Posted: Jan 20, 2011 12:30 pm
hackenslash wrote:The flagellum is not a machine, it's analogous to one.
The map is not the terrain.
In fact, for all intents and purposes the flagellum is a limb.
It shows evidence of having evolved from an ancestor to the Type-3 protein export apperatus(but not from the actual, extant Type-III export apperatus), through a stage of being a molecular syringe/virulence delivery system, to the final flagellum we see today. If memory serves, all of the proteins used in the assembly of the rod, hook and filament have been sequenced and show the expected evolutionary homologies to each other, and paralogous exported adhesion and virulence proteins being exported and injected by related non-flagellated microoganisms that have the T3 apperatus and/or related molecular syringes.
The evidence shows the flagellum evolved. Get over it.
Let the apologetics and handwaving begin....