horizontal gene transfer: the real IM? (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, December 18, 2014, 21:39 (3409 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

TONY: I hate to be the devil's advocate here (ok, I lie, I don't hate it.) but there are a fair number of rather large speculative gaps here. Lot's of "could have's" and "possibly's" with no real actual scientific data. -"The mite regularly parasitises both D melanogaster and D willistoni, using its needling mouthparts to suck up nutrients from fruit fly eggs and larvae. Such a parasite could conceivably transfer DNA from the egg of one fruit fly species to another." (Note that they didn't say it has been proven to happen)-The next sentence is: “Follow up studies showed that mites feeding on fruit flies did indeed harbor the P element.” Here is another quote from the same article: -“Scientists have known for many decades that prokaryotes such as bacteria and other microorganisms - which lack a protective nucleus enveloping their DNA - swap genetic material with each other all the time. Researchers have also documented countless cases of viruses shuttling their genes into the genomes of animals, including our own.
What has become increasingly clear in the past 10 years is that this liberal genetic exchange is definitely not limited to the DNA of the microscopic world. It likewise happens to genes that belong to animals, fungi and plants, collectively known as eukaryotes because they boast nuclei in their cells.” (My bold)-“Definitely” could hardly be more factual, and David says it is “accepted as happening” (I presume he means by the scientific community). You wrote: “In order to save the theory of evolution, we have to create some new method that can be neither proved nor disproved to support the theory.” I would say that if HGT is an established fact, it's not unreasonable to investigate the extent to which it might be responsible for major innovations that lead to new species. A theist can always argue, as David does, that it's all part of the mechanism God devised in the first place. As I have pointed out ad nauseam, evolution is not an atheistic theory. -However, the problem you raise is very significant for non-scientists like myself, and can be extended to most walks of life in which we ourselves are not proficient. We simply don't know how far we can trust the so-called experts. That's why we so rarely get consensus on any of the subjects that we discuss here!