Evolution, it’s not just for textbooks anymore:
A major evolutionary innovation has unfurled right in front of researchers’ eyes. It’s the first time evolution has been caught in the act of making such a rare and complex new trait.
And because the species in question is a bacterium, scientists have been able to replay history to show how this evolutionary novelty grew from the accumulation of unpredictable, chance events.
Twenty years ago, evolutionary biologist Richard Lenski of Michigan State University in East Lansing, US, took a single Escherichia coli bacterium and used its descendants to found 12 laboratory populations.
The 12 have been growing ever since, gradually accumulating mutations and evolving for more than 44,000 generations, while Lenski watches what happens.
(…)
Mostly, the patterns Lenski saw were similar in each separate population. All 12 evolved larger cells, for example, as well as faster growth rates on the glucose they were fed, and lower peak population densities.
But sometime around the 31,500th generation, something dramatic happened in just one of the populations – the bacteria suddenly acquired the ability to metabolise citrate, a second nutrient in their culture medium that E. coli normally cannot use.
Indeed, the inability to use citrate is one of the traits by which bacteriologists distinguish E. coli from other species. The citrate-using mutants increased in population size and diversity.
“It’s the most profound change we have seen during the experiment. This was clearly something quite different for them, and it’s outside what was normally considered the bounds of E. coli as a species, which makes it especially interesting,” says Lenski.
So there you have it, evolution you can document.
More importantly, though, it shows how evolution might have happened on a macro level over longer periods of time:
[T]he experiment stands as proof that evolution does not always lead to the best possible outcome. Instead, a chance event can sometimes open evolutionary doors for one population that remain forever closed to other populations with different histories.
Lenski’s experiment is also yet another poke in the eye for anti-evolutionists, notes Jerry Coyne, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago. “The thing I like most is it says you can get these complex traits evolving by a combination of unlikely events,” he says. “That’s just what creationists say can’t happen.”
Yea, but don’t you see how unfair it is to confront these people not only with well-founded biology but also actual proof ?
They don’t need proof, they’ve got two naked people and a snake in a garden.
June 19th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
[creationism] It’s microevolution, not macroevolution! It still doesn’t prove that new species can evolve from previous forms. They’re still E. coli! It’s not the same as now-extinct primates evolving in humans [/creationism]
“You can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into.”
-Someone smart
June 19th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Ryan,
They witnessed the coming about of a variety of E. Coli bacterium that could do something that no other version of that bacterium could do.
If that’s not a new species, I don’t know what is.
And, notwithstanding your quotation from “unknown”, I have yet to see anything approaching a scientifically credible argument for so-called creation science.
And I think we all know that Genesis is just a story.
June 19th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
Unfortunately, this wonderful discovery in science cannot be taught in either Kansas or (very soon) Louisiana unless it is balanced with creationist crap.
June 19th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Kevin,
I will say that if Jindal lets that Louisiana bill go through — which seems likely — he will have taken several steps down in my book.
June 19th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
It is micro-evolution. Did a single cell become a different cell? Different in the five systems that make up a cell? No.
June 19th, 2008 at 10:03 pm
I honestly don’t understand the creationist objection to the evidence that is right before our eyes, James.
I mean, seriously, how can anyone with a brain really believe the Genesis Myth ?
That’s one of the many reasons I have an easier time discussing issues like this with Catholics, at least they listen to reason.
June 20th, 2008 at 3:19 am
Doug,
If Genesis is a myth or just a story, then how else did the world begin? A big bang? C’mon, Doug. That is just as silly as the Garden. Given the choice between the two, the Garden is much more reasonable and logical to believe. I’ve had Catholics say to me, “You actually believe that it all started in the Garden with just a man and a woman?” To which I reply, “Of course. How else did it start?” I then receive the blank look.
But the problem with your “evidence” is legion. Shouldn’t all the combined intelligence of ALL the world’s scientist be able the do what their theory proposes happened billions of years ago? That is, create a single cell through chance encounters with random chemicals, without a set of instructions, and having no intelligence at all to help them along in their quest to become a living entity. Surely then scientists should be able to make a ’simple’ cell, no?
What they’re doing in your article is like breeding cattle. Big deal. Big deal. Build us a cell, from scratch, with the required raw material, and the argument is over. By the way, that means with NO cell material, just the ‘raw’ stuff.
You’re asking us to believe that the petri dish breeding exercise was tantamount to gathering all the chemicals that we know are essential for life, pour them into a large clay pot and stir vigorously to short cut a few billion years, and poof, LIFE! No wait a minute, we can’t stir vigorously because the theory of randomnity. It is insanity.
Doug, I can prove the existence of a supreme God to you or you will admit you believe in randomnity. That I am confident of. However, I cannot prove that Jesus is the Christ. I can only attempt to persuade you to that end. Even the ancient Greeks proofed the existence of a Supreme God and declared that logic required one to exist. If that be the case, then you have to at least submit your intellect to the proof of a created existence rather than blind happenstance and chance. After all, do you think the words you read at this very second could ever possibly evolve into something other than the English language? Or for that matter, Life?
June 20th, 2008 at 9:42 am
I guess that was too subtle. My comment was pure sarcasm. I with you here Doug. You can’t argue reason and evidence with a creationist because they didn’t come to that conclusion through reasonable means. (See James and Oath above)
June 20th, 2008 at 10:31 am
44,000 generations in 20 years = 2200 generations per year.
one mutation per 31,500 generations = one every 14.3 years
4 billion years of Earth’s history = 279.7 million mutations.
