Stress protein evolved early according to a report in Science News 21 May 2005.
The “fight or flight” response to stress in vertebrates (including humans) involves a hormone named corticotrophin-releasing hormone (CRH) and a protein named CRH binding protein. Mark Huising of Wageningen University and Gert Flick of Radboud University in the Netherlands, have found a gene for CRH binding protein in honeybees that “closely matches its vertebrate cousins in length, organisation and structure”.
Mosquitoes and fruit flies also have the CRH binding protein. These findings led Huising and Flik to conclude the corticotrophin based stress response system evolved in a common ancestor of insects and vertebrates that lived over 700 million years ago. They entitled their research paper: “The remarkable conservation of corticotrophin-releasing hormone (CRH) – binding protein in the honeybee (Apis mellifera) dates the CRH system to a common ancestor of the insects and vertebrates”. (Endocrinology 146 (May):2165-2170)
Editorial Comment: “Conservation” of similar genes in very different types of creatures is often used as evidence for evolution. However, such an argument is really a piece of circular reasoning based on the prior assumption that evolution has occurred.
The facts in the above story are that similar CRH binding protein is found in both vertebrates and insects. The idea that this means they both inherited the molecule from some unknown common ancestor 700 million years ago is using the theory of evolution to explain the facts and then claiming the facts as proof of evolution.
The fact that vertebrates and insects have the same protein is equally well explained by a common Creator Who built it into them because they all needed it to function properly. The creation explanation actually involves fewer presuppositions than the evolution explanation, because it does not need to invent unknown and unseen creatures that lived at a time we can never observe.
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