Drunks and Monkeys
Understanding our primate ancestors’ relationship with alcohol can inform its use by modern humans.
| June 1, 2014
Excerpt: “…the next time you enjoy a drink or two, think about primates enjoying the pleasure of ripe, squishy fruit in tropical rainforests. Realize that you are consuming the products of yeast metabolism.”
My comment: Drunks, monkeys, and evolutionary theorists are not capable of seeing the light of biologically-based cause and effect. Drunks and monkeys may not care. Evolutionary theorists seem to care enough to invent more theories. However, nutrient-dependent pheromone-controlled protein biosynthesis and degradation in brewer’s yeast is linked to alcohol addiction and other addictions via conserved molecular mechanisms of cell type differentiation in species from microbes to man. The story that yeast tell us is one of how organisms respond to ecological variation with ecological adaptations.
Yeasts produce alcohol that kills bacteria. The molecular mechanisms of survival in yeasts also include cell type differentiation at the advent of sexual differentiation of cell types in a unicellular organism. Some evolutionary theorists seem to understand the importance of sexual behavior to species survival in species that sexually reproduce. However, I have never met an evolutionary theorist who could tell me how sex differences in morphological phenotypes, or in behavioral phenotypes “evolved.” If yeasts could talk, they could probably carry on a more intelligent conversation about sexual reproduction compared to evolutionary theorists.
What’s known about yeasts already tells everyone that gene duplication is nutrient-dependent and pheromone-controlled, which means that sex differences in cell types arose from nutrient-dependent differences in alleles. For example, “…yeast cells have developed multiple signaling pathways that respond to the availability of sugars, nitrogen, amino acids, and other nutrients.” Schmidt (2013) also noted that “The mechanism by which one signaling pathway regulates a second provides insight into how cells integrate multiple stimuli to produce a coordinated response.” That insight was included in his article “Signaling Crosstalk: Integrating Nutrient Availability and Sex.”
It should not be difficult, except for evolutionary theorists, to move forward from signaling crosstalk to an understanding of how Secreting and Sensing the Same Molecule Allows Cells to Achieve Versatile Social Behaviors. Indeed, nearly all serious scientists realize that Feedback loops link odor and pheromone signaling with reproduction via changes in social behaviors and the nutrient-dependent pheromone-controlled physiology of reproduction. Social scientists, however, seem willing to continue telling us that mutations and natural selection somehow led to the evolution of biodiversity that is manifested in the morphological and behavioral phenotypes of all species. Seeing the light of nutrient-dependent pheromone-controlled ecological adaptations may not be possible for them.
Instead, evolutionary psychologists and other social scientists are more likely to cite Dobzhansky (1973) and claim “Nothing in Biology Makes Any Sense Except in the Light of Evolution”. Unfortunately, citing that famous work may have kept them and others from learning about the conserved molecular mechanisms that link the epigenetic landscape to the physical landscape of DNA in all organized genomes of all species. Without learning about molecular biology, social scientists are doomed. They may never realize that nothing about evolution makes sense except in the light of Creation. In fact, they probably don’t realize that Dobzhansky was a Creationist. As did other Creationists of his time, he thought that mutations might be the cause of natural selection and evolution. But today’s Creationists have either learned that ecological variation causes ecological adaptations, or simply refuse to believe the pseudoscientific nonsense of population geneticists, which is how serious scientists continue to make scientific progress.
