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Protein testing proves T. Rex related to Chickens
Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2007 9:34 pm
by Arlos
Care to comment, oh strict creationists? Intelligent Design too, since that's the same thing?
CHICAGO, Illinois (Reuters) -- Tiny bits of protein extracted from a 68-million-year-old dinosaur bone have given scientists the first genetic proof that the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex is a distant cousin to the modern chicken.
"It's the first molecular evidence of this link between birds and dinosaurs," said John Asara, a Harvard Medical School researcher, whose results were published in Friday's edition of the journal Science.
Scientists have long suspected that birds evolved from dinosaurs based on a study of dinosaur bones, but until recently, no soft tissue had survived to confirm the link.
That all changed in 2005 when Mary Higby Schweitzer of North Carolina State University reported finding soft tissue, including blood vessels and cells, in a T. rex bone dug out of sandstone from the fossil-rich Hell Creek Formation in Montana.
Schweitzer, in another study appearing in this week's issue of Science, found that extracts of T. rex bone reacted with antibodies to chicken collagen, further suggesting the presence of birdlike protein in dinosaur bones.
For his study, Asara used a highly sensitive technology called mass spectrometry to determine the chemical makeup of bone fragments provided by Schweitzer and her team.
He first had to purify the bone extract, which came in the form of a gritty brown powder that remained after minerals were extracted. Asara then broke it down into peptide fragments, little bits of proteins, isolated into the amino acid sequences that make them up.
"It was very tough to get anything," he said in a telephone interview. He wound up with seven separate strands of amino acid, five of which were a particular class of collagen, a fibrous protein found in bone.
Next, Asara had to interpret the sequences. He compared his results to collagen data from living animals. Most matched collagen from chickens, while others matched a newt and frog.
"Based on all of the genomic information we have available today, it appears these sequences are closer to birds or chickens than anything else," Asara said.
Ultimately, scientists had hoped to find genetic material that was unique to the T. rex. That was not possible with the tiny T. rex sample.
"We never found unique T. rex tags," he said.
In a similar study of mastodon bones supplied by Schweitzer, Asara had more luck.
He compared the samples to a database of existing amino acid sequences and against a theoretical set of mastodon sequences and found a total of 78 peptides, including four unique sequences.
Still, Asara said the T. rex protein sequence was useful in providing clues about the evolution of the species.
The researchers said the results may change the way that people think about fossil preservation.
"The fact that we are getting proteins is very exciting," said paleontologist Jack Horner, who dug up the T. rex in 2003 and is co-author of the paper with Schweitzer.
Horner said paleontologists will need to dig deeper for specimens that have not been corrupted by ground water and bacteria.
"I think we are going to find that many specimens are like it. It will be a matter of paleontologists getting into sites that are not necessarily easy," he told reporters in a telephone briefing.
Copyright 2007 Reuters. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
-Arlos
Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2007 9:47 pm
by Tae-Bo
must been some pretty big black guys back then
Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2007 10:15 pm
by 10sun
I wonder how big their teef were?
Re: Protein testing proves T. Rex related to Chickens
Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2007 11:31 pm
by Lyion
I don't subscribe to ID or Creationism 'science', but wow, what a complete pile of shit. No offense, Arlos, but this article is why Physics or Math people like me, detest Biology.
We, er, are completely clueless so it suggests this may be a bit like that, so it's clearly proof!
Anyways, not sure how this relates to ID philosophy versus evolution as it's a mediocre guess based on tissue that may actually be from a chicken. Although it's interesting Biology in some regards seems to ignore Occams Razor. Looking at similarity in structure to me does not imply descent or ancestry, but again that is more common sense than scientific.
Commonality in DNA has actually proven not to help Evolution much in large stroke examples like this, since due to it's self correcting nature and the fact we really know so little, it's difficult to use it much in this regard, especially with the given nature of allele's and the ongoing refutation of what 'Junk DNA' actually is, and the fact so much of DNA is a complete mystery, as can be evidenced here.
