Indiana Juby and the Multicellular Menace

OK, so it's a week late but it got released eventually

In episode 4 of his show "Genesis Week" our friend Ian "Indiana" Juby took it upon himself to dissect a scientific paper on the evolution of multicellularity where a species of single celled yeast had been selectively bred to become multicellular.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw_IXONCwSI

Having since learned that you can post links to references in the info box rather than just show them on screen, Ian thankfully provides a link to the scientific paper for us to read it our selves:

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/01/10/1115323109.full.pdf+html

As Ian is qualified as voice coach, when it comes to cutting edge science he has to rely on his mensa membership card which is obviously no bloody use what so ever. In this episode he makes a big fuss of the use of a centrifuge to settle the samples with a 100 x g burst for 10 seconds.

Unfortunately though that sounds a lot, he has no idea just how much gravitational force that is and as he has not done the calculations to work out the RCF (relative centrifugal force) he makes the mistake of thinking that the centrifuge must have been running at turbo overdrive to subject the sample to 100 x g

Of course it isn't, 100 x g is what Ian subjects his socks and Y fronts to when he puts them in the spin dryer at its slowest setting.

In fact when a bench centrifuge can go up to 20,000 x g, 100 x g is hardly turning it up to 11, its barely taking it off stop with the unit running at 0.5 per cent full speed.

Of course Ian fails to point all of this out and he goes on to mischaracterise the whole experiment in a way that suggests that he had difficulty finding the link at the bottom of the paper to the supplementary information page that detailed the full method used which can be found here

http://www.pnas.org/content/suppl/2012/01/11/1115323109.DCSupplemental/pnas.2...

It is interesting to note that in the supplementary information showing the actual method used, they only use the centrifuge in two parts of the experiment. The first part where they see if the yeast will become multicellular and the second part where they check to see if the centrifuge has any impact on the process and compare it to cultures that have been left to settle naturally for varied lengths of time.

When they are investigating the prevalence of multicellularity or cluster size against settling rates they do not use a centrifuge at all.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• ian
• juby
• Indiana
• creation
• creationism
• evolution
• genesis week
• stupid
• centrifuge
• yeast
• multicellular
• science
• experiment
• spin
• gravity
• pies

[no2religions]

Young earth creationism is the result of there being no selective pressures on the christian population.

[paulchartley]

@no2religions I suppose that's almost a good argument for introducing lions into North America

:0)

[ritchloui]

Creationism is the result of 2,000 years selective attention during which time anyone who had the gall to ask a searching question was immediately stoned to death or burned at the stake whilst those who believed in fairy tales were encouraged to go forth and multiply.

[paulchartley]

@ritchloui there is nothing wrong with telling creationists to go forth and multiply

:0)

[evilyakko]

Hyenas arn't dogs lol. so no.

[paulchartley]

@evilyakko That's right, they are felines that just happen to both look and behave like canines.

If you only have variation within the kinds and the ancestors of all animals alive today came off a boat in northern turkey and hyper-evolved into all the species we have today then how and why did a cat kind of animal evolve into a dog kind of animal.

Some creationists might just consider it to be what they think of as a transitional species!

[wasneeplus]

@Answerquestions1 I see, so the amount of functional genesis equal to the amount of information. So a grain of rice does indeed contain more information than a human being. That seems rather strange to me, since it doesn't have much to do with the complexity of the body.

[Answerquestions1]

@wasneeplus

new functional genes = new information

[wasneeplus]

@Answerquestions1 One thing I've always been curious about; how do you measure the amount of information in an organism? What units of measurement and what methods do you use to establish such a thing?

[Answerquestions1]

so what, new information was not added, some unicelular organisms can join with other cells and form colonies, but that is thanks to preexisting mechanisms. random mutations where not needed.

what´s next? are you going to say that catapilars evolved in to butterflies?

[theVulcanGuy]

@paulchartley i'm afraid it wouldn't work: we tried it in italy, and now we have the bloody vatican.

try cloning velociraptors, and let's see how the simians, kent ham&pals, manage around the little adorable killing machine.

[odinata]

You rock Paul!

Keep up the good work!

[Blackjack030190]

Pie bit at the end killed me. You sir, are awesome of the highest order!

[psycho3968]

raped, raped and raped. I'd like to subject this creatard to about 30 g's, followed by a sudden stop.

[tctheunbeliever]

@TheHydrogen4 It's just a theory!

[tctheunbeliever]

@paulchartley I don't think they were a threatened species in Roman times. Maybe we can learn from the past.