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Only design can explain folding proteins

SCIENCE | Evolutionists struggle to account for intricate cellular processes

by Julie Borg
Posted 6/29/17, 12:14 pm

Proteins, found in every cell of the human body, are the building blocks of life. There are thousands of different types of proteins but all are made up of long chains of amino acids. When a protein forms, the amino acid chain folds into a three-dimensional shape that determines the protein’s function. Each type of protein has its own unique shape and folds into the exact same shape each time.

Scientists have never known how and why proteins fold the way they do. Now, in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, two biophysicists attempt to explain how random chance could have evolved into this intricate folding system. The paper is just one more example of evolutionary scientists refusing to acknowledge God’s handiwork no matter how obvious it may be.

Intelligent Design experts writing on the Evolution News & Science Today blog note several difficulties with attributing the intricacies of protein folding to evolution.

Not all chains of amino acids fold—in fact most don’t. If protein folding happened by chance, the random process would have had to search all the possible combinations of amino acid sequences to find which ones would fold, a feat so improbable arriving at just one fold would “likely never occur in multiple universes.”

The evolutionist researchers acknowledged getting a large amino acid chain to fold by random chance would be too hard, so they hypothesized small chains of amino acids, called foldons, could fold a little bit and perhaps make it easier for proteins, composed of a number of foldons, to find their proper fold by chance.

But all the researchers have done is displace the problem of how amino acid sequences can fold by chance to how foldons can fold by chance, the blog writers said. “It is still radically improbable to arrive at a sequence that will produce a functional protein without design,” they wrote.

The researchers concluded “some additional mechanism” is needed for proteins to fold properly. Perhaps someday they will acknowledge the creator as that additional mechanism.

NOAAThe Venus basket sea sponge

Engineers marvel at bendable glass made by sea sponge

Researchers at Brown University have discovered yet one more example of a natural structure in creation that is the envy of human engineers. Scientists have marveled at how the Venus’ flower basket sea sponge can remain firmly fixed to the ocean’s floor, held there by nothing more than small strands of glass.

Now, in a study published the Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials, researchers reveal the internal architecture of the glass strands, thin hair-like spicules half the diameter of a human hair, keep the sponge clinging to the seabed.

The spicules are highly bendable and contain a central silica (glass) core encased with 25 thin glass cylinders. A cross section of the assemblage resembles the rings in a tree trunk. When the researchers compared the spicules of the Venus’ flower basket with those of a sponge that does not have the tree-ring architecture, the Venus’ flower basket’s spicules were able to bend 2.4 times further before breaking.

The consistency of the spicules’ pattern, in which the concentric rings gradually decrease in thickness from the center toward the outside, also intrigued the scientists. “It looked like a figure from a math book,” researcher Haneesh Kesari said in a statement.

The researchers hope a better understanding of the architecture of the Venus’ flower basket will help engineers develop new human-made materials. —J.B.

https://world.wng.org/content/only_design_can_explain_folding_proteins

Categories: Articole de interes general