Originally posted by AugoeideS:
Excellent piece of work!
Cells are more complex than it seems. If not why are there still research going on to discover the intricate mechanisms underlying in each and every cell found in our body?
Nong,nong time ago, scientists concluded that differentiated cells can never become stem cells again. Yet decades later, dolly was successfully cloned out by nuclear transferring of the nucleus from a somatic (differentiated, mind you) cell to a nucleus-ridden ovum. What seems impossible can still be done, and it certainly brings more questions than answers in understanding cells.
Human Researcher: "Ok, i have finally understood more on the mechanism underlying the anaphase of mitosis in a eukaryotic human cell...the process is so intricate and complex that several components of the cytoskeleton are involved, and protein factors of seemingly redundant purposes are at high concentration in this phase, which is something that we still have to find out about"
Somatic Cell: "Hmm...toothbrush...check...towels...check. Ok, so i have got everything in the luggage now, time to split"
Thanks!
You raise a good point about the many details we have yet to uncover. However I should also emphasize that the term "complexity", which is casually thrown about by creationists to support irreducible complexity, is not well-defined and not easily quantifiable.
Take for example some species of grasshopper with 120,000 genes, 3-4 times more than the human. Are grasshoppers more "complex" than human beings?
As we learn more about embryo development, we see that one strategy for producing a multi-cellular organism is the use of modular gene batteries and the use of iterative repeats, so that a small amount of base genomic information can result in a large diversity of developmental functions.
Our mathematical colleagues would call this "fractals". For example a plant genome doesn't need to encode for all the exact positions of every leaf on the adult tree - the developmental program simply repeats the same function for every successive leaf formation.
That allows for simpler, less "complex" genomes.