A complexidade redutível de uma máquina molecular mitocondrial

O juiz Jones III julgou em Dover que a complexidade irredutível (tese de design inteligente de Michael Behe) é religião, mas os cientistas continuam achando que é ciência e tentam falseá-la.

Gente, eu juro que eu não entendi a razão deste artigo. Se o juiz Jones III condenou o ensino da teoria do Design Inteligente nas escolas públicas americanas por ser 'religião', por que estes cientistas tenta refutar o caráter científico de uma das teses do DI???

Complexidade redutível de sistemas biológicos, pode. Complexidade irredutível de sistemas biológicos, não pode. Não foi Popper quem disse que para ser ciência uma teoria precisa ser submetida ao exame e tentativas de refutablidade?

Alô, Popper, help. We need you! Over.

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The reducible complexity of a mitochondrial molecular machine

Abigail Clementsa,1, Dejan Bursaca,b,1, Xenia Gatsosb, Andrew J. Perrya, Srgjan Civciristova,b, Nermin Celika, Vladimir A. Likicc, Sebastian Poggiod, Christine Jacobs-Wagnerd,e, Richard A. Strugnellf and Trevor Lithgowa,2

+ Author Affiliations

aDepartment of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Monash University, Clayton 3800, Australia;

bDepartments of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and

fMicrobiology and Immunology and

cBio21 Molecular Science and Biotechnology Institute, University of Melbourne, Parkville 3010 Australia;

dDepartment of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520; and

eHoward Hughes Medical Institute, New Haven, CT 06520

↵1A.C. and D.B. contributed equally to this work.

Communicated by Roy Curtiss III, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, July 24, 2009 (received for review May 11, 2009)

Abstract

Molecular machines drive essential biological processes, with the component parts of these machines each contributing a partial function or structural element. Mitochondria are organelles of eukaryotic cells, and depend for their biogenesis on a set of molecular machines for protein transport. How these molecular machines evolved is a fundamental question. Mitochondria were derived from an α-proteobacterial endosymbiont, and we identified in α-proteobacteria the component parts of a mitochondrial protein transport machine. In bacteria, the components are found in the inner membrane, topologically equivalent to the mitochondrial proteins. Although the bacterial proteins function in simple assemblies, relatively little mutation would be required to convert them to function as a protein transport machine. This analysis of protein transport provides a blueprint for the evolution of cellular machinery in general.

irreducible complexity protein evolution protein import Caulobacter crescentus TIM23 complex

Footnotes

2To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: trevor.lithgow@med.monash.edu.au

Author contributions: A.C. and T.L. designed research; A.C., D.B., X.G., A.J.P., S.C., N.C., V.A.L., S.P., and C.J.-W. performed research; D.B., A.J.P., and R.A.S. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; T.L. analyzed data; and A.C., C.J.-W., R.A.S., and T.L. wrote the paper.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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