Unitelligent Design - Using The Theory Of Evolution To Create Better Enzymes

Scientists devise algorithm to engineer improved enzymes - News & Events | Trinity College Dublin

Scientists at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland have discovered that using the natural algorithm of evolution by natural selection is the best way to improve the efficiency of enzymes in terms of the products of the processes they catalyse.

This begs an embarrassing question for creationists: why can enzymes produced by a perfect designer be improved upon?

The answer of course, is that they weren't designed by a perfect designer; they were designed by a utilitarian evolutionary process in which whatever is better than what went before will be retained and the only reason to improve beyond the sub-optimal that works well enough, is to have some other selectors driving it towards ever greater fitness. There is no 'ideal' nor any process for comparing what is against this idea and trying harder, as there would be if there was an intelligence guiding the process.

Creationism in Crisis - How Changing the Environment Affects Evolution - Naturally

Lake Victoria cichlids

The Nile perch is a menace to endemic cichlids

Pictured on the left is the Nile perch, a voracious predator introduced into Lake Victoria by humans to satisfy meat demands in the 1950s. On the right, several species of endemic cichlids that were markedly affected are shown. The populations of some of these species declined so much that their genomic structure remained significantly altered even after　their numbers climbed back up.

Nile Perch Invasion Triggered Genetic Bottlenecks in Lake Victoria's Endemic Cichlids The introduction of the Nile perch to Africa’s largest lake impacted the genomic structure of multiple local species | Tokyo Tech News | Tokyo Institute of Technology

The East African cichlids are an embarrassment to creationists because they are one of the best examples of rapid speciation over a known geological age from an initial founder population of one species.

Between 17,000 and 16,000 years ago, towards the end of the last Ice Age, there was a surge of icebergs and glacial meltwater into the North Atlantic which altered ocean currents and changed the weather pattern over the African and Asian monsoon areas, which experienced a resulting mega-drought. Analysis of sediments show that this caused Lake Victoria, Lake Albert and Lake Tana to dry up and disappear.

A similar event 14,000 - 15,000 years ago caused Lake Victoria to dry up again and a subsequent lowering of water levels 5,000 years ago left a small satellite lake, Lake Nabugabo, isolated. From this we know how long ago each lake received its founding population of cichlids from their feeder rivers. In the case of Lake Victoria, this was between 14,000 and 15,000 years ago. We also know that the micro-lake, Lake Nabugabo, has been isolated for just 5,000 years. By contrast, nearby Lake Tanganyika is tens of millions of years old and has remained filled for all that time. See AfricaPaleo - FOCUS 1: Lake levels and evolution.

So, we know exactly the maximum time for which these cichlids have been diversifying.

Creationism in Crisis - How Plants Evolved In Response To Different Environments - Naturally

Swede plants pollinated by bumblebees adapted better to different types of soil.

Image: istock.com/MaYcaL

The experimental plants pollinated by bumblebees displayed significant differences on limestone soil (r) and tuff soil (l).

Image: UZH.

Interaction with Insects Accelerates Plant Evolution | | UZH

A clutch of papers published today serve to refute creationism by showing how evolution occurs in response to environmental selectors with no need to include magic or supernatural deities in the explanation. They also serve to highlight the lie that creationist cult leaders fool their dupes with that mainstream biologists are turning to creationism because the Theory of Evolution is inadequate for explaining the observable evidence.

On the contrary, these papers illustrate the robust nature of the TOE in explaining how plants and fish evolve in response to natural selectors, and the power of the theory to explain the observable evidence.

The first two are from substantially the same team led by biologist Florian Schiestl of the Department of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and deal with the way flowering plants respond to insects in their environment; both as beneficial pollinators and as harmful herbivores.

Malevolent Designer - A Newly-Discovered Fish Parasite

Red lipped Blenny, a tropical marine species in which the researchers discovered the ichthyocolids.

Photo: François Libert

Red-lipped Blenny.

Credit to Matthew Hoelscher.
CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED

Previously uncharacterized parasite uncovered in fish worldwide

Parasites present creationists with an insurmountable problem, especially those who equate the putative designer with the Abrahamic, supposedly omnibenevolent, god of the Bible, Torah and Qur'an.

It is a problem for creationism because there is no way the design of parasites, which appear to have only two functions - Making their hosts sick, so increasing the suffering in the world, and producing more parasites to make more hosts sick - can't possibly be the work of an omnibenevolent designer, and the inevitable resulting arms races between parasite and host are not the act of an intelligent designer.

