Episode Transcript
Welcome to Faith and Science. I'm Dr. John Ashton.
One of the areas that has attracted a lot of attention recently is the microbiome, and that essentially a name for all the different types of bacteria that live in our digestive system. And we are discovering now that these bacteria can be responsible for a lot of health benefits or illnesses, and hence a lot of research is being done on identifying, trying to understand which are the best bacteria for us to have. And then of course, a lot of food companies are getting on the bandwagon and advertising eat their product for gut health and so forth.
And we know that dietary fibre plays an important part, all the different types of food, and it seems that the greater the variety of plant based food that we eat each day, the healthier our microbiome is likely to be. And we have talk about prebiotics too. That's all.
The dietary fibre and the probiotics are the different type of bacteria. But one of the common bacteria that is in our digestive system is e coli or in our bowel. And of course there can be bad types of e coli can evolve and these can be result in food poisoning.
But this is a very common bacteria that makes up large proportion of our faeces and it's one of the bacteria that's been quite extensively studied, its genome was worked out and it's quite complex. It's this little bacteria which is single celled organism, no nucleus, and it contains over 4000, 4288 genes are involved in the coordinating the structure of this little bacterium, which means that the total base pairs of nucleotides in the DNA is around 4.6 million.
So it's a huge amount of genetic information just to encode this little bacteria. There are 131 genes involved in processing amino acids. And so this is one of the important roles of bacteria in helping to break down some of our food and metabolise some two amino acids that then our body can use.
And I know at the University of Newcastle for a number of years, they were doing a lot of research in the area of chronic fatigue syndrome to try and look at ways that they could help people with this particular syndrome. And one of the areas that they were looking at was, and made certainly some progress in, was looking at the types of amino acids that bacteria seemed to be involved in producing for the body and using these particular amino acids to ameliorate the symptoms of chronic fatigue. If we look at just the cofactors that are involved in biosynthesis, there's 103 genes.
So these are 103 pieces of specific different specific codes that are required for this function. Just the envelope of the cell involves 195 genes. So 195 sets of genetic information are required just to construct the envelope surrounding the cell which protects it.
We got 188 genes involved in cellular processes. We got another round. 188 genes involved in metabolism, 243 involved in energy metabolism in addition to the intermediary metabolism, one and 48 involved in fatty acid and lipid metabolism.
There's 45 genes involved in regulatory functions. 115 genes are involved in replication of the cell so that it, in effect can reproduce. So we can see it's an extremely complex system, just this little simple cell.
And in fact, a living E. coli cell involves about 4750 different types of complex biopolymer type molecules are involved in. In about 800 different simultaneous chemical reactions are occurring all the time.
I think most people who believe in evolution believe in evolution because that's what they've been taught. And this is a theory that was developed over 150 years ago, basically. And it's now really in the light of the knowledge that we have of biochemistry.
It's just totally impossible for these complex systems to have evolved by chance chemical reactions occurring in nature. That's essentially what evolution requires, chance chemical reactions forming these complex structures and eventually DNA and all this sort of thing. And when we think about it, it obviously is so impossible.
And one of the things now, of course, that scientists are working on so hard is to try and justify evolution. When we look at the scientific evidence, straight at the evidence, there's overwhelming evidence, it's absolutely impossible. Where even when we look at the fossil record, we find fully formed, functioning animals.
We don't find fossils of intermediate species. Sure, there's maybe half a dozen species or animals that people argue over could be intermediates, but really there should be millions, hundreds of millions of intermediate species, all involving the evolutionary steps. And one of the puzzles, and I think even Darwin recognised this, in the fossil record, flowering plants just appear fully developed.
There's no transition from pines across to flowering plants, this sort of thing. And with complex reproductive systems that produce seeds in the female part of the flower and so forth. When we look at the fossil record, the fossil record doesn't show evaluate, it just shows fully formed, fully functioning components.
And when we look at something like E. coli, which is so small we can't even see them with the naked eye, we have to use quite a strong microscope to see E. coli and these sort of bacteria there, but they're there all around us.
But when we delve in, and I've looked at the complexity just of the genetic information just at the genetic code, and all these genes are working together, functioning. When we look at some of the things, when we think of this little e coli that's sort of swimming around in our bowel there, it's propelled along by a little flagellum, a little propellers flagellum. And these are tiny, little like structures that propel the bacteria around and they spin.
And these are driven by little motors, little electric motors that spin at more than 20,000 revolutions per minute. Matter of fact, in some bacteria, the little electric motors in them reach over 100,000 revs per minute. Now, it takes a pretty sophisticated car engine to rev over about 6000 revs per minute these days.
And so here we have these little electric motors swimming at, spinning in e Coli at over 20,000 revolution spin. In fact, I think it's 22,800 is the measured speed, and some at over 100,000. And these act as a little propeller.
But the e coli's motor is only about 45 millionths of a metre wide. 45 million of a metre or 45,000 of a millimetre. So we know a millimetre is pretty small.