CHICAGO, Illinois (Reuters) -- Tiny bits of protein extracted from a 68-million-year-old dinosaur bone have given scientists the first genetic proof that the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex is a distant cousin to the modern chicken.
"It's the first molecular evidence of this link between birds and dinosaurs," said John Asara, a Harvard Medical School researcher, whose results were published in Friday's edition of the journal Science.
Scientists have long suspected that birds evolved from dinosaurs based on a study of dinosaur bones, but until recently, no soft tissue had survived to confirm the link.
That all changed in 2005 when Mary Higby Schweitzer of North Carolina State University reported finding soft tissue, including blood vessels and cells, in a T. rex bone dug out of sandstone from the fossil-rich Hell Creek Formation in Montana.
Schweitzer, in another study appearing in this week's issue of Science, found that extracts of T. rex bone reacted with antibodies to chicken collagen, further suggesting the presence of birdlike protein in dinosaur bones.
For his study, Asara used a highly sensitive technology called mass spectrometry to determine the chemical makeup of bone fragments provided by Schweitzer and her team.
He first had to purify the bone extract, which came in the form of a gritty brown powder that remained after minerals were extracted. Asara then broke it down into peptide fragments, little bits of proteins, isolated into the amino acid sequences that make them up.
"It was very tough to get anything," he said in a telephone interview. He wound up with seven separate strands of amino acid, five of which were a particular class of collagen, a fibrous protein found in bone.
Next, Asara had to interpret the sequences. He compared his results to collagen data from living animals. Most matched collagen from chickens, while others matched a newt and frog.
"Based on all of the genomic information we have available today, it appears these sequences are closer to birds or chickens than anything else," Asara said.
Ultimately, scientists had hoped to find genetic material that was unique to the T. rex. That was not possible with the tiny T. rex sample.
"We never found unique T. rex tags," he said.
In a similar study of mastodon bones supplied by Schweitzer, Asara had more luck.
He compared the samples to a database of existing amino acid sequences and against a theoretical set of mastodon sequences and found a total of 78 peptides, including four unique sequences.
Still, Asara said the T. rex protein sequence was useful in providing clues about the evolution of the species.
The researchers said the results may change the way that people think about fossil preservation.
"The fact that we are getting proteins is very exciting," said paleontologist Jack Horner, who dug up the T. rex in 2003 and is co-author of the paper with Schweitzer.
Horner said paleontologists will need to dig deeper for specimens that have not been corrupted by ground water and bacteria.
"I think we are going to find that many specimens are like it. It will be a matter of paleontologists getting into sites that are not necessarily easy," he told reporters in a telephone briefing.
Copyright 2007 Reuters. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Also, this is the most important part which also somewhat refutes the crux of this very poorly written article.
"Once more of them get sampled, then we can start being able to compare the extinct with the extinct," he said. "Then they could really support, or overturn, previous hypotheses. The results of this paper aren't so much that they have made an important contribution to our understanding of T. rex or mastodons, but rather that they are opening a window into an entirely new approach to these fossils."
It'd be nice to see what the differences were, also, as they seemed to not give actual facts in this article, which ya know, would've made it actually scientific.
Posted: Fri Apr 13, 2007 12:13 am
by brinstar
what will it take lyion?
Posted: Fri Apr 13, 2007 12:57 am
by Lyion
The proper question is what should it take.
Posted: Fri Apr 13, 2007 1:11 am
by Lueyen
It appears as the the author of the article used circular logic to come to the conclusion in the first sentence that this represents proof.
Tiny bits of protein extracted from a 68-million-year-old dinosaur bone have given scientists the first genetic proof that the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex is a distant cousin to the modern chicken.
"Based on all of the genomic information we have available today, it appears these sequences are closer to birds or chickens than anything else," Asara said.
What Asara said here is that it was closer, to come to the conclusion that this is absolute proof, one first needs to view it from a perspective that other species MUST have evolved from the T-Rex. Even if the theory of evolution is correct this is a flaw in the logic simply because there may be no modern day relatives of the T-Rex, it might have simply died out instead of evolving.
