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Edge of Evolution

The Edge of Evolution was a book by biochemist Michael Behe that was published in 2007.  Much debate erupted following its publishing.

 

Jerry Coyne

A well-known critic of ID, evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne was among the first to respond to Michael Behe's book:

 

  1. Jerry Coyne, The Great Mutator (The New Republic, June 11, 2007)
  2. Michael Behe, Response to Critics, Part 1: Jerry Coyne (June 24, 2007)
  3. Jerry Coyne, Professor Jerry Coyne Addresses Michael Behe's Reply to Coyne's Review of Behe's New Book, (Talk Reason, June 30, 2007)
  4. Michael Behe, Back and Forth with Jerry Coyne, Part 1 (July 8, 2007)
  5. Michael Behe, Back and Forth with Jerry Coyne, Part 2 (July 9, 2007)
  6. Michael Behe, Back and Forth with Jerry Coyne, Part 3 (July 10, 2007)

 

 

Sean B. Carroll

Sean B. Carroll (not to be confused with Sean Carroll the physicist) is a molecular biologist and geneticist.  He published a negative review of Edge of Evolution in the journal Science:

 

  1. Sean B. Carroll, God as Genetic Engineer (Science, June 8, 2007):  Carroll argues that Behe ignores many cases where multiple mutations lead to new traits arriving in a stepwise process, "as if binding or catalysis were all or nothing rather than a broad spectrum of affinities or rates" and lists "tetrodotoxin resistance in snakes, the tuning of color vision in animals, cefotaxime antibiotic resistance in bacteria, and pyrimethamine resistance in malarial parasites" as examples of "selection changing multiple sites in evolving proteins". He goes on to note "there are dozens of well-studied families of cellular proteins (kinases, phosphatases, proteases, adaptor proteins, sumoylation enzymes, etc.) that recognize short linear peptide motifs in which only two or three amino acid residues are critical for functional activity."
  2. Michael Behe, Response to Critics, Part 2:  Sean Carroll (June 26, 2007):  Behe responds that in his book he also listed "several instances where multiple changes do accumulate gradually in proteins".  He criticizes Carroll for ignoring that the majority of binding sites require more residues for binding and that if (as Carroll showed by calculation) all binding cites required so few amino acids, every protein would bind to every other protein.  Behe concludes by noting that Carroll's papers show "different species have different protein binding sites" but "they demonstrate nothing about how the sites arose".
  3. Casey Luskin, Sean Carroll fails to scale the Edge of Evolution, (Evolution News, July 2, 2007)
    1. Carrol wrote, "it is a non sequitur to leap to the conclusion, as Behe does, that such multiple-amino acid replacements therefore can't happen. Multiple replacements can accumulate when each single amino acid replacement affects performance, however slightly, because selection can act on each replacement individually and the changes can be made sequential.", but Behe cited numerous examples of gradual improvements in his book, such as "The Darwinian magic works well only when intermediate steps are each better ("more fit") than preceding steps"
    2. Carrol's other examples of evolution fall within the categories of small improvements Behe already acknowledged evolution can do well.
    3. When Carroll cites that "new protein interactions ... can evolve fairly rapidly" he's not referring to observed evolution but only to evolution inferred from homology.
  4. A Discussion at Uncommon Descent arose over the Carroll / Behe debate.
  5. Michael Behe, Addressing Cumulative Selection (Science, Oct 2007):  Behe shares instances of his book where he talked about one-mutation-at-a-time gains in fitness in response to Carroll's claim that Behe never talked about these cases.
  6. Sean Carroll, Response (Science, Oct 2007):  Carroll says all evolution can be explained one-mutation-at-a-time, and that pyrimethamine resistant malaria is just as fit as wild type malaria.
  7. Michael Behe, Back and forth with Sean Carroll in Science (Oct 17, 2007):  Behe says that if wild-type pyrimethamine resistant malaria is as fit, why don't they outcompete regular malaria in nature?  Perhaps they have other detrimental aspects that result in a net burden.  Behe notes that Science cut the last 100 words of his response 300 word response, when Carroll's 500 word response then chastised Behe for not addressing the very point that was cut!  The journal Science rigged the debate.

