Genome Maintenance Defies Evolution

Darwinism cannot explain the multi-part systems
required to maintain the DNA code

 

 

by Jerry Bergman, PhD

Our entire intellectual culture rests on the unscientific foundation of evolutionism. Evolution rests on three basic ideas:

• Life originated from unguided chemicals,
• The raw material for evolution is random mutations, and
• Natural selection propels the development of all higher organisms by selecting mutations that provide a survival advantage for the organism.

Darwin’s natural selection theory is limited to conserving certain traits, and cannot account for what is commonly called macroevolution. The postulated source of variation—mutations—fails, because the vast majority of mutations, up to 99 percent, are either slightly deleterious or lethal. As a result, the harmful mutation load is increasing with each generation.

Genetic evidence, however, shows that life is designed to not evolve. One example is that over a dozen mutation-repair mechanisms are known to exist. And, no doubt, more await discovery. As described by Volkva et al., “Cells possess an armamentarium of DNA repair pathways to counter DNA damage and prevent mutation.”[1]

Nucleotide Excision Repair

One gene repair system, the nucleotide excision repair system, repairs up to 99% of all  point mutations almost uniformly across the mutation spectrum.[2] Nucleotide excision repair, described below, is the main system used by mammals to remove DNA damage and replace it with non-damaged DNA. This system repairs DNA damage caused by UV (ultraviolet) light, environmental mutagens, and even some cancer chemotherapeutic adducts. This system functions by design to reduce mutations, the main means of providing random genetic variety and the engine of evolution, according to evolutionists.

Research on persons exposed to radiation, such as from detonated atomic bombs, indicates that, after several generations, the repair system and natural selection reduces the mutation load below the very high level that was expected. This effect tends to maintain stasis—the opposite of evolution.

Life Before DNA Repair Impossible

Without the complex cellular and DNA repair systems, most all cell DNA would rapidly decay, causing cellular death. These cells would then disintegrate and eventually the organism would die. Consequently, evolutionists must assume that, for some unknown reason, this did not happen to all life before the repair system evolved. Only when all of these repair systems existed, and worked as a functional unit, could “nature” select the organism that survived best and produced the most offspring.

The cell-repair mechanisms existing in all living organisms are able to identify most mutations when they occur. The repair system cuts out the mutated DNA section with excision enzymes and then repairs the damage. One mutation type occurs during DNA replication, causing a mistake in base pairing that results in the incorrect A-C (adenine-cytosine) pair instead of the proper A-T (adenine-thymine) pair. Repair enzymes in the daughter cell, if they recognize the mismatch, which depends on an intact allele, will excise (remove) the incorrect bases and replace them with the correct ones.

Super Proofreading

The genetic proofreading machinery includes three levels of quality control: 1. DNA polymerase, 2. proofreading exonuclease, and 3. mismatch repair. Altogether, the mistake may result in a newly synthesized DNA chain at a rate of only a single error for every from 1 to 10 billion nucleotides.[3]

If the repair system is damaged, the life-form often cannot survive. The disease called zeroderma pigmentosum is caused by a malfunction of the excision repair mechanism. This damage is most often fatal. Differential survival and excision enzymes are but a few of the many systems that are designed to prevent, or reduce, the rate of an organism’s, and also a species’, deterioration and death. This repair system exists in all life forms, from bacteria to humans.

DNA Repair Reduces Cancer Risk

The research cited in this review has documented the repair system designed in whales to help them to resist cancer and increase their longevity to over 200 years![4] These whales are seldom affected by cancer even though they are exposed to some of the same cancer-causing agents that humans are.[5] Naturalists are baffled by the fact that whales are 20,000 times larger than humans and, as a result, they have far more cells. Consequently, whales should have a higher  cancer rate than humans, not a much lower rate.[6] A female whale weighs, on average, 61 thousand kilograms (134,000 lbs.) or 1,130 times larger than the average female human whose weight is 54 kg (120 lbs.). This finding may also help us to understand why the life expectancy of humans is now only close to 80 years and in Biblical times was much longer.