The traditional explanation offered by creationists, particularly those with only a rudimentary grasp of the subject is to blame 'devolution' [sic] caused by 'genetic entropy' which was made possible by 'Sin' following the mythical 'Fall' as an organism evolves away from some assumed initial perfection at 'creation'. Apart from betraying the religious fundamentalism dressed in a grubby lab coat, that is 'intelligent design' creationism, this is scientifically nonsensical and counter factual, of course.

Creationism in Crisis - Human Culture Is A Cumulative Process Which Started 590,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'

Stone tools that become increasingly more complex over the course of 3 million years.

ASU study points to origin of cumulative culture in human evolution | ASU News

Stone tools that become increasingly more complex over the course of 3 million years. Left: First time period studied — Oldowan core, Koobi Fora, Kenya (below baselines). Center: Second time period studied — Acheulean cleaver, Algeria (around baseline). Right: Characteristic of 600,000 year ago technology — Levallois core, late Pleistocene Algeria.

Image credits: (left) Curry, Michael. 2020. Oldowan Core, Koobi Fora. Museum of Stone Tools. Retrieved June 10. From: https://une.pedestal3d.com/r/DGHMTdkn4_;
(middle) Curry, Michael. 2020. Acheulean Cleaver, Morocco, Koobi Fora. Museum of Stone Tools. Retrieved June 10. From: https://une.pedestal3d.com/r/JMVajqyz29;
(right) Watt, Emma. 2020. Levallois Core, Algeria. Museum of Stone Tools. Retrieved June 10. From: https://une.pedestal3d.com/r/JMVajqyz29.

More evidence was provided yesterday of human history and the beginnings of human culture about 600,000 years ago, i.e., about 590,000 years before creationists claim Earth was magicked up out of nothing as a small flat planet with a dome over it in the Middle East. The evidence comes in the form of a research paper by Arizona State University researcher Charles Perreault and doctoral graduate Jonathan Paige.

Generally speaking, human culture has been like a snowball rolling down a snow-covered hillside. The bigger the snowball gets, the more snow it accumulates, so its growth is exponential. Interestingly, and something for creationists to ignore, is the fact that human cultural evolution began before anatomically modern humans had evolved, so, as Homo sapiens, as with our genes, we inherited the beginnings of our culture from an ancestral species.

Contrast that with the childish creationist origin myth which has humans all descending from two individuals magically created without ancestors.

How the two authors carried out their research is the subject of an Arizona State University (ASU) news release by Julie Russ:

Creationism in Crisis - A Marine Reptile From 246 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Artist's impression of Nothosaurs off the ancient southern polar coast of what is now New Zealand around 246 million years ago

Artwork by
Stavros Kundromichalis.

Reconstruction of the oldest sea-going reptile from the Southern Hemisphere. Nothosaurs swimming along the ancient southern polar coast of what is now New Zealand around 246 million years ago.

Artwork by Stavros Kundromichalis.

Ancient polar sea reptile fossil is oldest ever found in Southern Hemisphere - Uppsala University

Sometimes, it must seem as though everything that happened on Earth happened before creationists believe the Universe was created. The simple reason is that this is precisely so, since about 99.9975% of time has existed between when Earth formed out of an accretion disk around the sun and when creationists believe their magic creator god created a universe as a small flat planet with a dome over it in the Middle East, 10,000 years ago.

For example, by about 246 million years ago, life had evolved to the point where terrestrial reptiles were returning to the sea where they evolved into large, marine predators - the apex predators of their day. This means that there was plenty of other life in the seas for them to predate upon, and the fossilised remains of one of them has recently been found in rocks on the southern coast of New Zealand, making it the oldest marine reptile fossil ever found in the southern hemisphere.

Creationism in Crisis - A Tiny Bird Refutes Creationism - Again

Titipounamu, Acanthisitta chloris

Photo: Dr. Kristal Cain.

Titipounamu, Acanthisitta chloris

Photo: Dr. Kristal Cain.

Tiniest bird delivers evolution lesson - The University of Auckland

In case any creationists are still under the delusion that mainstream biologists are abandoning the scientific Theory of Evolution (TOE) in favour of their childish magical story involving a magic man made of nothing who magicked everything into existence out of nothing with some magic words, here is an example of how the TOE is used to understand and make sense of the observable facts.

