Episode Transcript
[00:00:12] Welcome to faith and science. I'm Dr. John Ashton.
[00:00:17] Recently I had to replace the clothesline cord on our clothes line at home for my wife. And so we bought a length of cord that was coiled up in a particular way. How it was laid out wasn't just sort of a circular coil, it was elongated and had a little bit of a twist to it. So just after starting actually dropped this and you wouldn't believe it, somehow it became really tangled. I thought, man, this is just folded up. It should just have all just very neatly pulled out. As we sort of went the put the cord around this rotary clothesline. But no, it took us ages to untangle this. And it reminded me that it's amazing that the DNA code actually has its own detangling machine or little motor that prevents this amazing long polymer molecule from becoming tangled.
[00:01:38] And it's quite interesting how this works. And for me, this is overwhelming evidence for superior intelligent design. You see, all of us, all living creatures, contain many incredible machines that are operating within the living systems. So, as well as an instruction manual, which is the DNA code, the DNA molecule, which is a molecule that encodes information, that is the instruction manual to build them. And of course, as I've explained in programs before, this manual or code comprises sequences of chemical letters which scientifically are called nucleotides in the famous DNA molecule deoxyribonucleic acid.
[00:02:43] And so these letters are arranged just as information in a book is written with the letters on the page. And it was interesting, I read an article a few years ago by Dr. Jonathan Safati, who is a chemist as well. He wrote a very interesting article that was published in the journal Creation back in 2018. If anyone's interested in looking it up, it's volume 40, number one. And from pages 24 on, and he gave it the title God's DNA and Detangling Motors. And it's actually an article about the top isomera's enzymes which operate within the DNA.
[00:03:44] And it's a really, really good article. Some amazing diagrams there. You see, the DNA's physical dimensions are really long molecule, a really long polymer composed of these helical coils interwoven and joined together along the way.
[00:04:14] And because it's so long, it actually constitutes quite a lot of problems. So in order to fit it into a tiny space, it has to be coiled up. And this double helix is very, very narrow.
[00:04:34] It's about two and a half nanometers wide. And a nanometer, of course, is a 10th of a millionth of an inch wide.
[00:04:45] And so it's a little bit too thin to be seen with any light microscope. But the whole DNA molecule is actually extremely long. And the largest human chromosome, number one, has about 220,000,000 letters in it. And so it would be about, even though it's only two and a half nanometers wide, it would be about 85 mm long or eight and a half centimeters long if we actually stretch this molecule out. So when you think about it, it's amazing. Now, this is just one chromosome, 220,000,000 letters, and if all the DNA in a cell, one of our cells were lined up, it would be about 2 meters long, bit over 2 meters long. So these are enormously, long, thin, sticky strands that must be packed into a microscopic cell. Now, our cells are so tiny and yet this DNA is packed in there. So it's all coiled up.
[00:06:06] And it also then the fact that this DNA is there isn't all coiled up. And if we're going to have to make copies of parts of this DNA and this sort of thing, because the cell needs to be able to read this DNA and yet to have it all coiled up in there and yet accessible without them becoming tangled is an amazing there's an amazing system in place that enables this to happen. And so the cell actually needs quite complex machines to do all this. And I think, as point out in the Dr. Savati's article, these machines are amazing testimony to the absolute brilliant genius of our creator. And for me, for biologists to continue to teach that these amazing machines arose by blind chance random mutations of lifeless molecules coming together and forming these machines that are essential for life, for the DNA to work for them. To continue to teach that this happened just by random blind mutations, just really astounds me because the evidence is so obvious that we have a supernatural creator. We have a brilliant mind behind these systems.
[00:07:47] When DNA is decoded, that's when the information is used to create a protein. And of course, there's a copy made. Well, I guess let me go back. The two strands of the double hulex have to actually be separated and during reproduction, each strand is copied independently. Matter of fact, there's a brilliant video that shows this animation that shows this that is on the Walter Eliza Hall Institute website. You can google it if it would be wihigh W-E-I DNA replication.
[00:08:34] So if you Google something like that, there should be a YouTube video comes up that shows this amazing DNA replication system where the two coils are separated. One coil is copied one way. The other coil has to be then reversed and done in loops and then passed into the ribosome, which can make or makes the messenger RNA, which passes into the ribosome, which then reads the code and assembles the amino. Acids that come in and assembles them to make the protein according to the instructions in the code and to enable these to be copied.
[00:09:20] You can see this in the video.
[00:09:24] There's also some videos about the topyisomase enzyme, particularly system Two enzyme, system Two and replication, its amazing untangling properties. If you Google that too, there'll be on YouTube videos demonstrating these amazing animations, demonstrating how these amazing untangling machines work.
[00:09:54] They require special motors called DNA helicases.
