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Bacteria Make Major Evolutionary Shift In the Lab
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Jun 10, 2008 02:52 PM
from the forty-four-thousand-generations dept.
from the forty-four-thousand-generations dept.
Auxbuss sends us to New Scientist for news sure to perplex and confound creationists: scientists have watched a new, complex evolutionary trait develop in the lab. "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."
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Observing Evolution Over 40,000 Generations 461 comments
Last year we discussed the work of Richard Lenski, who has been breeding E. coli for 21 years in a laboratory in Michigan. Then, the news was that Lenski's lab had caught direct, reproducible evidence of a genetic mutation with functional consequences for an organism. Now Lenski's lab has published in Nature a major study comparing adaptive and random genetic changes in 40,000 generations of E. coli (abstract here). "Early changes in the bacteria appeared to be largely adaptive, helping them be more successful in their environment. 'The genome was evolving along at a surprisingly constant rate, even as the adaptation of the bacteria slowed down,' [Lenski] noted. 'But then suddenly the mutation rate jumped way up, and a new dynamic relationship was established.' By generation 20,000, for example, the group found that some 45 genetic mutations had occurred, but 6,000 generations later a genetic mutation in the metabolism arose and sparked a rapid increase in the number of mutations so that by generation 40,000, some 653 mutations had occurred. Unlike the earlier changes, many of these later mutations appeared to be more random and neutral. The long-awaited findings show that calculating rates and types of evolutionary change may be even more difficult to do without a rich data set."
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Two words (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Two words (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Two words (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Two words (Score:5, Insightful)
Because every good science article needs a religious debate....For simplicity's sake, let's say there's evolutionists (evos) and creationists (godists). When evos make the mistake of saying "People can believe what the want" they are making the assumption that beliefs have nothing to do with actions. This, in general, is not the case.
If I'm a godist, I might believe that God cures all ills, and never take my pneumonia-ridden son to the hospital. Bummer for my son but it was God's choice if he died. If I'm a godist, I might believe that evolution is a myth meant to defeat my faith. I ignore science, I lobby to create laws that ignore science, and I preach to other people to ignore science. I believe science is wrong and I want to convince other people of this truth.
So you can have personal beliefs that very much affect your public actions. Putting your money where your mouth is, so to speak.
The answer to ignorance of science or ignorance of faith is always going to be education - school, word of mouth, whatever. We need to talk it out, show why science is useful, and why the community of religion and other aspects can also be useful, and why either can be detrimental (sure the A-bomb was neat, but geez...).
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Re:Two words (Score:5, Insightful)
I think members of The Church of Christ, Scientist might be offended by being called imaginary.
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Re:Two words (Score:5, Funny)
Fortunately they're a relatively small group. And if they keep doing as their belief tells them, they'll get smaller still.
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Re:Two words (Score:5, Insightful)
That is not the fault of the evolutionary biologists, but those who applied the theories in all sorts of inhuman ways. Since we're already skirting around Godwin's Law anyway, I'll just out and say it: Neither Darwin nor Nietzsche were responsible for Hitler's actions; Hitler was responsible for Hitler's actions.
To use a more contemporary analogy, if I teach someone how to drive a car and he uses that knowledge to deliberately run people over, it isn't my fault; it's his.
(And who cares whether social sciences are truly sciences? They provide us with useful tools, and that is sufficient for me to respect them as areas of study. Computer Science isn't really a "proper" science either, and yet here you are on the Internet...)
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Re:Two words (Score:5, Informative)
Ahem Faith in Prayer Kills Children [livescience.com]
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Terrible argument (Score:5, Insightful)
Second, this argument is terrible.
Why would life not form? Because the laws of nature say so? But we just established the laws of nature are not the same in this alternate universe. Its a variation on the first fallacy. "Life" has the characteristics of this universe because it exists in this universe. If there was another set of rules, life might be much more likely, much less likely, extremely different or very similar.
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Re:Two words (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with the "Everything is so perfect for life that a supreme being did it on purpose" argument is that it makes the assumption that life cannot exist in any form but ours.
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Re:Two words (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Two words (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps that's not what you meant in your question, but then that simply means you should have worded the question better.
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Re:Two words (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Two words (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Two words (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Two words (Score:5, Insightful)
That certainly isn't the case. The evidence for a historical Jesus is very scant, far less than the amount of evidence for the existence of Julius Caesar and Alexander say, and the majority proponents of the existence of a historical Jesus who are described as Biblical scholars are, by and large, religious believers seeking to justify their faith. While we still need to take seriously and reply to the arguments of religious believers, the number of scholars who claim the historicity of Jesus has been swelled by the number of religious believers in their ranks. The term "pretty well established" is a a claim based on counting such numbers.
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Re:Two words (Score:5, Informative)
Which isn't to say Jesus didn't exist. There's also about as much evidence for Alexander the Great as there is for Jesus. Hell, even the existence of Troy was thought to be a myth until it was discovered a few decades ago. My point is history is damn hard, and nothing is well established until there's archaeological evidence.
Personally, I do rather doubt the historical Jesus. The whole thing REEKS of myth.
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Re:Two words (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Two words (Score:5, Insightful)
Humans are pack animals. We work well in groups of 10, maybe 20 individuals. Anything beyond that isn't in our genes. You cannot easily make more than 20 people work together on a given project. And even those 20 people have to have something in common, most commonly their genes. It is likely that the first "packs" of humans were actually what we'd now call "extended family". Cousins, brothers, sisters and their mates.