It addresses the question of how the ability to learn and imitate sounds evolved in birds.

Basically, ornithologists had thought that birds could be divided into two groups - those which can learn sounds (parrots, songbirds, and hummingbirds) and those which can’t - and that this ability in the former group had evolved sometime after modern birds had diversified from their avian dinosaur ancestors, but the fact that a small New Zealand bird, the titipounamu or rifleman, Acanthisitta chloris, has the rudiments of this ability suggests it may have been present in the common ancestor of both groups.

In other words, the ability to learn and imitate sounds may be evidence of common descent.

Alphons Mucha - Slav Patriot, Mystic and Art Nouveau Master

After the Battle of Grunwald

Alphons Mucha (1924)

The Celebration of Svantovit on Rügen (1912)

Alphonse Mucha and Art Nouveau: 100 years after its creation, his work is still a balm for a world in upheaval

Some readers might have been surprised to see me posting an article about an acknowledged mystic who saw a close relationship between Slav nationalism and religion, but to me Alphons Mucha is very much like the Irish patriots who identified Catholicism with Irish nationalism, not because they believed in Papal authority and the divine right of priests to meddle in national affairs but because Catholicism was a part of the identity of the Celtic Irish. So, Mucha saw the struggle for Slav self-determination as closely tied to the struggles against Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox Christianity and later Germanic Protestantism.

Like Irish History, Slav history too can be seen as an illustration of how religion poisons everything, as the Czech people seem to have realised, since they are now second only to France in the proportion of the population who openly self-identify as Atheists.

So, it's interesting to read the following article by Will Visconti, a member of the teaching staff in the Department of Art History, University of Sydney, NSW, Australia, introducing an exhibition of Alphons Macha's work in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. I've reproduced it here under a Creative Commons license as a sort of sequel to my earlier article om Mucha's Slav Epic. The article is reformatted for stylistic consistency:

Creationism in Crisis - How Homo Sapiens Helped Bonelli's Eagle Extend Its Range - 40,000 Years Before Creation Week

Bonelli's Eagle, Aquila fasciata

F. David Carmona

Bonelli's Eagle, Aquila fasciata

F. David Carmona

Early "Homo sapiens" facilitated the establishment of the Bonelli's eagle in the Mediterranean 50,000 years ago - Canal UGR

Not only is there no sign at all that the conversion of leading biologists to creationism's childish fairy tale in place of the scientific Theory of Evolution, that creationist cult leaders have been assuring their dupes is imminent - and has been for the last 50 years or so - it's as though they've never even heard of it. They still keep finding evidence of events that happened ten of thousand, even tens of millions of years before the Universe existed, according to the ludicrous creation myths they are supposedly about to adopt. And those events are frequently evidence of evolution or recent human history.

Imagine a serious, grown-up scientist who has been through university, with so much contrary information at his or her fingertips believing that account of magic creation 10,000 years ago written by ignorant Bronze Age pastoralists yet belonging to the creation cult requires fools to believe such an absurdity.

About 9 months ago while on holidat near Bezier, France, we were driving to Carcassonnes when, about a mile apart, we saw two majestic eagles that neither of us recognised. I now know they were Bonelli's eagles, and I probably have the activities of early Homo sapiens about 40,000 years ago to thank for them being there.

A study led by scientists from the University of Granada (UGR), Spain, shows how the activities of early Homo sapiens in the Iberian Peninsula, 40,000 years before creationists think their god created a universe consisting of a small, flat planet with a dome over it in the Middle East, may well have facilitated the expansion of the range of Bonelli's Eagle, Aquila fasciata, north of the Mediterranean Basin.

Creationism in Crisis - How The Human Heart Evolved As Humans Adapted To An Active Life-Style

Study on architecture of heart offers new understanding of human evolution - Swansea University

According to research by an international team from Swansea University, Swansea, Glamorgan, Wales and the University of British Columbia, Okanagan, Canada, there is evidence that the human heart has evolved to facilitate the more active life-style of humans compared to their closest relatives, as they diversified.

Humans typically have a much more active life-style with a higher resting metabolic rate compared to chimpanzees. We also have larger brains. As hunter-gatherers, we typically walked and ran far more often and for much longer than do the other apes and we needed to lose the excess body heat this activity generated, so we needed a more hemodynamic heart able to meet those needs, which meant adaptations to changes in the twisting of the left ventricle (LV) - the chamber which pumps oxygenated blood around the body - during systole, and this meant a change in the degree of trabeculation inside the LV.