Just imagine 45,000 of a millimetre. And so about 2000 of them could be lined up across the width of a human hair. And it's a nanomachine.
It's an amazing nanomachine. And even in this, you know, secular evolutionary literature, it's described as a remarkable nanomachine or a sophisticated rotary motor, an example of elegance in molecular engineering. And so even secular scientists recognise this sort of thing when we look at the amazing structure.
The motor is actually composed of parts that perform similar functions to the ones found in human design motors. So they include gears, a rotor, axles, drive shafts, bushings, a universal joint and adapter rings. And we need to remember that each of these components requires its own specific genetic code involved using four letters.
The chemicals that they make them up. The chemical components are abbreviated act and g. And the fascinating thing is, just like electric motors in our washing machines and hairdryers and blenders at home, and industrial electric motors in electric trains and electric cars and so forth, are powered by electricity.
So the little bacterium flagellum is powered by electricity. And the bacterial cell membrane functions actually as a highly efficient capacitor. So might remember that a capacitor is usually made up of two conductive plates separated by an insulator.
And so this capacitor that's in the little bacteria keeps the positive and negative charges apart. And this electrical difference is created by a little proton pump. So a proton, remember is a positive charge particle or hydrogen ions.
And remember, if we split water up, we split water, which is h 22 hydrogen atoms combined to an oxygen atom, we split water up into a hydrogen. And so if we pass an electric current through water, providing there are some conducting ions there, we can split water up and have the hydrogen generated, and it'll be generated as hydrogen ions. And so these proton pumps take the hydrogen ions or protons and remove them from the cell.
And these positively charged particles then flow back into the cell, acting like an electric current. So, in a household electric current, it involves the flow of negatively charged particles, electrons, whereas in the bacteria, it involves the flow of positive charged particles. And as these protons flow through the little flagella motor, they cause it to spin.
And at the base of the motor is a central gear surrounded by about eleven, matter of fact, up to eleven powered gears. And in some other bacteria, there can be up to 18 gears. And the current flowing through the powered gears causes them to rotate, driving the central gear.
So these are little gears that surround a central gear, a bit similar to epicyclic gears in the old automatic gearboxes in cars, I guess. And the powered gears rotate around the axles that are anchored to the cell wall. The rotor connects a central gear to the drive shaft, which is made of an inner ring and an outer ring and an adapter ring and a socket.
And then the drive shaft passes outside the cell through a ring of proteins that serve as bushings. So for people to believe that these structure evolved by random mutations that work so precisely, it's a machine. It's a real machine.
Chemical molecules don't assemble themselves into machines naturally. This is something that, as we looked at E. coli, all the genes and the huge number of genes that are there encoding the information for this structure to be built from the DNA, it's interesting that the outer surface of the drive shaft and the inner surface of the bushings are each very smooth.
I mean, that's just another factor that it has to be for it to operate and are separated by a thin layer of fluid. And so, just like with normal bearings in a car, we generally have a thin layer of fluid, and hence the role of the oil pump, for example, in gasoline engines. And these optimally designed bushings allow the drive taft shaft to rotate with very little friction, making the motor almost 100% efficient.
Isn't that amazing? So, in actual fact, the design is better than anything we've made with our best engineers. And yet we assume that there was no designer behind this motor. It really, really frustrates me that we in our education system are continuing to teach evolution.
I don't mind if they teach evolution as a historical scientific theory, but we need to recognise the fact that there was a super intelligent, a supernatural creator that designed and made these things, that knows everything, that knows all the laws of physics, all the laws of chemistry. It's interesting that there's more. A hook shaped universal joint has about 120 moving parts, each a highly specialised protein.
That's just in the design of the universal joint in this little motor. It staggers the mind, again, for people to blindly say, oh, well, these bacteria evolve very early on when we look at the complexity of these structures in it. This particular design with these specialised proteins that smoothly expand and contract as it rotates.
This design makes it very resistant to twisting, but very flexible to bend. Two important measurement requirements for an efficient universal joint. This is in a very interesting article that I was reading by a scientist, David Thomas, that was called E coli's electric motor.
A marvel of design, and it certainly is. He points out that the motor has two gear shifting mechanisms, one to change the direction of rotation and one to adjust the power output. The motor switches between forward and reverse gear in less than a millisecond by changing the diameter of the top central gear.
So I guess that's, in a way a bit similar to the old fashioned epicyplic gearboxes, like in the old Wilson preselector gearboxes. I guess maybe the second gear mechanism performs the same function as gears on a bicycle. If the cell swims into a thicker fluid, it becomes harder to rotate the propellers.
The motor detects this using torque sensors. So here we've got other little sensor molecules and automatically engages more powerful gears with the central gear, increasing the rotational force produced by the motor. The opposite occurs if the cell swims into thinner fluid.
This sophisticated gear mechanism makes the whole system extremely energy efficient and doesn't use any more power than is needed. Automatic gearboxes. I think the first one was the hydromatic, original hydromatic, developed by General Motors.
