
The final evolution of the flagellum might then have involved only the novel recombination of sophisticated parts that initially evolved for other purposes. [SA 84]
Minnich points out that only about 10 of the 40 components can be explained by co-option, but the other 30 are brand new. Also, the very process of assembly in the right sequence requires other regulatory machines, so is in itself irreducibly complex.9
7.Behe responds to various critics <www.trueorigin.org/behe08.asp>
8.See Scott Minnich, Bacterial Flagella: Spinning Tails of Complexity and Co-Option <www.idurc.org/yale-minnich.html>
9.Unlocking the Mysteries of Life, video, Illustra Media, 2002.