If you want to create larger groups, you have to create a reason why they don't go to each other's throat to increase their own pack's strength. It gets worse as soon as a division of work (and the difference in status that comes along with it) sets in, which is another necessity for an efficient group. There's no use when you have 100 farmers but nobody to build you a new plough. And if everyone can do everything, nobody can do anything really well.
With the agricultural revolution you run into a new problem: You need to know when to sow and when to reap. You need an astronomer (the reason why astronomy is one of the oldest sciences). Now try to explain to your people why they should feed someone who doesn't do anything but look at the stars.
All those problems can be solved with religion. Religion is a tool to create order, to make people work together and to keep large groups of people from fighting each other for resources. Every single religion (at least the successful ones) made it an important point that God (or whoever) doesn't like it when you kill your fellow man or steal from him. And since they had no surveillance cams back then, God was usually allmighty, omnipresent and omniscient, so you could rest assured that you'll get your punishment, if not in life then in death.
Check any religion. All of them contain such or similar parts.
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Re:Young earth creationists believe in evolution.. (Score:5, Funny)
Since we haven't had a good car analogy in this thread yet:
Microevolution would be if you drive your car across town. This has been proven so many times that by now everyone accepts it as true.
Macroevolution would be if you could drive your car all the way to another country. This is, as everyone in America knows, impossible.
Come to think of it, this analogy could help explain why they hardly ever have these kinds of debates in Europe, too...
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amusing (Score:5, Insightful)
So assuming all science were in and we could prove from end to end the entire evolution of the human species , you would have made no progress in proving or disproving either the existence of God or weather or not He was ultimately responsible for the creation of human beings.
The only group that holds 'evolution can't happen because the bible says' is a very small minority of Christians. Specifically biblical literalists.
Evolution also poses no particular threat to Hindu or Buddhist belief system.
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Re:amusing (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:amusing (Score:5, Insightful)
What's the difference?
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Let me be the first to say... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Let me be the first to say... (Score:5, Funny)
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Remember... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Remember... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Remember... (Score:5, Funny)
I can't wait for God's press release on this one.
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Re:Remember... (Score:5, Funny)
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Quote from article: (Score:5, Funny)
Wasn't that already proven with the rise of homo sapiens?
This is why ... (Score:5, Informative)
This is why doctors ask people to finish the entire bottle when prescribing antibiotics. This is also why we should ban antibacterial hand soaps for domestic use - because when you bathe a population of microbes in something for millions of generations, the odds are that eventually a spontaneous mutation will occur.
All the anal-retentive clean freaks will just have to figure out how to live with the notion that they - like everyone else - carry microbes on their skin.
Re:This is why ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course the good news is that we can then ride around in big honking SUVs made of all kinds of different parts searching for gas and shooting arrows at each other. I wonder where we will get the hair dye for the mohawks that will be in fashion at that time or the leather for the jackets and straps?
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Ha! This is just how God test his flock. (Score:5, Funny)
Grow up. (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyway, it's an interesting find, but I wonder, why did they not wait until they finished their investigation of the event? It says that they're still figuring out if the change was a random, incredibly rare mutation, or the result of many small changes. Why not wait until you get the whole story to announce your discovery?
Re:Grow up. (Score:5, Insightful)
I couldn't disagree more. See, these creationist believers are fighting tooth and nail to get their ideas included in school curriculae, etc, in order to make themselves appear legitimate. They're feeding on, and also fostering, rampant anti-intellectualism, particularly in the United States, and historically, people have just sat back and let it happen. "It's their right to believe what they want", they'd say. "Gotta respect their beliefs!"
Luckily, scientists and the educated public have finally started to realize that they can't just sit back and let the anti-intellectuals foster an environment of anti-science. They *must* be challenged. And so, when stories like this come up, you can damn well be sure that those fighting on the side of science will hold up those results and say, "See, we were right!". Otherwise, the anti-intellectuals will continue to dominate the debate, by virtue of simply yelling louder, and things will never improve.
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Re:First! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:First! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:First! (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:First! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:First! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:First! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:First! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Perplex and Confound? (Score:5, Funny)
You can't even see a bacteria with your own eye, so this can't be real.
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Re:Keep it up and it won't be a "theory" (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Keep it up and it won't be a "theory" (Score:5, Interesting)
Gravity is just a theory. The Sun-centered solar system is just a theory. Radio waves are just a theory.
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Re:NOOOOOOOOO! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's funny how they are completely non-skeptical when it comes to their book, and how intensely skeptical they are toward things like evolution.
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Re:Never Be Enough (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Never Be Enough (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Never Be Enough (Score:5, Insightful)
- Daddy why do things fall down?
- Because they're attracted to earth.
- Why?
- Because the law discovered by newton states... blablablah, 9.8m/s^2, blablablah
- Why?
- Because the law of universal gravitation... blablablah... equation... blah...
- Why?
- According to quantum physics and Einstein's relativity theory, the curvature in the space-time continuum... blablablablabla...
- Why?
The why's never end. Science try to explain HOW things work. But why they work that way, it's a problem impossible to solve - we'd need a way to measure them that is superior to the things being explained. In other words, we'd need a power greater than the whole universe to explain WHY.
Ah, but HOW... that's a very different thing.
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Re:energy? (Score:5, Informative)
Um, actually, that's been done. Yeast have been producing ethanol from sugar for how many years now? With very little modification, virtually none if you have a FFV, ethanol will work fine in your gas tank,... :-)
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