In the context of heart ventricles, what are trabeculae and what is their function? Trabeculae (also known as trabeculae carneae) are irregular ridges of muscle found on the inner walls of the ventricles of the heart. They play several important roles in the function of the heart:

1. Structural Support: Trabeculae carneae help reinforce the ventricular walls. Their irregular structure provides additional strength and prevents the walls from sticking together during contraction, thereby maintaining the heart's shape and integrity.
2. Facilitation of Blood Flow: The trabeculae carneae create a more turbulent flow of blood within the ventricles, which can help with the efficient mixing of blood and ensure a more thorough contraction and expulsion of blood from the ventricles during systole.
3. Conduction System: Some trabeculae carneae are involved in the conduction system of the heart. For example, the moderator band (a type of trabecula) in the right ventricle contains part of the right bundle branch of the bundle of His. This helps coordinate the contraction of the right ventricle by ensuring that the electrical impulses are transmitted efficiently.
4. Reduction of Blood Stagnation: By creating a complex surface within the ventricles, trabeculae carneae reduce the likelihood of blood stagnation, which can prevent clot formation and improve overall blood flow dynamics.

In summary, trabeculae carneae serve to strengthen the ventricular walls, enhance blood flow, support the heart's electrical conduction system, and reduce the risk of blood clots by preventing blood from pooling in the ventricles.

What is meant by 'ventricular twist'?

'Ventricular twist' refers to the complex motion of the heart's ventricles during the cardiac cycle, particularly during the contraction (systole) and relaxation (diastole) phases. This twisting motion is also known as 'ventricular torsion' or 'ventricular rotation.' Here’s a more detailed explanation:

Mechanics of Ventricular Twist

1. Twisting Motion During Systole: During systole, the ventricles contract to pump blood out of the heart. The base (the top part of the ventricles, near the atria) of the heart rotates in a counterclockwise direction (when viewed from the apex), while the apex (the bottom tip of the heart) rotates in a clockwise direction. This results in a wringing motion, similar to wringing out a wet towel.
2. Untwisting Motion During Diastole: During diastole, the ventricles relax and fill with blood. The previously twisted ventricles now untwist, helping to create a suction effect that aids in the efficient filling of the ventricles with blood.

Significance of Ventricular Twist

1. Efficient Blood Ejection: The twisting motion enhances the efficiency of the heart’s pumping action. By adding a rotational component to the contraction, the heart can expel blood more forcefully and completely.
2. Diastolic Suction: The untwisting or recoil of the ventricles during diastole contributes to the rapid filling phase. This elastic recoil generates a negative pressure that helps draw blood into the ventricles more efficiently.
3. Mechanical Synchrony: The coordinated twisting and untwisting ensure that the contraction and relaxation phases are well-synchronized, promoting optimal cardiac function and maintaining a steady and efficient blood flow throughout the body.
4. Clinical Relevance: Abnormalities in ventricular twist mechanics can be indicative of various cardiac pathologies, such as heart failure, myocardial infarction, or cardiomyopathies. Therefore, measuring and analyzing ventricular twist can provide valuable diagnostic and prognostic information.

Measurement of Ventricular Twist
Ventricular twist can be assessed using advanced imaging techniques such as speckle-tracking echocardiography (STE) or cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). These techniques allow for detailed visualization and quantification of the rotational mechanics of the heart.

In summary, ventricular twist is a crucial aspect of the heart’s mechanics, contributing to the efficient ejection and filling of blood in the ventricles. It is essential for maintaining optimal cardiac function and can be an important parameter in the assessment of heart health.

The team has shown there is a negative correlation between the degree of trabeculation and LV systolic twist. The inner wall of the LV of a healthy human heart is comparatively smooth. Their results are published in the journal Communications Biology and explained in a Swansea University News release:

An international research team from Swansea University and UBC Okanagan (UBCO) has uncovered a new insight into human evolution by comparing humans’ hearts with those of other great apes.

Despite humans and non-human great apes having a common ancestor, the former has evolved larger brains and the ability to walk or run upright on two feet to travel long distances, likely to hunt.

Now, through a new comparative study of the form and function of the heart, published in Communications Biology, researchers believe they have discovered another piece of the evolutionary puzzle.