Bowhead whales have a more complex repair system than humans because they have more copies of certain repair genes. The repair system is called the DNA-damage response (DDR) which helps ensure error-free DNA replication and transcription. Defects in DDR resulting in unstable DNA, erroneous repeats, rearrangements, and mutations. These DNA defects are linked to numerous diseases, including cancer and heritable neurological disorders. The DDR system requires a total of 605 proteins that are organized in a hierarchy of 109 assemblies (see the chart illustrating them). Their functions includes repair pathways for distinct DNA lesion types, including base-excision repair discussed above, nucleotide-excision repair, mismatch repair, interstrand-crosslink repair, and double-stranded-break repair.[7] As shown in the chart below, the complexity is mind boggling. It is irreducibly complex, and therefore impossible to evolve in a stepwise manner.

Adding or deleting letters to the DNA code changes the DNA sequence, which results in a gene malfunctioning, which can lead to cancer. Repair involves adding or deleting letters to again produce the correct DNA code.[8] Depending on the effect of the damage, the bowhead whale cells accurately repair the DNA, contributing to reducing the damage that leads to cancer, thus adding to the longevity of the whale.

Can Evolution Explain DNA Repair?

A Google search was unable to locate an evolutionary explanation for the DNA damage response system except to note that each step in the evolution of the DNA damage response system improved its ability to reduce mutations in the genome, thus improving the survivability of the organism. Ignored was the fact that this complex, well-designed system also drastically reduces the main means of creating new genetic information—mutations—thus limiting the variety that evolution is able to select from. If no new genetic variation, then no evolution. It also ignores the fact that without the DNA damage response system, life would quickly spiral to extinction. Even if simple life evolved, mutational errors would rapidly cause the degeneration of the genome and cell death.

Summary

The focus for our purposes is not on the details of the research. Rather, the focus is the fact that research shows an enormous level of irreducible complexity in the DNA damage response system. Even minor changes in DNA can contribute to causing cancer. Both cancer and the drastic reduction of the longevity in humans is partly a result of mutations in the DNA-repair efficacy since the Fall of man as recounted in Genesis 3. Furthermore, the DNA-damage-response-system study shows that mutations are not a viable source of evolutionary novelty. Cells are designed to resist mutation and protect the innate genetic information the cells contain.

Figure 1. Damaged DNA-Repair Response Map. Diagram from Kratz, et al. A multi-scale map of protein assemblies in the DNA damage response. Cell Systems;  https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.cels.2023.04.007, 2023.

References

[1] Volkova, Nadezda, et al. Mutational signatures are jointly shaped by DNA damage and repair. Nature Communications 11(2169); https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-15912, 2020.

[2] Volkova, et al., 2020.

[3] Shapiro, Robert.. Evolution: A View from the 21st Century. FT Press Science, Upper Saddle, NJ, 2011.

[4] Wong, Carissa. Bowhead whales may resist cancer thanks to superior DNA repair ability. New Scientist, 22 May 2023.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2374622-bowhead-whales-may-resist-cancer-thanks-to-superior-dna-repair-ability/

[5] Wong, Carissa. 2023a, Bowhead Whales’ Cancer Secret. New Scientist. May. p. 20.

[6] Wong, 2023.

[7] Kratz, et al. A multi-scale map of protein assemblies in the DNA damage response. Cell Systems;  https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.cels.2023.04.007, 2023.

[8] Wong, 2023.

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Dr. Jerry Bergman has taught biology, genetics, chemistry, biochemistry, anthropology, geology, and microbiology for over 40 years at several colleges and universities including Bowling Green State University, Medical College of Ohio where he was a research associate in experimental pathology, and The University of Toledo. He is a graduate of the Medical College of Ohio, Wayne State University in Detroit, the University of Toledo, and Bowling Green State University. He has over 1,300 publications in 12 languages and 40 books and monographs. His books and textbooks that include chapters that he authored are in over 1,800 college libraries in 27 countries. So far over 80,000 copies of the 60 books and monographs that he has authored or co-authored are in print. For more articles by Dr Bergman, see his Author Profile.