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Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Microscopic Clutch

The bacterial flagellum continues to give strict Darwinians migraines. Scientists have recently discovered that the flagellum's rotation is stopped by a protein assembly that acts just like the clutch in an automobile transmission.

"We think it's pretty cool that evolving bacteria and human engineers arrived at a similar solution to the same problem," said IU Bloomington biologist Daniel Kearns, who led the project. "How do you temporarily stop a motor once it gets going?"

Indeed. The whole flagellar assembly is a miniature outboard motor and the filament is disengaged from the motor by a clutch assembly such as intelligent engineers have designed for cars. Yet we are to believe that random genetic mutations occurring relatively quickly in geological time acted in tandem with natural selection to produce this astonishing machine completely without any guidance or intention.

Which came first, you may wonder, the flagellar motor or the clutch assembly? What good would each do the organism if the other didn't exist? If it does no good how was it conserved? If they evolved together how did such a marvel happen unless guided by an intelligent agent?

Never mind. It's impertinent to ask such questions. Just believe what the wise Darwinists tell you and don't be difficult.

RLC