The team compared the human heart with those of our closest evolutionary relatives, including chimpanzees, orangutans, gorillas, and bonobos cared for at wildlife sanctuaries in Africa and zoos throughout Europe.

During these great apes' routine veterinary procedures, the team used echocardiography—a cardiac ultrasound—to produce images of the left ventricle, the chamber of the heart that pumps blood around the body. Within the non-human great ape's left ventricle, bundles of muscle extend into the chamber, called trabeculations.

The left ventricle of a healthy human is relatively smooth, with predominantly compact muscle compared to the more trabeculated, mesh-like network in the non-human great apes. The difference is most pronounced at the apex, the bottom of the heart, where we found approximately four times the trabeculation in non-human great apes compared to humans.

Bryony Curry, first author
Centre for Heart, Lung and Vascular Health
School of Health and Exercise Sciences
University of British Columbia, Kelowna, BC, Canada.

The team also measured the heart's movement and velocities using speckle-tracking echocardiography, an imaging technique that traces the pattern of the cardiac muscle as it contracts and relaxes.

We found that the degree of trabeculation in the heart was related to the amount of deformation, rotation and twist. In other words, in humans, who have the least trabeculation, we observed comparatively greater cardiac function. This finding supports our hypothesis that the human heart may have evolved away from the structure of other non-human great apes to meet the higher demands of humans’ unique ecological niche.

Bryony Curry.

A human’s larger brain and greater physical activity compared to other great apes can also be linked to higher metabolic demand, which requires a heart that can pump a greater volume of blood to the body.

Similarly, Higher blood flow contributes to humans’ ability to cool down, as blood vessels close to the skin dilate—observed as flushing of the skin—and lose heat to the air.

In evolutionary terms, our findings may suggest selective pressure was placed on the human heart to adapt to meet the demands of walking upright and managing thermal stress.

What remains unclear is how the more trabeculated hearts of non-human great apes may be adaptive to their own ecological niches. Perhaps it’s a remaining structure of the ancestral heart, though, in nature, form most often serves a function.

Dr Aimee Drane, co-corresponding author
International Primate Heart Project
Cardiff Metropolitan University, Cardiff, UK
And Faculty of Medicine
Health and Life Sciences
Swansea University, Swansea, UK

The research team is grateful to the staff and volunteers who care for the animals in the study, including the teams at Tchimpounga Wildlife Sanctuary (Congo), Chimfunshi Wildlife Sanctuary (Zambia), Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary (Sierra Leone), Nyaru Menteng Orangutan Rescue and Rehabilitation Center (Borneo), the Zoological Society of London (UK), Paignton Zoo (UK), Bristol Zoo Gardens (UK), Burgers’ Zoo (Netherlands) and Wilhelma Zoo (Germany).

Abstract
Although the gross morphology of the heart is conserved across mammals, subtle interspecific variations exist in the cardiac phenotype, which may reflect evolutionary divergence among closely-related species. Here, we compare the left ventricle (LV) across all extant members of the Hominidae taxon, using 2D echocardiography, to gain insight into the evolution of the human heart. We present compelling evidence that the human LV has diverged away from a more trabeculated phenotype present in all other great apes, towards a ventricular wall with proportionally greater compact myocardium, which was corroborated by post-mortem chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) hearts. Speckle-tracking echocardiographic analyses identified a negative curvilinear relationship between the degree of trabeculation and LV systolic twist, revealing lower rotational mechanics in the trabeculated non-human great ape LV. This divergent evolution of the human heart may have facilitated the augmentation of cardiac output to support the metabolic and thermoregulatory demands of the human ecological niche.

Introduction
Mammals are a remarkably diverse class of vertebrates, capable of inhabiting every major biome on the planet. This diversity is associated with a vast range of environmental stressors and interspecific differences in posture and locomotion, creating very different hemodynamic challenges. Despite this remarkable diversity, the gross structure of the mammalian heart is highly conserved across species; retaining four chambers and a complete interatrial and interventricular septum¹.

Although the gross structure of the mammalian heart is conserved, interspecific features exist. For example, heart shape varies considerably across species, from broad and flat in whales to long and narrow in terrestrial ungulates2. Variation in the cardiac phenotype is also present among closely-related mammals², indicative of evolutionary divergence. While comprehensive data examining cardiac structure and function across the entire Hominidae taxon do not exist, preliminary work suggests that the left ventricle (LV) of adult male chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) may be morphologically distinct from that of humans³. Prominent myocardial trabeculations, characterized by protrusions of the endocardium into the LV cavity with intertrabecular recesses, were previously observed in adult male chimpanzees³. This trabeculated phenotype differs from the relatively smoother ventricular wall typically observed in healthy humans⁴, suggesting that there may have been species-specific selective pressures on the heart during the evolution of Hominidae³.