 

Kenneth Miller

Kenneth Miller is a biologist and well-known critic of intelligent design.  He published a negative review of Edge in Nature:

 

  1. Kenneth Miller, Falling over the edge, Nature, (June 28, 2007):  I cringed at how badly Miller misrepresents Behe.  Miller claims, "Behe obtains his probabilities by considering each mutatin as an independent event, ruling out any role for cumulative selection, and requiring evolution to achieve an exact, predetermined result."  Yet Behe talked about many cases of stepwise evolution and used malaria as a case where stepwise evolution wasn't possible.  Behe "overlooks the existence of chloroquine-resistant strains of malaria lacking one of the mutations he claims to be essential (at position 220). This matters, because it shows that there are several mutational routes to effective drug resistance. Second, and more importantly, Behe waves away evidence suggesting that chloroquine resistance may be the result of sequential, not simultaneous, mutations (Science 298, 74–75; 2002)".  Behe ignores other step-wise evolutionary paths such as "hormone-receptor complexes by sequential mutations (Science 312, 97–101; 2006), the ‘evolvability’ of new functions in existing proteins — studies on serum paraxonase (PON1) traced the evolution of several new catalytic functions (Nature Genet. 37, 73–76; 2005) — or the modular evolution of cellular signalling circuitry (Annu. Rev. Biochem. 75, 655–680; 2006)"
  2. Michael Behe, Response to Kenneth R. Miller (July 11, 2007):  Behe explains that Miller confused Behe's 1020number as a probability calculation, when it was instead from observed data.  When Miller noted chloroquine resistent malaria without a mutation at position 20, it's because those malaria took a different path to achieve chloroquine resistence.  "there may be several routes, maybe permutations of pathways, too. But whether or not there are several routes, the bottom line is that resistance arises only once for every 1020 parasites."
  3. Michael Behe, Response to Kenneth R. Miller, Continued (July 12, 2007):  None of millers citations of gradual evolution deal with evolution in nature, or even protein-protein binding sites.  "The Science paper concerns protein-steroid-hormone binding; the Nature Genetics paper deals with the enzyme activity of single proteins; and the Annual Reviews paper discusses rearrangement of pre-existing protein binding domains. What’s more, none of the papers deals with evolution in nature. They all concern laboratory studies where very intelligent investigators purposely re-arrange, manipulate, and engineer isolated genes (not whole cells or organisms) to achieve their own goals."

 

Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins wrote a negative review of Edge of Evolution in the New York Times, and Behe responded.  I wondered if Dawkins had even read the same book I did.

 

  1. Inferior Design (New York Times, July 1, 2007)
  2. Michael Behe, Response to Richard Dawkins (July 16, 2007)

 

Nick Matzke

  1. Nick Matzke, The Edge of Creationism, Trends in Ecology and Evolution, (Oct 30, 2007)
  2. Michael Behe, Trends in Ecology and Evolution follows the trend, Part 1 (Nov 2, 2007)
  3. Michael Behe, Trends in Ecology and Evolution follows the trend, Part 2 (Nov 5, 2007)
  4. Michael Behe, Trends in Ecology and Evolution follows the trend, Part 3 (Nov 6, 2007)

 

Ian Musgrave

Ian Musgrave is a population geneticist who challenged Michael Behe's claim that HIV had not developed any new binding sites, and on the population genetics in regard to Behe's estimate of total HIV population:

 

  1. Ian Musgrave, An Open Letter to Dr. Michael Behe (Oct 22, 2007)
  2. Ian Musgrave, An Open Letter to Dr. Michael Behe (Part 2) (Nov 11, 2007)
  3. Michael Behe, Response to Ian Musgrave’s “Open Letter to Dr. Michael Behe,” Part 1 (Nov 12, 2007)
  4. Ian Musgrave, An Open Letter to Dr. Michael Behe (Part 3) (Nov 12, 2007)
  5. Michael Behe, Response to Ian Musgrave’s “Open Letter to Dr. Michael Behe,” Part 2 (Nov 13, 2007)
  6. Ian Musgrave, An Open Letter to Dr. Michael Behe (Part 4) (Nov 13, 2007)
  7. Michael Behe, Response to Ian Musgrave’s “Open Letter to Dr. Michael Behe,” Part 3 (Nov 14, 2007)
  8. Ian Musgrave, An Open Letter to Dr. Michael Behe (Part 5) (Nov 15, 2007)
  9. Michael Behe, Response to Ian Musgrave’s “Open Letter to Dr. Michael Behe,” Part 4 (Nov 15, 2007).  Michael Behe agrees that figure 7.4 in Edge of Evolution should have shown HIV evolving one new binding spot, not zero.
  10. Ian Musgrave, An Open Letter to Dr. Michael Behe (Part 6) (Nov 16, 2007)
  11. Michael Behe, Response to Ian Musgrave’s “Open Letter to Dr. Michael Behe,” Part 5 (Nov 16, 2007)
  12. Ian Musgrave, An Open Letter to Dr. Michael Behe (Part 7) (Nov 16, 2007)

