Despite intellectual and scientific roots going much further back, the modern intelligent design movement (if that label is appropriate; Paul Nelson thinks it’s more of an ID community) was launched arguably in 1991 with Phillip Johnson’s Darwin on Trial. In that book and others, Johnson identified the central question of evolution as whether unguided processes are creative. Could blind, aimless variation and natural selection produce the exquisite instances of design (real or apparent) we see in complex living organisms? Evolutionists assume so.

As we’ve seen before, Michael Lynch, evolutionary biologist at the Indiana University, raises questions about natural selection’s creative potential (see here and here). Don’t misunderstand; Lynch is an ardent Darwinist, with no love for ID. But recognizing that natural selection is often treated as a magic wand for adaptive design, he has looked to other unguided mechanisms — such as genetic drift and population genetics — for the seeds of innovation.

He also thinks that evolutionists have not paid enough attention to how cells work. By way of an aside, Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen evidently feels the same way — he just sunk $100 million into a new Allen Institute for Cell Science here in Seattle, whose executive director, biologist Rick Horwitz, admits that currently "We really don’t have a good idea of how normal cells work."

Anyway, Lynch is now ready to launch a movement of his own: a new field of science that combines cell biology with evolutionary biology. He calls it, obviously, "evolutionary cell biology" (let’s call it ECB for short). With seven colleagues from across the U.S. and Europe, he announced the need for this movement in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ("Evolutionary Cell Biology: Two Origins, One Objective"):

Because all evolutionary change ultimately requires modifications at the cellular level, questioning and understanding how cellular features arise and diversify should be a central research venue in evolutionary biology. However, if there is one glaring gap in this field, it is the absence of widespread cell-biological thinking. Despite the surge of interest at the molecular, genomic, and developmental levels, much of today’s study of evolution is only moderately concerned with cellular features, perhaps due to lack of appreciation for their wide variation among taxa. However, a full mechanistic understanding of evolutionary processes will never be achieved without an elucidation of how cellular features become established and modified.

The time is ripe for bridging the gap between the historically disconnected fields of cell biology and evolutionary biology and integrating them with the principles of biophysics and biochemistry into a formal field of evolutionary cell biology. (Emphasis added.)

Great idea. But along with it comes some big challenges for Darwinism: molecular machines and genetic information. Undoubtedly thanks to the ID movement, Lynch is well aware that some irreducibly complex molecular machines need explaining:

One remarkable example of how history continues to influence today’s cell biology is the near universal use of ATP synthase as a mechanism for energy generation. Embedded in the surface membranes of bacteria and organellar membranes of eukaryotes, this complex molecular machine uses the potential energy of a proton gradient to generate a rotational force that converts ADP to ATP, much like a turbine converts the potential energy of a water gradient into electricity. However, the proton gradient does not come for free: cells first use energy derived from metabolism to pump protons out of membrane-bound compartments, creating the gradient necessary for reentry through ATP synthase. Even assuming that ATP production is an essential requirement for the origin of life, it is by no means clear that the path chosen for ADP-to-ATP conversion is the only possibility.

Much of the paper consists of questions that ECB needs to address. Prominently among them is: "How Do Cell Innovations Arise?" One reads on with bated breath, but finds only promissory notes, hoping that future research might figure this one out. Stating "Maybe we’ll figure it out some day" in highfalutin jargon does not make the dodge any less dodgy:

Although conceptually straightforward, resolving the degree to which variation (and covariation) of phenotypes in populations of cells is a consequence of genetic vs. environmental causes will require large-scale experimental designs including genetically variable isolates.

Lynch provides not one single example of how any unguided natural process, whether natural selection, random genetic drift, stochastic cellular noise or some other thing, produced a "complex molecular machine" like ATP synthase. There is only the suggestion that since such things exist, they must have evolved. Oh yes, he does offer three examples of innovations mapping onto the tree of life, like —

In a third example, an integration of molecular and morphological phylogenetic analysis has led to the identification of novel components of centrioles and cilia, as well as to evolutionary hypotheses for how their coordinated biogenesis and functions in different cellular contexts have been achieved through duplication and divergence of an ancestral gene set.

But this is not a demonstration that these organelles arose from unguided processes, much less a theory of how that could happen. It’s the same trick Darwinian evolutionists have always used at the organismic level: if two things look alike, they must be homologous. It’s assuming the very thing evolution needs to prove.

Any good sales pitch needs to establish that the "old way" is insufficient. Lynch is aware that accumulating "parts lists" of cells is not helping Evolutionary Cell Biology. Textbooks on cell biology have focused on structures and functions, without telling how they got that way. And the preoccupation with "model organisms" leaves many other interesting creatures out in zoo of "amusing oddities." Out with the old —

The view that intracellular structures are essentially invariant in diverse organisms engenders the false impression that an evolutionary biologist has little to gain by pursuing studies at the cellular level. Moreover, the few statements about evolution that can be found in cell-biology textbooks and journal articles frequently speculate on the adaptive significance of cellular features, oversimplifying and obscuring our understanding of evolutionary mechanisms. This outmoded view of evolutionary processes still gives rise to major misunderstandings, with substantial implications.

Well, that’s interesting. You wonder if he has ID in mind as a "major misunderstanding" because of cell biology’s preoccupation with structures and functions instead of evolutionary mechanisms. You wonder if the mention of "substantial implications" has anything to do with politics or education.

His final pitch is all future tense. ECB is going to do everything but create a global economic boom, cure cancer, and make everyone hold hands. Bring it on!

In summary, we have attempted to highlight why bridging the conceptual gap between cell biology and evolutionary biology is likely to enrich our understanding of virtually all biological processes. For example, although the natural spatial delimitation of cell biology resides at the cell membrane, an understanding of the evolutionary roots of various cellular features is of central relevance to evolutionary developmental biologists concerned with the origin of cell types. Evolutionary cell biology has a particularly high potential for informing a variety of practical matters with ecological, economic, and health benefits. Such applications include the facilitation of drug development and the elucidation of the mechanisms of drug sensitivity and resistance, and of the identification of the mechanisms of nutrient fluxes through the environment and their dependence on species-specific features. The removal of real and perceived conceptual and communication barriers (including those engendered by the use of specialized vocabularies) and the design and implementation of cross-disciplinary educational initiatives are central keys to building an interactive community of scientists essential for igniting an effective field of evolutionary cell biology.

We’ve looked hard for evidence that unguided material processes could create innovations like ATP synthase. That check is still in the mail. And Darwin is still on trial.

Photo: Michael Lynch /Biology Department, Indiana University.