I know it came out in the 49 Cadillac. I had a 49 cadillac with a hydromatic gearbox in it, but that took a lot of engineers to develop that automatic gearbox. Here we have one in E coli, which are bacteria that are quite early on in the evolutionary chain of things.
The complexity of constructing E coli's electric motor far exceeds the complexity of the motor itself. Numerous machines, motors and proteins are required to manufacture, transport and assemble each of the motor's parts in their precise location in the Pacific. Time needed and so again, as this little cell reproduces, and we saw the number of genes involved in reproduction and is being assembled, the new little cell is being assembled.
It involves these other machines to assemble the motor and besides the complicated system that locates the phagellum genes and makes proteins from them via transcription and translation. And again, when we looked at transcription and translation, there were tens of genes were involved, just in this mechanism itself. The cell has to produce a chemical fuel, which is atp, to power many of the assembly machines.
It has to transport the newly manufactured proteins to an export machine and protect them on the journey. Then it has to cut a hole in the cell wall for the drive shaft to pass through without bursting. The cell then has to form temporary scaffolding to assist the assembly of the other proteins.
And the author points out, that's just a start. Many of these tasks cannot be performed by single machines, but require the collaboration of numerous these little nanomachines, along with complicated production lines to make this motor. Some of these machines also have proofreading systems, which cheque that their tasks are performed correctly, and sometimes call on other repair machines to fix mistakes.
Isn't that amazing in a little bacteria, that we think that this whole system evolved by random mutations? How would random mutations have developed proofreading systems? I mean, it just blows the mind. And we're talking about, as I said, a lintel single cell bacteria. We're talking about single cell bacteria.
Proteins are manufactured with the identification tags used to identify, sort and export the different proteins. The export machine controls the timing of delivery for each protein and communicates with machines at the start of the protein production line, so that a backlog is not generated. Export machine also has a built in rotary motor that unfolds the proteins.
Other machines at the assembly site refold the proteins into place. Motor construction has three stages. In stage one, a genetic programme takes numerous input signals from sensors which detect the cell's acidity, oxygen levels, temperature, salinity and other factors, as well as communication signals from other bacteria cells.
And it uses this signal stream to decide if the conditions are right to make the flagellum. Next, the core structures and the motor and the hook are assembled. Then the propeller filament, the navigation system and the powered gears are assembled.
The last step of the second stage is the construction of the hook, which to work most efficiently, must be made to 55 nanometres in length. It's interesting, the references, if you're interested in some of these, is Spöring one I. Sorry, Spöring I, “Hook length of the bacterial flagellum is optimised for maximum stability of the flagella bundle” journalsplos.org, 6 September 2018.
And so there's another really good article by A Baker, and O’Toole, “Bacteria Rev Your Engines: Stator Dynamics Regulate Flagella Motility”. That was published in the Journal of Bacteriology 25 May 2017.
And another one that was published in Nature, Nature Communications by Yamaguchi T and others, “Structure of the Molecular Bushings of the Bacterial Flagella Motor”. Nature Communications you can see at Nature.com 22 July 2021.
Look, there's so much has been done and, you know, when we look at these things, despite the clear evidence of design, many evolutionists persist in claiming that the flagella motor evolved through random mutations and selections. You know, it's, and this is what is being taught in the textbooks. But it's interesting that the timing and the logistics of the construction of these processes are actually overseen by another sophisticated programme. And this genetic programme functions like a computer programme, with circuitry feed forward and feedback loops, input and output signals and logic gate functions. It's absolutely mind blowing.
The genetic programme includes over 50 genes, organised into groups called operons, which are further organised into three classes. Genes contain instructions on how to make particular proteins. A protein produced from one gene can switch other genes in the programme on and off, forming genetic circuitry.
The production of different proteins is prioritised according to when they are required at the assembly site. You know, this is an absolutely amazing system. And a summary, a lay level article was published, written by David Thomas, and it's in Creation, volume 44, number 1, 2022.
It really astounds me when we see what is involved in just the design, the control systems for this little motor that controls the flagellum on a bacteria, and in particular, E. coli has been studied. It's one of the most studied bacteria, I guess, in science. It's absolutely amazing.
And evolutionists believe that this evolved. And of course, according to the evolutionary theory, bacteria evolved quite early on in the system. But, you know, E. coli have been bred through thousands of generations, tens of thousands of generations.
They haven't evolved anything new or different. They haven't evolved into a new species of bacteria. There's been some minor changes that take place, but no new body parts and all this sort of thing.
And so people have done the studies, we haven't seen evolution happening. The structure of living organisms, when we drill down into the detail, is just so amazingly complex. And yet we're continuing to teach our children about evolution that we all evolved. And there, of course, people then begin to doubt that there is a God, when actual fact there is overwhelming evidence for a creator God, overwhelming evidence. And that creator God revealed himself through Jesus Christ. And of course we can read about that. We can read the historical evidence in the Bible for this, particularly in the New Testament and in the gospels. And when it comes to eternity, a knowledge of evolution isn't going to save us, but a knowledge of Jesus Christ can save us.
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I'm Dr. John Ashton. Have a great day.
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