Talk:Evolution of flagella

Introduction bias
Why is it "extremely sophisticated" and a "finely-tuned system"? These are descriptions that are not cited, and they seems like weasel words 202.78.240.7 (talk) 22:19, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Removed. Viriditas (talk) 09:01, 26 June 2010 (UTC)


 * You can remove the word, but anyone that knows about rotary engines, can easily see the bacterial flagellar motor is a rotary molecular engine.

Versinia pestis flagellum
I removed the section about the yersinia pestis flagellum. The reference was not from a peer reviewed journal.

Nic's introduction to the article:

''Note: The beginning author of this section is new to Wikipedia, and apparently stepped on some toes when he added this material to the flagellum article. The topic of the origin of flagella is indeed something worth having in an encyclopedia, as (1) many people (Intelligent Design fans) claim that no scientific information exists on the topic, and (2) actually there is a lot of such information. Type "flagellum" and "design" into google to see what I mean. ''


 * Could someone please give a web link to even one of the "many people" who claim that "no scientific information exists on the topic"? If there are many, perhaps some of them are well-known - even mentioned in Wikipedia! --Uncle Ed 18:40, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

--- This article looks for my taste far too much like an anti-Behe or anti-ID position statement. It's more something I would expect on http://www.talkorigins.org. But Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and not a discussion forum so I would expect under the title "Evolution of flagella" a summary and explanation of the current status of scientific research on this subject. Behe, ID or IC don't come into that and simply shouldn't be mentioned at all. If you want to tell us about the discussions surrounding ID et cetera, I would suggest you write it under the title "Intelligent Design and the evolution of flagella" or something, but then it also shouldn't be a position statement but a neutral description of the discussion which describes its origins, history, current standing, arguments et cetera.

Another thing that could be better is the integration of this article with the rest of Wikipedia. Why, for example, are the links to Lynn Margulis and cilium external links? There's also a whole lot of biological terms that are explained elsewhere in Wikipedia and should be linked to. -- Jan Hidders 05:52 Jul 22, 2002 (PDT)


 * Nic, I agree with Jan for the most part. This is a great article, but I think that the ID comments should be a foot-note, not the opening.  I think that you'll appreciate that science exists for its own reasons, not just to refute ID nonsense.  As a scientist, I'm half-insulted that so many persons feel the need to discus scientific theories in the context of anti-scientific ideas.


 * Be careful of using the word "I" in an article. These aren't supposed to be personal statements, and they don't belong to any particular person.  Use the talk page to discuss your understanding of an issue.


 * I also have some issues with the formatting, which I may fix in the near future. Specifically, I think all reference should be at the bottom of the page, after all text...and that is a bit of overkill with external references.  Ideally, you could just refer to one page which includes all of those references.

-adam (P.S. I don't think there's any risk of anyone deleting an entire article, especially one that obviously had so much good research. I'll move some of your personal comments to the talk page)

ID stuff
I moved the "creationist controversy" stuff around: Behe rather specifically criticises the cilium (not the eukaryotic flagellum, which I understand is related) and the bacterial flagellum as being irreducibly complex. So it's best to put his criticism as a subsection there. Martin 22:24, 2 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Note cilia is often used to apply to eukaryotic flagella, especially in evolutionary contexts.

New Article
Mark J. Pallen and Nicholas J. Matzke. "From The Origin of Species to the origin of bacterial flagella." Nature Reviews Microbiology 4, 784-790 (October 2006) | doi:10.1038/nrmicro1493

I'll try to add some information from this article in a little bit.

Symbiotic/endosymbiotic/exogenous models
"At present the symbiotic hypothesis for the origin of cilia seems to be limited to Margulis and a few of her associates" - In Lynn Margulis wrote:

"Acquisition of eubacterial motility symbionts into a Thermoplasma-toke archaebacterial host to form the first protists is reconstructed. The thorny issue of the origin of undulipodia is illuminated by the discovery of kinetosome-centriole DNA by Rockefeller University scientists"

citing: Hall J L. Ramanis Z & Luck D J L. Basal body/centriolar DNA: molecular genetic studies in Chlamxdomonas (sic! - this should be read as Chlamydomonas, Ernsts). CW/59:121-32. 1989. See []

However, in one finds:

"The evidence is less clear here, since undulipodia probably don't have their own DNA. (Tantalizing evidence for centriolar DNA was found by David Luck and colleagues in 1989, but couldn't be confirmed)" and

"In 2006, Mark Alliegro and colleagues found that centrosomes have their own associated RNAs (called cnRNA). . . one of which codes for a probable RNA-replicating enzyme. Could this mean that centrosomes are endosymbiotic? Stay tuned. . ."