 

Other Debates

David E Levin, The Edge of Evolution, (NCSE, April 2007)

Arthur Hunt, Reality 1, Behe 0 (Panda's Thumb, July 22, 2007)

PZ Myers, Behe’s Edge of Evolution, part 1

PZ Myers, Behe's Edge of Evolution, part 1a

PZ Myers, Behe's Edge of Evolution, part 2

Scott Buchanan, Letters to Creationists STAN-4, 2010

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Larry Moran

 

  1. Michael Behe:  A Key Inference of The Edge of Evolution Has Now Been Experimentally Confirmed (July 14, 2014)
  2. Casey Luskin:  So, Michael Behe Was Right After All; What Will the Critics Say Now? (July 16, 2014)
  3. Michael Behe:  It's Tough to Make Predictions, Especially About the Future (July 16, 2014)
  4. Michael Behe:  The Edge of Evolution: Why Darwin's Mechanism Is Self-Limiting (July 18, 2014)
  5. Larry Moran:  Taking the Behe challenge! (August 01, 2014)
  6. Michael Behe:  Laurence Moran's Sandwalk Evolves Chloroquine Resistance (Aug 13, 2014)
  7. Larry Moran:  CCC's and the edge of evolution (Aug 15, 2014)
  8. Michael Behe:  Guide of the Perplexed: A Quick Reprise of The Edge of Evolution (Aug 20, 2014)
  9. Larry Moran:  Understanding Michael Behe (Aug 22, 2014)
  10. Michael Behe:  Drawing My Discussion with Laurence Moran to a Close (Aug 26, 2014)
  11. Larry Moran:  Michael Behe's final thoughts on the edge of evolution (Aug 26, 2014)

 

In the end, Moran and Behe both agreed that it took a little bit less than 1020 malarial parasites for chloroquine resistence to arise, but it took about 1020 for it to arise and fixate.  Moran claimed Behe was wrong because he said it would take 1020 for the mtuation to arise, but still saying "we can all agree that some pathways are improbable and if he wants to use 10-20 as a point of departure then that's fine by me".  Moran also stated that "some of Behe's critics really did misinterpret Behe's calculation and proposed a silly scenario for chloroquine resistance that doesn't agree with the data. There were, in fact, several reviews of Michael Behe's book that completely missed the mark. That's embarrassing."

 

Experimental Evolution, Loss-of-Function mutations, and "The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution"

In 2010, Michael Behe published a paper in the Quarterly Review of Biology.  He measured rates of gains, modifications, and losses of functional coding elements (FCT's) which he defined as:

  1. promoters
  2. enhancers
  3. insulators;
  4. Shine-Dalgarno sequences
  5. tRNA genes
  6. miRNA genes
  7. protein coding sequences
  8. organellar targeting- or localization-signals
  9. intron/extron splice sites
  10. codons specifying the binding site of a protein for another molecule (such as its substrate, another protein, or a small allosteric regulator)
  11. codons specifying a processing site of a protein (such as a cleavage, myristoylation, or phosphorylation site)
  12. polyadenylation signals
  13. transcription andtranslation termination signals.

 

Using this criteria, he then performed a literature review of the last four decades of microbial evolution experiments and noted that "by far the most common adaptive changes seen in those examples are due to the loss or modification of a pre-existing molecular function", as opposed to gains of function."

 

Debate with Jerry Coyne

Evolutinary biologist and well known intelligent design critic Jerry Coyne was quick to respond to the paper on his blog.  And Michael Behe responded in turn on his own blog:

 

  1. Jerry Coyne, Behe's New Paper (Dec 12, 2010)
    Michael Behe, The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution: A reply to Jerry Coyne (Dec 17, 2010)
  2. Jerry Coyne, An Experimental Evolutionist Replies to Behe (Dec 20, 2010)
  3. Jerry Coyne, New genes arise quickly (Dec 21, 2010)
  4. Michael Behe, More from Jerry Coyne (Dec 24, 2010)
  5. Michael Behe, Even more from Jerry Coyne (Jan 12, 2011)