Re: Evolution's Imperative

Kevin O'Brien (Cuchulaine@worldnet.att.net)
Thu, 25 Mar 1999 00:07:02 -0700

>Cummins wrote:
>
>> ...One of those challenges is for them to describe a viable animal that
cannot
>> be explained by Evolution...
>
>Easy. If I saw a bacterium that produced human insulin, I would conclude
>that it was genetically engineered rather than evolved.
>

It wouldn't even need to be human insulin, since insulin is not and has
never been a bacterial protein; they simply don't need it.

However, that might not be conclusive. Afterall, poppies don't need neural
transmitter mimics like morphine or codeine, yet they produce them. So it
is conceivable that a bacterial species could evolve a protein identical in
function to insulin, even though it don't need it, and it might even have
the same basic structure as insulin.

But by chance alone it would never be identical in amino acid sequence to
human insulin, so your original point still stands.

Kevin L. O'Brien