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Author
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Topic: CSI Applications in Bio-Reporting
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Salvador T. Cordova
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Member # 959
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posted 20. September 2004 14:52
I present a clear cut application of CSI already in existence, or planned for existence in biological systems.
CSI Application in Bio-Reporting
The term "CSI" is not officially used, however the efficacy of the intelligent detection methods work because of the principles outlined in No Free Lunch and Design Inference.
CSI advocates have focused intensley on the origins debate, but in terms of operational science CSI has many areas ripe for exploration and understanding of what CSI is. These are examples of what I call the "BluePrint/Artifact" metaphor of CSI.
The trick to applying CSI in debates of origin would be to express it in terms of evolutionary convergence agruments, as this tends to resists problems with complaints of post diction. I would call these the "Convergence" metaphor within CSI.
There is one system within biology however that I think can fit into the "BluePrint/Artifact" quite well : the Biological Turing Machines. Aldemen has succeeded in building a man-made DNA Turing Machine. We have such Turing Machines already in existence in biological systems.
Salvador
[ 20. September 2004, 22:38: Message edited by: Salvador T. Cordova ]
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Mesk
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Member # 630
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posted 24. November 2004 19:58
Salvador, could you please point out exactly how either of these applications involve the use of CSI as a method for detecting design?
The first example (bio-reporting) involves the engineering of a microbial cell so that they contain two linked systems, one of which detects a specific molecule in the environment, while the other responds to a detection event by producing a measurable output (e.g. a fluorescent protein). This is nothing more than a complex assay for the detection of a known compound. In no way does it employ the concept of CSI - even implicitly - to detect design. It is not even really intended to detect design at all, but rather represents a generic system for determining whether or not a specific, known compound (which could be either natural or artificial) is present.
The second example does at least involve the explicit detection of design (by examining organisms to search for traces of deliberate genetic modification). However, this process does not involve the concept of CSI in any way, shape or form. As the company states in its section on how the tests work, they identify genetically modified organisms by using PCR (a method which amplifies regions of DNA flanked by specific, known sequences) or ELISA (a method which uses antibodies to detect specific, known proteins). In other words, the company searches for the molecular signatures of specific, known examples of design. This is not a generic design detection method by any stretch of the imagination, and it is certainly not CSI.
So how do these examples represent the use of the concept of CSI?
Mesk.
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posted 23. November 2004 13:27
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