This of course begs the question as to why the similarities, and perhaps a greater question where evolution is concerned. If you accept for a moment the theory of evolution as absolute fact, then are all living things traced back to a single organism having evolved in different ways? This would explain common similarities without being able to find direct links until you progress all the way to a single prodigious organisim.
The research sounds interesting, but the author has inserted their own bias coming to a non objective conclusion.
Posted: Fri Apr 13, 2007 2:07 am
by brinstar
lyion wrote:The proper question is what should it take.
okay, answer that one then
Posted: Fri Apr 13, 2007 2:33 am
by Arlos
Uh, Lueyen, it doesn't work that way. Proteins are very species specific, most of them. You'll get reactions to family groups, but not from stuff that is sufficiently distant. I guarantee you that a similar test run against, say, Dog antibodies would produce no reaction whatsoever. Frogs & newts are amphibians, and are much closer relatives to lizards & birds than they are to mammals.
While it's true that we don't know what a lot of the intergenomic DNA does, we're actually not bad at gene prediction at this point, and while predicting the 3D structure of a protein given only its amino acid makeup is VERY hard, comparing 2 proteins that are already built is a relatively simple issue.
Indeed, commonality of DNA is EXCELLENT evidence for how closely related two species are. Ultimately, it's a statistical analysis. I'm actually in classes on this right now, as it's one of the primary uses of Bioinformatics, to be quite honest. By looking at the genes of 2 creatures, you can actually get a fairly accurate rough estimate of how long it had been since those species diverged. Unfortunately, we don't have Dinosaur DNA yet. But being able to do this kind of protein analysis is huge.
Let me close with a quote from one of the world's foremost experts on DNA, and as previously noted, a devout Christian:
The head of the Human Genome Project wrote:Yes, evolution by descent from a common ancestor is clearly true. If there was any lingering doubt about the evidence from the fossil record, the study of DNA provides the strongest possible proof of our relatedness to all other living things.
-Arlos
Posted: Fri Apr 13, 2007 6:58 am
by Reynaldo
In order to survive, the mighty T-Rex evolves into the stealthy chicken! Maybe now that chicken are slaughtered today, they'll evolve back into a t-rex and beat some ass.
Posted: Fri Apr 13, 2007 7:07 am
by Eziekial
I feel science is a religion itself and one must have faith to believe it
Posted: Fri Apr 13, 2007 7:41 am
by Lyion
arlos wrote:Let me close with a quote from one of the world's foremost experts on DNA, and as previously noted, a devout Christian:
The head of the Human Genome Project wrote:Yes, evolution by descent from a common ancestor is clearly true. If there was any lingering doubt about the evidence from the fossil record, the study of DNA provides the strongest possible proof of our relatedness to all other living things.
I have absolutely no problems with that statement above and agree. However, agreeing that we have a common ancestor does not indicate a T Rex turned into a chicken based on a fairly weak circular logic argument, and some very dodgy guesswork
Although it does add more authenticity to what Fred Flintstone ate.
DNA 'blueprint' comparisons such as from this article are not good and the article is a nice, but somewhat wild guess, as even you know how much we lack in knowledge there. The AP writer clearly misrepresents things in the title, opening paragraph, and overall context which he refutes within is own article.
The scientist quoted even admits his 'proof' is nothing, and he hopes we figure more out to be able to really know the facts, which shows he is wise, even if the AP article ain't that good.
The BBC article is more accurate and a better read.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6548719.stm
Posted: Fri Apr 13, 2007 7:54 am
by Menlaan
Reynaldo wrote:In order to survive, the mighty T-Rex evolves into the stealthy chicken! Maybe now that chicken are slaughtered today, they'll evolve back into a t-rex and beat some ass.
hahaha
Posted: Fri Apr 13, 2007 8:51 am
by Harrison
Super Mega Ultra Chicken? No, he is legend!
ARISE CHICKEN, ARISE
Posted: Fri Apr 13, 2007 9:30 am
by Xaiveir
Harrison wrote:Super Mega Ultra Chicken? No, he is legend!