Cardiac morphology and function are closely linked⁵; therefore, the discrete structural attributes of the chimpanzee and human LV likely coincide with differences in systolic and diastolic ventricular function. Such interspecific cardiac phenotypes may be the result of selection for the hemodynamic demands associated with each species’ ecological niche (i.e., the habitat and the role a species plays within an ecosystem). Indeed, previous data has shown that resting metabolic rate⁶, physical activity and daily locomotion⁷ are far greater in humans in comparison with other great apes, and so it is not surprising that cardiac output is also comparatively higher in humans³. The larger cardiac output in humans is likely supported by comparatively greater LV systolic and diastolic function (e.g., myocardial rotation and deformation), including LV twist³. LV twist, which is dependent upon the helical angulation of the aggregated cardiomyocytes^8,9,10, is characterized by counter-directional rotation of the LV base and apex during systole. Together with the velocity of LV untwisting during diastole, LV twist helps facilitate efficient filling and ejection of the ventricle, especially during periods of heightened metabolic and thermoregulatory demand^11,12.

The functional advantages associated with a LV capable of greater twist and untwisting velocity, combined with the preliminary data in adult male chimpanzees³, prompt the hypothesis that the human heart has diverged from a trabeculated ancestral phenotype to support the specific metabolic and thermoregulatory demands of the human niche. To test this hypothesis, we compared LV structure across all extant great apes using 2D echocardiography and further explored trabeculation in a subset of post-mortem chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) hearts. We then compared LV rotation and deformation between human and non-human great apes to explore whether the trabeculated phenotype is associated with differences in LV systolic and diastolic functional mechanics. Our findings point to evolutionary divergence of the human LV away from the phenotype of all other non-human great apes, which may have had important implications for cardiac function in early humans.

Discussion (part of)

[…]

Collectively, the findings of this study support evolutionary divergence of the human LV away from a trabeculated ancestral phenotype, towards a ventricular wall with a proportionately greater compact myocardium. We propose that this adaptive evolution occurred to support the requirements of the human ecological niche, including an augmented cardiac output to facilitate sustained bipedal physical activity, a larger brain, and the associated metabolic and thermoregulatory demands.

Fig. 1: Comparison of left ventricular trabeculation in great apes.

The bullseye plots represent the trabecular:compact (T:C) ratio for each segment of the left ventricle. The outer layer of the bullseye plots represents the basal segments, the middle and innermost layers represent the midpapillary and apical segments of the left ventricle, respectively. Red segments correspond to an average T:C ratio of >2; orange segments correspond to an average T:C ratio >1.5–2; yellow segments correspond to an average T:C ratio of >1–1.5; green segments correspond to an average T:C ratio of >0.5–1; blue segments correspond to an average T:C ratio of <0.05. Echocardiographic images of the parasternal short-axis at the apex are shown at end-diastole. *No data were available for the basal or midpapillary segments in the orangutans due to artifact from laryngeal air sacs. †These T:C ratios compare favorably with other reports in healthy human cohorts, ranging from 0.2 to 0.9^65,66. ‡Anatomical labels have been provided in accordance with the conventional guidelines for cardiac chamber quantification by the American Society of Echocardiography and European Association of Cardiovascular Imaging⁵². However, we note that this clinical convention does not align with the recognized anatomical approach and may result in confusion across disciplines—see ref. ⁶⁷ for further clarification.

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Fig. 2: Graphical representation of the trabecular:compact (T:C) ratio for each segment of the left ventricle in chimpanzees.

The outer layer of the bullseye plots represents the basal segments, the middle and innermost layers represent the midpapillary and apical segments of the left ventricle, respectively. Red segments correspond to an average T:C ratio of >2; orange segments correspond to an average T:C ratio >1.5–2; yellow segments correspond to an average T:C ratio of >1–1.5; green segments correspond to an average T:C ratio of >0.5–1; blue segments correspond to an average T:C ratio of <0.05. Infant age class includes individuals of ≤4 years of age, juveniles between 5–7 years of age, sub-adults between 8-11 years of age and adults ≥12 years of age.

