Washington Post - Scientists following the evolution of a single strain of bacteria reported that it underwent several steps of mutation, surprising in its complexity, to acquire the ability to use a new food source.
The findings, reported Wednesday in the science magazine Nature, are the result of an experiment started 25 years ago by Richard Lenski of Michigan State University.
"When I started that project, I thought I would find one or two mutations and be done with it," said Zachary Blount, a member of Lenski's lab. "But instead, there may be dozens of mutations working together."
"Creationists sometimes argue that even two mutations for one trait is too much complexity, yet here we see that evolution manages that with ease," he said.
To study evolution in real time, Lenski followed the descendants of a single E. coli bacterium, a bug that normally populates our intestines. Bacteria have short life spans and in this experiment went through more than six generations a day.
Every day for 25 years — over 50,000 bacterial lifetimes — members of Lenski's lab transferred the E. coli into a new flask with sugar solution. Every 500 generations, a part of the population was stowed in a freezer, creating a fossil record that can be brought back to life.
One day in 2003, the scientists observed something peculiar: A flask was much more densely populated than usual. At first the scientists suspected contamination. But then they found that after 30,000 generations, the bacteria had discovered how to use a different chemical as a food source. Citrate, the chemical in question, is given to the bacteria to help them absorb minerals and cannot normally be digested in the presence of oxygen.
PPSIMMONS - In summary Lenski observed "over 50,000 bacterial lifetimes" and observed nothing more than bacteria becoming bacteria. If we take that observable evidence, observed over 50,000 generations, and apply those findings to the human equivalent we can draw some startling (and damning) extrapolations. A human lifetime is 70 - 80 years. That number, multiplied by 50,000 generations is 3.5 to 4 million years.
Humans have spread across the entire planet, colonizing every corner. But humans have really been on the planet for a fraction of the lifetime of the Earth according to evolutionary archaeologists who estimate that modern humans have been on the Earth for about 200,000 years. The Homo genus according to the evolution timeline goes back around 2.5 million years. Since the evolution timeline is purely hypothetical and the timeline offered by Lenski's bacteria experiment is observable we can safely and reliably jettison the entire deep-time timeline and embrace the reliable findings by Lenski, that being, whenever we observe vast lines of generations we see that everything reproduces according to its own kind. And even though we observe changes within said kind there is clearly no evidence that the walls have, or ever will be, breached.
Over the course of the equivalent of 4 million human years Lenksi proved that bacteria never become anything other than bacteria. This is evidence against the kind of evolution which would turn fish into men.
Over the course of the equivalent of 4 million human years Lenksi proved that bacteria never become anything other than bacteria. This is evidence against the kind of evolution which would turn fish into men.
This is an argument FOR evolutionism, not AGAINST it.
ReplyDeleteActually, over the course of the equivalent of 4 million human years Lenksi proved that bacteria never become anything other than bacteria. This is evidence against the kind of evolution which would turn fish into men.
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