Chromosomal rearrangements and ecological adaptations

PZ Myers is an atheistic biology teacher who believes in mutation-driven evolution. Myers thinks I am  “crank” and he compared me to John A. Davison, who Myers also thinks is a crank. According to Myers, Davison was a crank for proposing a theory that Evolution was all due to chromosome rearrangements…

Discussion of who’s the crank ensured with more misinformation than I have ever seen spread by evolutionary theorists and atheists across 740 posts to Myers blog. Every comment I made was dismissed and usually ridiculed. Finally, I posted a link to research published yesterday that reported Estrogen receptor α polymorphism in a species with alternative behavioral phenotypes.

Abstract excerpt (with my emphasis as above): “These behaviors are thought to be mediated by sensitivity to sex steroids, and the chromosomal rearrangement underlying the polymorphism has captured a prime candidate gene: estrogen receptor 1 (ESR1), which encodes estrogen receptor α (ERα).”

My comment: This report links ecological variations in nutrient-dependent pheromone-controlled alternative splicings of pre- mRNA to chromosomal rearrangements in sparrows and to their receptor-mediated sex differences in hormone-organized and hormone-activated behavior. Simply put, experimental evidence shows that Davison was correct, and that evidence also shows that touting mutation-driven evolution — as PZ Myers has done — is something only an ignorant atheist or biology teacher could continue to do.

All experimental evidence, including the latest evidence from Donna Maney’s lab, continues to show that ecological variation is responsible for adaptations in species from microbes to man. Extending that experimental evidence to chromosomal rearrangements and differences in behavior attests to the fact that there is no such thing as mutation-driven evolution, which is what I’ve been telling participants on PZ Myers blog Pharyngula for an entire week, in more than 80 posts. Nevertheless, Myers has concluded to everyone’s delight that I am conveying this message:” But you will morph into another species if you change your diet.” The most intelligent comment Myers has made is added:  Right. Total looney tunes.

He deliberately makes what I’ve been saying appear to be ridiculous, which is what he did with Davison’s idea about chromosome rearrangements. But he did this after I notified the group of experimental evidence that shows Davison was correct. If the works of the two people Myers calls “cranks” are combined, we now see that nutrient-dependent pheromone-controlled amino acid substitutions link the conserved molecular mechanisms of behavior in species from microbes to man. Simply put, olfactory/pheromonal input epigenetically links food odors and pheromones to the physical landscape of DNA in the organized genomes of all species, via the physiology of reproduction and chromosomal rearrangements linked to genetically predisposed hormone-organized and hormone-activated vertebrate behavior.

An anonymous participant on PZ Myers blog added:

1) You definitely demonstrate boundless ignorance.

2) Not all changes to proteins are harmful – changing a valine to an alanine in a signal sequence has little effect

3) From what fetid orifice did you pull the idea that all that is required for speciation is a single change of an amino acid in a single protein ?

Like PZ Myers, this participant either has not read any of my published works, or cannot understand the role of ecological variation in adaptations.

I had already mentioned examples that support my model of how one nutrient-dependent amino acid substitution causes speciation in nematodes, which is controlled by the physiology of reproduction.

Excerpt from Kohl (2013):  “Differences in the behavior of nematodes are determined by nutrient-dependent rewiring of their primitive nervous system (Bumbarger et al., 2013). Species incompatibilities in nematodes are associated with cysteine-to-alanine substitutions (Wilson et al., 2011), which may alter nutrient-dependent pheromone production.”

Another example of what happens in vertebrates due to one nutrient-dependent amino acid substitution puts cause and effect specifically into the context of changing a valine to an alanine in mice and in a modern human population.

Excerpt from Kohl (2013):  Two additional recent reports link substitution of the amino acid alanine for the amino acid valine (Grossman et al., 2013) to nutrient-dependent pheromone-controlled adaptive evolution. The alanine substitution for valine does not appear to be under any selection pressure in mice. The cause-and-effect relationship was established in mice by comparing the effects of the alanine, which is under selection pressure in humans, via its substitution for valine in mice (Kamberov et al., 2013).

These two reports (Grossman et al., 2013; Kamberov et al., 2013) tell a new short story of adaptive evolution. The story begins with what was probably a nutrient-dependent variant allele that arose in central China approximately 30,000 years ago. The effect of the allele is adaptive and it is manifested in the context of an effect on sweat, skin, hair, and teeth. In other mammals, like the mouse, the effect on sweat, skin, hair, and teeth is due to an epigenetic effect of nutrients on hormones responsible for the tweaking of immense gene networks that metabolize nutrients to pheromones. The pheromones control the nutrient-dependent hormone-dependent organization and activation of reproductive sexual behavior in mammals such as mice and humans, but also in invertebrates as previously indicated. That means the adaptive evolution of the human population, which is detailed in these two reports, is also likely to be nutrient-dependent and pheromone-controlled, since there is no other model for that.”

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Given the overwhelming amount of experimental evidence that now extends my model to Davison’s ideas about the importance of chromosomal rearrangements, which was attested to in latest research report on sparrows, I wonder what nonsense PZ Myers will be teaching his students tomorrow, the next day, and the next.

He is not likely to be teaching any nonsense that is not also being taught by other biology teachers who typically cannot understand anything besides the “evolution for dummies” that they were taught, which is why they keep teaching evolution for dummies. Sooner or later, their nonsensical teaching will stop; atheistic perspectives will not be pitted against biological facts and those who provide examples of ecological variation that lead to adaptations and species diversity will no longer be ridiculed and called “cranks.” Meanwhile, PZ Myers represents what one ignorant atheist biology teacher has done to influence a host of other ignorant theorists who continue to tout a ridiculous theory that lacks any experimental evidence to support it whatsoever. Clearly mutations do not cause chromosomal rearrangements. Nutrient-dependent pheromone-controlled alternative splicings and amino acid substitutions cause chromosomal rearrangements and species differences in behavior.