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Fig. 3: Comparison of left ventricular morphology and mechanical indices of ventricular function between chimpanzees and humans.

Shortening along the long axis of the left ventricle (i.e., longitudinal strain) and deformation at the apex (i.e., apical circumferential and apical radial strain) were averaged across a mixed-sex, adult cohort of chimpanzees (n = 136) and represented in maroon. Blue reflects the deformation patterns of a mixed-sex, adult human cohort (n = 34). Dashed line represents aortic valve closure. Gray shading to the left of dashed line represents systole and white represents diastole.

---

Fig. 4: Relationship between markers of left ventricular (LV) function and apical trabeculation in the extant Hominidae taxon.

a Peak LV systolic apical rotation, shown in red, in a mixed-sex, adult cohort of humans (male n = 18, female n = 16), chimpanzees (male n = 59, female n = 51), bonobos (male n = 2, female n = 4), gorillas (male n = 4, female n = 6) and orangutans (male n = 10, female n = 6). b Peak LV systolic twist, shown in green, and (c) peak diastolic untwisting velocity, shown in blue, in a cohort of humans (male n = 18, female n = 16), chimpanzees (male n = 47, female n = 43), bonobos (male n = 1, female n = 3) and gorillas (male n = 4, female n = 5). Analyses of LV twist and untwisting velocity were not possible in all individuals, nor any of the orangutans due to artifacts from laryngeal air sacs, hence the reduced sample size. The exponential plateau curve is shown, with the 95% confidence bands represented by the dotted line. The mean and standard error are shown in black for each species.

Curry, B.A., Drane, A.L., Atencia, R. et al.
Left ventricular trabeculation in Hominidae: divergence of the human cardiac phenotype. Commun Biol 7, 682 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-024-06280-9

Copyright: © 2024 The authors.
Published by Springer Nature Ltd. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

No crumbs of comfort there for creationists as the authors attribute everything to evolution by natural selection as humans diverged from the other great apes, nor is there any hint of a doubt that such an evolutionary divergence occurred.

The interesting thing from a biologists point of view is how the changes to the human heart reflect changes in our life-style as we adopted an upright gait and a hunter-gatherer life-style, necessitating running and walking long distances with additional demands on our heart to cope with the additional oxygen required and to dissipate the excess heat these activities generated, in addition to the increased demands our large brains were already imposing on our circulatory and thermoregulatory systems.

More work is now needed to understand whether the retention of this degree of trabeculation in the other apes has a benefit or whether it has simply been retained from a common ancestor. If the former, what evolutionary trade-off has there been for humans in losing these benefits?

Creationism in Crisis - A New Genus of Fish - From 18 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

 †Simpsonigobius nerimanae

All scale bars = 2 mm.

†Simpsonigobius nerimanae gen. et sp. nov. A, holotype, BSPG 1980X1030a; B, paratype, BSPG 1980X1013(2); C, paratype, BSPG 1980X1019a; D, paratype, BSPG 1980X992a. All scale bars = 2 mm.

Dirnberger, M., Bauer, E., & Reichenbacher, B. (2024).

Paleontology: new fossil fish genus discovered - LMU Munich

Today's casual refutation of creationism come in the form of an open access paper in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology in which a team of researchers from the master program ‘Geobiology and Paleobiology’ led by Bettina Reichenbacher, professor at the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, München, Germany.

In it, the team of three explain how they have identified a new genus of the Gobi family of fishes and so provided critical insight into the evolution of this group of fish.

The fossil of the Simpsonigobius genus was found in 18-million-year-old rocks in Turkey. The significance of their discovery is explained in a Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) press release:

Religion Provides Excuses for People Who Need Excuses - Human Sacrifice At Chichén Itzá

El Castillo (the Temple of Kukulcan), Chichén Itzá

© Johannes Krause

El Castillo, also known as the Temple of Kukulcan, is among the largest structures at Chichén Itzá and its architecture reflects its far-flung political connections.

© Johannes Krause

Ancient Maya genomes reveal ritual sacrifice at Chichén Itzá | Max-Planck-Gesellschaft

When priests succeed in sowing superstition and fear into the minds of their victims, and fool them into believe they know the mind of their god and what he requires them to do, there is probably no depth of depravity they can't descend to, with the excuse of religion to fall back on, especially when it's backed up by threats of eternal pain and suffering in some assumed life after death, for non-compliance.