[00:09:59] These are ring shaped with a hole for the DNA to actually pass through. But since they're motors, they also need fuel. And helicases are powered by a fuel called ATP, which is made by another motor ATP synthase.
[00:10:18] Using ATP as an energy source, a cyclic change in shape runs around the helicase ring at about 10,000 rpm. And this is pointed out in the Walter Eliza Hall YouTube video.
[00:10:38] It's particularly good that it revs at the speed of a jet engine.
[00:10:44] And the water. Eliza Hall Institute, by the way, is one of the research institutes associated with the University of Melbourne in Australia.
[00:10:54] So it's a really good animation to watch.
[00:11:02] And the DNA's helical or coiled shape produces another problem that is amplified when the helicase unwinds it to separate the strands. So you can easily demonstrate the problem with a long multistranded rope. If you start in the middle and try to pull the strands apart, it'll soon become too hard to unwind because of the resistance of the extra twists on both sides of the separation point. And if you let go, the rope will tend to coil back on itself and sort of like the if you remember the old telephone coils when you sort of often after a while, they become tangled into coils upon coils.
[00:11:50] So it's interesting to compensate for every added twist in the forward direction, the DNA behind the unwinding site adds a twist and also becomes super coiled or overwhelmed. Now, in a cell, if the DNA were prevented from unwinding, then the cell would no longer make proteins or be able to copy itself.
[00:12:16] And so it's interesting that God solved this problem in living creatures with a special protein machines and enzymes called topoisomerases. And they cut the DNA, rearrange it and then stick it back together. And they must work ahead of the replication fork to keep the DNA from overwinding. Now, it's hard to explain this without a diagram, but there's some very good diagrams, as I said in the article by Dr. Jonathan Sarfati in Creation 2018. So again, if you went on to creation.com and just googled in God's DNA detangling motors, you can read the article there and again. If you google that under YouTube videos, then again, videos explaining these amazing machines will come up. Of course, there's several classes of these topoisomerases and there's two main types. The type one cuts one of the DNA strands and temporarily bonds both ends of the cut. Then the uncut strand is free to pass through the brake. Now, in either case, this relieves or relaxes the strain one twist at a time. And finally, the brake is reconnected, called ligation.
[00:14:03] And it's interesting, these type one top, rosymarases isomerases rather don't need ATP.
[00:14:15] The energy built up by the DNA's over winding is simply released like a coil spring when they let go. But the type two topoisomerases are more complex. Now and these are the ones it's very interesting to watch the DVD animation of how they work. This type cuts both strands of the double helix and holds them apart. And then it pulls a loop of the double helix from a non cut section through the break. After that, the two strands are reconnected and the pass through section of DNA is released. And finally the enzyme releases the reconnected DNA so the process can be repeated as necessary.
[00:15:04] And this is really clearly demonstrated in the Wihigh DNA replication animation.
[00:15:14] It's amazing to watch in my view.
[00:15:18] Now, these type two topoisomerases are important for another reason. When DNA is replicated, sometimes the two daughter DNA molecules can end up wound around each other like links in a chain. And thus separating these link molecules is called decatenation. And this is a very important role for the type two topoisomerase.
[00:15:52] It's interesting, these enzymes or little molecular machines must do three things, otherwise they'd be useless or even harmful.
[00:16:04] They cut, move another strand through the cut and reconnect. Now, each step is really important. If one step is disabled, the enzyme doesn't work and the cell dies.
[00:16:18] So here again, we have an example of how the system can't really evolve. You need the complete system, you need the whole setup for all those processes in place and these sort of systems where you need a complete system to work or else the whole system doesn't, the whole organism will die.
[00:16:44] And examples of where these systems are actually quite complex, they all have to be in place together, otherwise nothing works. Again, is powerful evidence against this whole concept that random blind chemical mutations can produce this amazing complexity. It can't, because you'd have to have all these mutations occurring all at once at the same time, otherwise the system is going to die, it's not going to work.
[00:17:14] And it's interesting, for example, that some antibacterial and anticancer drugs work by targeting topoisomerases.
[00:17:27] There's a class of antibiotics called Fluoroquinones that stop the reconnecting step of the bacterial type two topoesomerases and that leads to increasing breaks in the DNA and that quickly cell kills the little bacteria cell.
[00:17:54] Similarly, some anticancer drugs do the same thing to type one and type two topoesomerases in the cancer cells that were reproducing out of control. So these help kill those cells.
[00:18:15] So we can see this is a classic example where you need a complete system working. If you have a bit of a problem in that system, the cell dies. So these are major issues for the theory of evolution that I know of, no explanation where they can get round this. And the evidence is so obvious now, now that we know so much more about the biochemistry of cells and of course we're learning more every day, just about the complexity of living systems in plants, bacteria, animals and so forth, that it points, all this information points to an amazing supernatural designer. And for our young people to continue to be taught that we evolve from monkeys, that these systems evolve, that there isn't a God, where in actual fact we have all this evidence pointing to God right there.