ARISE CHICKEN, ARISE
Isn't that the chicken the Peter Griffon fought in the Family guy???
Posted: Fri Apr 13, 2007 9:45 am
by Harrison
No, Super Mega Ultra Chicken is 30 feet tall.
Posted: Fri Apr 13, 2007 10:05 am
by KaiineTN
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWz3V1rt6hE
It doesn't have the Super Mega Ultra Chicken part though!
Posted: Fri Apr 13, 2007 12:20 pm
by kinghooter00
T-rex,......He turned into a little bitch.
Posted: Sun Apr 15, 2007 9:20 am
by Scatillac
Evolution, creationism... I have an idea, Lets just survive. With all we know, with all our knowledge, all the people that have lived and died, the heroes, the villians. Its interesting that all it would take is a big rock to fall from the sky and none of it would have mattered at all.
Posted: Sun Apr 15, 2007 10:51 am
by araby
No, that is from ATHF. And I just picture a huge t-rex bird leg in a frying pan. I loved the Flintstones. They were so creative with the animals.
Posted: Sun Apr 15, 2007 12:18 pm
by brinstar
Harrison wrote:Super Mega Ultra Chicken? No, he is legend!
ARISE CHICKEN, ARISE
haha that hit the spot, thanks man
Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2007 2:05 pm
by Burgy99
So, if we have DNA and proteins from Dinosaurs, could we clone them ? Maybe we could fill in the missing gaps with bird DNA and hatch them from ostritch eggs Jurassic Park style !
Seriously though Arlos, could cloning a dinosaur ever be possible, and if not what are we missing to do so ?
Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2007 2:49 pm
by Arlos
We still haven't gotten DNA from dinosaurs, this was just some bits of proteins.
One of the main problems is that DNA is a fairly fragile molecule, actually. I mean, for one thing, DNA molecules are HUGE. For example, Ethanol (alcohol) has a chemical formula of C2H6O. DNA on the other hand, even for the simplest creatures is thousands or tens of thousands of elements the size of the ethanol molecule long. So, the wrong temperatures, the wrong environment, etc. etc. etc. can reduce DNA to its component pieces, effectively, thus rendering it utterly useless, at least with any technique we currently have.
Also, think about what fossilizing means: replacing organic parts with minerals. That's why bones fossilize but soft parts rarely do: bones have lots of pure calcium, etc. so they'll stay solid and recognizeable as the gaps are filled in with rock. Other parts, much much much much rarer.
Even stuff like the flash-frozen mammoths from the arctic that I'm sure everyone has heard of have major issues. If freezing isn't done in a precisely controlled fashion, ice crystals form. Ice crystals, like most other crystals, are sharp and pointy. The insides of cells are, of course, mostly water. So, you get ice crystals forming there, the spikes on the crystals are going to puncture all of the cell membranes and the nuclear membrane as they grow, thus releasing everything into one undifferentiated mass, etc.
They're continually working on new techniques to try and get DNA from fossils and frozen animals both, but so far, no major luck. Believe me, scientists would love to clone ancient animals. But beyond the DNA preservation issues I've already discussed, there's monumental issues to overcome. Like, for mammals, what do you use for a womb? Who knows if a cloned wooly mammoth, say, could survive and develop properly in even the womb of a close relative, the Elephant? Could a human mother gestate a chimp fetus, for example, and we're closer relations to chimps than elephants and mammoths are, to my understanding...
-Arlos
Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2007 5:25 pm
by Lueyen
I think it's interesting that Burgy99 referenced Jurassic Park, Criton tends to take something from pioneering science and runs with it. History has already seen previous science fiction become modern day reality in some cases, and the source from which Criton generally derives his idea tends to make them look at least somewhat plausible.
We may not be there yet, but I believe it might be someday possible. Even if we can not get DNA from fossilized material it might someday be possible to use it as a blue print to build it.
Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2007 5:27 pm
by Diekan
D. Duck wrote:must been some pretty big black guys back then
lol.
I'd add some scientific value to this, but I am burnt on writing thesis like papers on genetics...