For example, Christians have been persuaded that their god needed a blood sacrifice so it could forgive them for something of which it had arbitrarily declared them to be guilty, and that there was a sense in which impregnating a young woman without her consent, then having her baby killed to satiate its lust for blood, was something to be admired.

Now detach those acts from religion and the belief that a god had sanctioned them and imagine them, being the subject of a court case in which the defendant explained that he had to rape the girl so she could have his baby, so he could then kill her child, because he was angry about something that someone once did hundreds of years ago, and would otherwise make people suffer in unimaginably horrible ways.

Which jury would declare him to be not guilty of any crime and free to go, assuming he was considered fit to plead? After appropriate psychiatric assessment, he would most likely be found to be a dangerous psychopath with a narcissistic personality disorder, who should probably be kept under lock and key for the sake of society.

And yet Christians sing songs in this monster's praise and tell their children to look to it for moral guidance, and pass on to their children the superstition and fear that caused them to lose their moral judgement, believing this to be the right and proper way to bring up children!

Something has caused them to lose moral judgement because priests say a god did it, so they can distance themselves from the brutality.

It's hardly surprising then that there has been so much death, destruction and human misery caused by religions, or rather caused by people who had been told a god wanted them to go out and cause it.

And it's hardly surprising that an international team of researchers from institutions including the Max Planck Institutes for Evolutionary Anthropology (Leipzig) and Geoanthropology (Jena), the National School of Anthropology and History (ENAH, Mexico City), the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH-Yucatan, Mérida), and Harvard University (Cambridge) have found evidence of regular barbaric ritual child sacrifice, carried out by the Mayan's at Chichén Itzá.

And in another discovery, the same team provide evidence, if any were needed, of how a population's genome can be changed by intense selection pressure such as an epidemic, resulting in the evolution of the population in response to this environmental change, in a classic example of Darwinian evolution by natural selection.

In this case, an outbreak of Salmonella enterica in 1545 (the cocoliztli pandemic) has resulted in an increased frequency of HLA-DR4 alleles which provide greater resistance to Salmonella enterica infection. Clearly, those better able to resist the infection left more descendants than those who succumbed to it.

An account of their findings is given in an open access paper in Nature and in a Max Planck Institute News release:

Malevolent Designer News - How a Special Gene Helps Cancer Spread Throughout The Body

Mass General Cancer Center Researchers Identify Gene That Helps Cancer Cells Spread Throughout the Body

According to creationists, genes don't evolve but are intelligently designed, so presumably their intelligent designer should be given the credit for designing a gene which has been shown to help cancer cells disseminate and set up colonies of secondaries throughout the body. The gene, Gstt1, is responsible for 90% of cancer-related deaths.

Gstt1 has a key role in eliminating toxins from the body so blocking it as a prophylactic treatment to prevent cancer metastases may not be a straightforward option.

The gene's role in helping cancer to metastasize was discovered by a team of investigators from the Massachusetts General Cancer Center, Boston, USA, who have just published their findings in the journal Nature Cell Biology and explained it in a press release from Massachusetts General Hospital:

Creationism in Crisis - A 'Missing' Fossil From 550 Million Years Ago - And Another Gap Is Filled

Helicolocellus cantori

NIGP-176531

Virginia Tech geobiologist Shuhai Xiao with a 550 million-year-old sea sponge fossil, filling in a gap in the evolutionary family tree of one of the earliest animals.

Photo by Spencer Coppage for Virginia Tech.

Virginia Tech researcher's team discovers 'missing' sea sponges | Virginia Tech News | Virginia Tech

That mountain of evidence against creationism just grows and grows!

Today, we have evidence of multicellular life in the form of an early sponge from about 550 million years before creationism's 'Creation Week' when they believe everything was magicked into existence in 6 days from nothing by some magic words spoken by a magic man made of nothing.

And it gets even worse.

Creationists also like to pretend the so-called 'Cambrian Explosion' when a lot of different multicellular body plans appear in the geological record, was an actual explosive creation as a single event, so the organisms in the Cambrian biota had no ancestors. It wasn't, of course; it lasted some 6-10 million years during which there are recognizable phases with characteristic organisms in each phase showing clear evolutionary progress - and it was preceded by the Ediacaran biota when some of the earliest multicellular organisms are found in the geological column.