On the other hand:

I just heve learned, thet (DNA free) hydrogenosomes are now wdely considered to be originating from mitochondria since there is a missing link (Nyctotheras ovalis) which has hydrogen producing organella (per definition 'hydrogenosome') *with* DNA.

Now my question: Are there any recent news about the undulipodia/centrosomes matter?

Any help by a specialist here is highly appreciated!

Thanks & kind regards --Ernsts (talk) 18:01, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Irreducible complexity claims for Flagellum
Flagellum is famous for irreducible complexity claims made by intelligent design advocates. Therefor I believe the article about evolution of flagella should note this. I would like to create a section for irreducible complexity claims and the counterclaims for this specific organism. But before I start, I would like to hear some other opinions on the subject, do you think it's undue weight to create a section? Also sources we can use... So far I got this book: Darwinian Ape (talk) 06:44, 19 May 2015 (UTC)


 * No, articles on scientific topics do not promote fringe ideas—see WP:ONEWAY. Johnuniq (talk) 09:31, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
 * No, wasn't going to "promote" the idea. in fact it's the opposite. But you can't write about how wrong something is without mentioning what that is. WP:ONEWAY allows the idea itself to be discussed if it is published in reliable sources. The source I cited is such, and it discusses the claims made by Michael Behe, and disproves them. I think I can use it as a secondary source for Behe's claims. However, I too, am not sure whether it's undue weight or not. I would like to hear from more people before making a decision.(It would be nice if you comment on that too) I think it could have encyclopedic value to note that there is this claim, coming from some fringe scientists, and why and how it's disproven, because otherwise this organism is just a scientific curiosity. Darwinian Ape (talk) 11:19, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Sorry if my comment suggested that you would promote a fringe idea—what I meant was that if a reader of this article found a section mentioning Irreducible complexity and/or Michael Behe, the reader could reasonably conclude that those topics are significant for an understanding of how flagella evolved. Regardless of our intentions, that would "promote" a fringe idea by associating it with this scientific topic. I agree that the refutation of the IR position is interesting, but standard procedure for Wikipedia would be that any discussion of that should be in an article on the fringe topic. I'm not sure how many people watch this page (it is on my watchlist) but it is possible that not many people would want to discuss this matter because many editors have had enough of the evolution vs. creationism debates, and it might be hard to get much interest. If no other discussion continues here, one possibility would be to ask for opinions at WT:WikiProject Evolutionary biology, or just edit and see what happens. Johnuniq (talk) 11:55, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
 * No problem, I will see if I can get any other opinion on the matter. If not, I could try to find a solution that doesn't involve directly mentioning the IC itself. Darwinian Ape (talk) 12:16, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I would lean towards the position expressed by Johnuniq, unless of course there are a significant number of reliable sources that focus on refuting the intelligent design claims. I suspect there are not. Vanamonde93 (talk) 14:35, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Fringe ideas should not be dragged into a science article just in order to refute them. There are other articles that deal with such nonsense.Charles (talk) 17:03, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

Thank you all for commenting, I agree with you and instead of creating an IC claims section, I am thinking of creating eubacterial flagellum as a subsection to bacterial flagellum section where the the organelle is described and explained. After all, the picture in Dembski's book was the flagellum of eubacteria.(the state of bacterial flagellum section was the reason I wanted to edit this article anyway.), would it be OK to put that refutation articles in see also section? My reasoning for this is that many people who heard of flagellum organelle, heard it because of this IC nonsense. And they would expect information on IC claims. Maybe it would be helpful to point them in the right direction? Darwinian Ape (talk) 05:22, 20 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Recent edit to the article (2022-08-15) adds a claim about "irreducible complexity" to the lead section. I agree with the consensus of the above discussion from 2015, that this sort of material doesn't belong in the article. Including the claim here, in an Evolutionary biology article, may give the reader the impression that evolutionary biologists give some credence to arguments based on "irreducible complexity".  In fact, as noted in the Irreducible complexity article:
 * For this reason, I'm removing the sentence about irreducible complexity. Tim314 (talk) 09:30, 26 October 2022 (UTC)
 * I also added a tag to the rest of the lead.  I don't doubt that flagella are a sophisticated bit of cellular machinery, but a claim about why biologists are interested ought to reference a reliable source on the views of biologists. Tim314 (talk) 09:58, 26 October 2022 (UTC)