Paradigm of Design: The Bacterial Flagellum

Two seminars presented by Dr. Scott Minnich as Fernando Castro-Chavez remembers them:

1.
Paradigm of Design: The Bacterial Flagellum (RealPlayer, 2003, 83 min.)

"The bacterial flagellum is a complex macromolecular machine. Are the forces of mutation and natural selection sufficient to build these structures? Do type III secretory organelles truly reflect intermediate structures? A review of our current understanding of these systems is presented by Dr. Minnich."

"Dr. Minnich's research interests are temperature regulation of Y. enterocolitca gene expression and coordinate reciprocal expression of flagellar and virulence genes."

In this interesting conference I remember that Dr. Minnich mentioned the fallacy of Richard Lenski, who after years of not obtaining any 'evolution' in bacteria, turned his attention to computational simulations to 'obtain' his preconceived bacterial 'evolutions' [using the deceiving and non-realistic computational program Avida, which means in Spanish "Sin-Vida" (absence of life!), the other collaborator for such software "sin-vida" (lifeless) is Robert Pennock].

2.
Bacterial Flagella: A Paradigm for Design. (Video in QuickTime, 2004. Or hear it in Audio, mp3)

In this second conference of Dr. Minnich I remember that he mentions that because biological systems are Irreducibly Complex it is possible to learn about the function of its vital genes through deliberated inactivation of them (by using artificial mutations, deletions, insertions, translocations, etc.)