An
announcement was made recently by the University of Minnesota with the
following headline: “First Artificial Enzyme Created by Evolution in a Test
Tube.”[1] Do
you see something wrong with that headline? Read it again, I’ll give you a
minute. OK, here’s the rub as Shakespeare would say. If the enzyme is
“Artificial” (made by human beings rather than being found in nature) and if it
was “Created” (caused to exist by means of a designer/creator), then it
certainly did not evolve on its own!
The
U. of M. announcement states that Burckhard Seelig and a team at the university
used “directed evolution” to create a new functional enzyme. The article states
that there is a new biochemical structure that may resemble what enzymes looked
like billions of years ago back in the “Land that Time Forgot.” The study
further declares that directed evolution should be distinguished from rational
evolution. Rational evolution suggests a preconceived plan, but directed
evolution is very different (so they say).
Rational
enzyme design begins with a preconceived idea of what the new enzyme should
look like and how it should work. But directed evolution involves producing a
large number of candidate proteins and then screening a number of generations
to produce one with the desired function. Wait…all this thinking is making me
sweat. Let me take off my lab coat and think this through for a minute.
Have you got your thinking cap on? OK: proteins were “screened” to “produce” one with a “desired function.”
Isn’t screening something to produce a desired function a rational design? I
know, I only have a B.S. in Theatre/Speech and another degree in Theology, but
the U. of M, study wants us to think that this enzyme came into existence by
neo-Darwinian evolution—and me thinks not!
The
article goes on to say, “To my knowledge, our enzyme is the only entirely artificial
enzyme created in a test tube by simply following the principles of natural
selection and evolution." Give me a break! This is not “natural
selection and evolution. This is artificial selection—a form of intelligent
design; the same type of intelligent design that one uses when making different
varieties of roses, dogs, apples or any other type of organism for a “desired
function.” It really doesn’t matter (I don’t think; I could be wrong) whether
you create a random pool of organisms to choose from or you follow a planned
design of steps: “selection” by a scientist’s “mind” is intelligent design. Am
I wrong? If the scientists were really allowing the principles of natural
selection and evolution to work they would have cast the biochemical matter out
into the world, gone out for pizza and let nature do its work.
The
U. of M team leader, Seelig, said of his work “It’s kind of like giving
typewriters to monkeys. One monkey and one typewriter won’t produce anything
clever. But if you have enough monkeys and typewriters, eventually one of them
will write ‘to be or not to be’.” Oh, I see. I wonder if that’s how the
“Curious George” series of books came to be? Actually, I read somewhere that
when monkeys were given typewriters they urinated on the key boards and broke
the machines. Besides that, his analogy is very misleading. Seelig began with a desired
result; the monkeys don’t care what they write.
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