[00:19:23] And that's just published in the literature.
[00:19:27] There's another class of drug, actually called catalytic inhibitors, that prevent the ATP energy release and so work by stopping the first step of the cutting. Instead of the cell dying by its DNA being ripped to pieces, the DNA just gets tangled up so that the cell can either reproduce or make proteins. So here we see that again. Just eliminating one step destroys the cell.
[00:19:58] And there are so many of these steps in the biological systems, even in simple organisms like single cell bacteria.
[00:20:09] And as Dr. Safadi points out he points out, clearly random chemical reactions in pre life conditions could not produce the first cell by small, gradual steps, each with a supposed advantage over the previous one and thus favored by natural selection. He writes Suppose this process produced an enzyme with the first step cutting without putting it back together. This would harm the cell by chopping its information molecule into pieces.
[00:20:40] And then he goes on but it's even worse for evolution. Natural selection is, by definition, differential reproduction. That is, A is fitter than creature. B means that A has to have more surviving offspring than B. Therefore, natural selection requires at least two self replicating entities. This means that it can't explain the origin of replication because you cannot reproduce until you have a way to replicate the DNA. And as he points out, as we've seen with Toposymarases osomerases, the DNA can't be replicated because it would tangle up too quickly. Since natural selection can't explain the origin of the first Topoisomerase, darwinian evolution cannot even get started.
[00:21:34] And he sits down and explains it so clearly, logically.
[00:21:45] One of the other fascinating things is, of course, that the instructions to build Topoisomerases are on the DNA. But these instructions can't be read without Topoisomerases to detangle the DNA. And this is like the classic ribosome as well. The DNA is useless without a ribosome. The amazing code reader. And of course the ribosome is amazing molecular machine with over 300,000 atoms in its structure that have to be assembled. And the instructions to assemble it are in the DNA.
[00:22:25] And yet the DNA is useless. And you can't assemble unless you have a ribosome. To me, this is just overwhelming clear evidence that life is supernatural. We were created. The Bible clearly talks about how God created us. God created the living organisms. He created the plants as living organisms. He created the birds and the sea creatures and the animals and us humans. He created us as living creatures.
[00:22:59] He set up these systems, and that's the only way it's going to work.
[00:23:07] Even the simplest type two Topoisomerase, has 800 protein letters or amino acids split between two segments 800 of these have to be organized. It takes three DNA letters to code for one protein letter. So the gene for this is about two and a half or 2400 letters long.
[00:23:35] And again, it's too large to be read without detangling.
[00:23:41] So again, just even the DNA of the smallest living organism that we know, mycoplasma genitalium, which has the smallest genome of any living organism is far too large for it to just form by chance without these code mechanisms. There DNA is probably well that clearly is the most advanced information storage receivable transmission system known. The information density in living cells DNA is, some people have calculated around 1000 terabytes per cubic millimeter.
[00:24:32] And so a living cell can store an enormous amount of information in tiny space.
[00:24:41] It's absolutely amazing.
[00:24:45] And it's interesting that the information stored in a human cell, if it was written on paper and ink, would occupy about 1000 Bible sized books.
[00:25:04] So you can see it's a huge amount of information that's stored in this amazing system that again and yet it's so clear that we have these amazing complex, well designed machines that cut, move and reconnect the DNA and without them reproduction is impossible. Is just clear evidence that Darwinian evolution involving random mutations and natural selection could not have produced these systems.
[00:25:45] So we have this overwhelming evidence for the existence of our creator God. And there's so many other examples of that and the biblical account of creation just makes so much sense in the light of the biochemistry that we now have.
[00:26:03] You've been listening to faith and science and remember, if you want to relisten to these programs, just google 3abnaustralia.org.au and click on the radio listen button. And I would like to encourage you to share links to these programs and these talks with your friends to put them up on your own social media pages so that more people can become aware of the overwhelming evidence that we have that we were formed not by random blind mutations, but by a loving creator God. Remember, there are many other programs in this series if you go back that you can listen to. There's also the television program evolution impossible. If you go to the television catch up pages on Three ABN. And also there is science conversations as well another radio program that's available where I discuss with a colleague the evidence that I put forward in my book Evolution Impossible. And also we'll put up links to a couple of YouTube videos that demonstrate the amazing DNA replication process and also the amazing role of topoisomerase two as these scientific animations that have been prepared. So those links will be put up in the descriptors for the program and the podcasts.
[00:28:00] I'm Dr. John Ashton. Have a great day.
[00:28:19] You've been listening to a production of Three ABN, Australia radio.