How different do you think the cells would be by then?
It’s not much more complicated than that, although the numbers I used are very rough.
June 20th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
Ryan, With all due respect, you avoid reasoning and logic like William Brennan and David Souter ignore the Constitution. Seriously, answer the question instead of resorting to absurdum ad reductio conclusions.
What is it about my “means” that were unreasonable?
Doug,
I’ve never said mutations can’t happen. Mutation isn’t necessarily evidence of evolution. And as any scientist worth their salt would agree, most mutations aren’t helpful. And for the record, I’m open to the possibility of some evolution on a molecular scale but not wide spread application of what we see in the change of a E.Coli. I suppose it depends on what our definition of evolution is.
If evolution is that simple cells become more complex as they evolve, then I seriously doubt the E.Coli became more complex? There was simply a change in the ability to absorb a citrate that no other E.Coli could? Would we say that rats who started to eat and crap cardboard boxes evolved? What if their bodies developed an immunity to the cardboard glue? Why isn’t it possible that the rat’s body has some sort of built in mechanism allowing it to change its metabolism process because it had to? I don’t see any different species of rat anymore than with this E.Coli. I think what we see is a more dangerous strain of E.Coli that didn’t exist before because some part of the “simple” cell kicked in to high gear. Any microbiologist will tell you there’s no such thing as a simple cell. I have no problem referring to it as a mutation. But evolution? To what end is the bacterium evolving?
June 20th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Oath,
There is no “end”. Evolution isn’t a goal, it’s merely a description of a process. Mutation is the mechanism. If the mutation allows the creature to survive better than the unmutated creatures, it thrives (and reproduces better) and they don’t. There’s really no more to it than that.
You mentioned cattle breeding. Precisely the same process, only WE determine which traits thrive and which don’t. In nature, it’s survival ability which does so.
It seems relatively obvious that the ability to “eat” two types of nutrients as opposed to only one is beneficial. Proving whether it was really a mutation isn’t that difficult - map the genes of both types.
June 20th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
tfr…that is true and I don’t disagree with what you’ve written. Evolution describing a process isn’t helpful. If we say “mutating,” it is a more apt description because it doesn’t imply an end. “Evolving” does imply an end.
In terms of E.Coli mutating to “eat” two types of nutrients, it still doesn’t make the bacterium more complex. Going from the simple to the complex is the hallmark of evolution.
July 23rd, 2008 at 6:47 pm
Over and over many scientists claim ‘Creationism’ is wrong because the earth is older then six thousand years. The Bible is a six thousand year old history of today’s materialistic man. It explicitly says we can only see His creation in our light. Our light is spiritual knowledge. Many theologians take a different view and this makes the origin of earth a controversial subject. Controversy is ok in that it makes us think things through and search for answers. The earth has a spiritual origin. If it’s origin is material the world would have no solid reason to exist by now for mater is finite. That is another reason evolution is not provable.
I personally have had God speak so loudly to my thought as if speaking to you face to face, I do not do drugs. This has happened to me at many crossroads of my life while on my spiritual journey.
The voices of great thinkers:
* “Scientists who go about teaching that evolution is a fact of life are great con-men, and the story they are telling may be the greatest hoax ever. In explaining evolution, we do not have one iota of fact.” Dr. T. N. Tahmisian (Atomic Energy Commission), The Fresno Bee, August 20, 1959.
* “Scientists concede that their most cherished theories are based on embarrassingly few fossil fragments and that huge gaps exist in the fossil record.” Time magazine, Nov. 7, 1977.
* “As by this theory, innumerable transitional forms must have existed. Why do we not find them embedded in the crust of the earth?” Charles Darwin, Evolution or Creation,
Adam And Eve:
The record of man as we experience him is six thousand years. The Bible is the only written record of the world as we know it. It’s history has been preserved for a reason. Before that pictures on caves were the only form of communication and tells us little about our world, as we know it today. We look at the world ‘through a glass darkly’, to quote scripture.
Adam and eve were not the only persons ever living on earth. When they chose to live out side of God’s will believing they would know things God did not, they opened the door for sin to invade their thinking. They could not experience the pure state of God’s kingdom in the mental atmosphere of sin and it’s disruptive consequenses. They did not go anywhere else, they just lost sight of their perfection as children of the one creator.
Read my book, “Who Made God? now a paperback at bookstores or online. You will find the order of the universe is spiritual and scientific, and why it is so. Adam and Eve by choice chose to live out side of the will of God and so has all of us or we would not be where we are. It is symbolic of the way we look at our world and how the choices we make influence who we are and what we believe.
The Bible is the only written record of finite mans activities and it only goes back six thousand years. The universe, including earth is eternal for God has existed forever and He holds all that is real, true, and eternal in His consciousness forever. God speaks to our thoughts and only in our light(spiritual knowledge) can we hear His voice.
Scientists today are moving closer to the conclusion there has to be an intelligent design to the universe. Many of them have studied the designs of the body, plants, animals, stars, etc. and have concluded there had to be a conscious design for the make up of such well planed functions to operate in the way they do to support life, the earth, and the universe.
The earth will change as mankind rises into a higher realm of spirituality for we will see the earth through God’s eyes. The distrubences we feel today are the result of the
breaking up of that darkness. It will continue until earth appears through the lens of our spirituality. Helen M Nanney http://www.journey-book.com