Proteins, found in every cell of the human body, are the building blocks of life. There are thousands of different types of proteins but all are made up of long chains of amino acids. When a protein forms, the amino acid chain folds into a three-dimensional shape that determines the protein's function. Each type of protein has its own unique shape and folds into the exact same shape each time.

Scientists have never known how and why proteins fold the way they do. Now, in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, two biophysicists attempt to explain how random chance could have evolved into this intricate folding system. The paper is just one more example of evolutionary scientists refusing to acknowledge God's handiwork no matter how obvious it may be.

Intelligent Design experts writing on the Evolution News & Science Today blog note several difficulties with attributing the intricacies of protein folding to evolution.

Not all chains of amino acids fold—in fact most don't. If protein folding happened by chance, the random process would have had to search all the possible combinations of amino acid sequences to find which ones would fold, a feat so improbable arriving at just one fold would “likely never occur in multiple universes.”

The evolutionist researchers acknowledged getting a large amino acid chain to fold by random chance would be too hard, so they hypothesized small chains of amino acids, called foldons, could fold a little bit and perhaps make it easier for proteins, composed of a number of foldons, to find their proper fold by chance.

But all the researchers have done is displace the problem of how amino acid sequences can fold by chance to how foldons can fold by chance, the blog writers said. “It is still radically improbable to arrive at a sequence that will produce a functional protein without design,” they wrote.

The researchers concluded “some additional mechanism” is needed for proteins to fold properly. Perhaps someday they will acknowledge the creator as that additional mechanism.

The Venus basket sea sponge NOAA

Engineers marvel at bendable glass made by sea sponge

Researchers at Brown University have discovered yet one more example of a natural structure in creation that is the envy of human engineers. Scientists have marveled at how the Venus' flower basket sea sponge can remain firmly fixed to the ocean's floor, held there by nothing more than small strands of glass.

Now, in a study published the Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials, researchers reveal the internal architecture of the glass strands, thin hair-like spicules half the diameter of a human hair, keep the sponge clinging to the seabed.

The spicules are highly bendable and contain a central silica (glass) core encased with 25 thin glass cylinders. A cross section of the assemblage resembles the rings in a tree trunk. When the researchers compared the spicules of the Venus' flower basket with those of a sponge that does not have the tree-ring architecture, the Venus' flower basket's spicules were able to bend 2.4 times further before breaking.

The consistency of the spicules’ pattern, in which the concentric rings gradually decrease in thickness from the center toward the outside, also intrigued the scientists. “It looked like a figure from a math book,” researcher Haneesh Kesari said in a statement.

The researchers hope a better understanding of the architecture of the Venus' flower basket will help engineers develop new human-made materials. —J.B.

The Venus basket sea sponge NOAA

Researchers discover treatment to slow cancer’s spread

Nearly 600,000 people in the United States die of cancer every year, 90 percent of them because the cancer spread from its original location to other parts of the body. Until now, researchers have not understood what causes some cancer cells to break away from the original tumor. But a team led by Johns Hopkins researchers has discovered the density of cells within a tumor is a key factor.

Lead researcher Hasini Jayatilaka likened the process to “waiting for a table in a severely overcrowded restaurant and then getting a message that says you need to take your appetite elsewhere.” The researchers discovered a mix of medications that prevents the delivery of that message.

So far researchers have only tested the treatment in animals, but the discovery opens the door to a new focus for cancer treatment. The study is published in Nature Communications. —J.B.

A non-invasive way to reach deep in the brain

MIT researchers have just developed a noninvasive technique to electrically stimulate neurons deep in the brain to treat brain diseases like Parkinson's, epilepsy, and others.

Doctors found treating patients with movement disorders by delivering an electrical current deep in the brain can be quite successful. But the treatment requires doctors to open the skull and implant electrodes deep in the brain, a risky procedure.

In the current study, reported in the June 1 issue of Cell, researchers tested a new technique on mice in which they placed electrodes on the scalp. The researchers found they could target specific brain locations without affecting brain tissue in the surrounding area, and the technique did not affect neurons in the region of the brain lying between the electrodes on the skull and the interior target.

“I think it’s very exciting because Parkinson’s disease and other movement disorders seem to originate from a very particular region of the brain, and if you can target that, you have the potential to reverse it,” Li-Huei Tsai, one of researchers, said in a statement. —J.B.

Earth’s not-so-recent warming trend

A recent article published in the journal Nature Geoscience documents evidence the climate has been continually warming for the past 11,000 years. The finding undermines the supposed consensus that attributes global warming to humans. “Anthropogenic effects on climate only began in the Industrial Revolution within the past two centuries. If this report is correct, the climate has been warming steadily for 11,000 years, and it wasn’t humans’ fault,” David Coppedge wrote on the Creation Evolution Headlines blog. —J.B.