Evolution: only genetics can design a bush of life (Introduction)

by David Turell @, Tuesday, September 25, 2018, 22:21 (2012 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

David: A new study on a very simple group of animals can sort out relationships only by use of genetics. Phenotype cannot work and must be discarded:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/worlds-simplest-animal-reveals-hidden-diversity-20180912/

"The world’s simplest known animal is so poorly understood that it doesn’t even have a common name. Formally called Trichoplax adhaerens for the way it adheres to glassware, the amorphous blob isn’t much to look at. At just a few millimeters across, the creature resembles a squashed sandwich in which the top layer protects, the bottom layer crawls, and the slimy stuffing sticks it all together. With no organs and just a handful of cell types, the most interesting thing about T. adhaerens might just be how stunningly boring it is.

***

"But after spending four years painstakingly reconstructing the blob’s genome, Eitel might know more about the organism than anyone else on the planet. In particular, he has looked closely enough at its genetic code to learn what visual inspections failed to reveal. The variety of creature that biologists have long called T. adhaerens is really at least two, and perhaps as many as a dozen, anatomically identical but genetically distinct “cryptic species” of animals. The discovery sets a precedent for taxonomy, the science of naming organisms, as the first time a new animal genus has been defined not by appearance, but by pure genetics.

David: Comment: It occurs to me that this revolution in classification might help better define the whale series and perhaps explain the the pattern of change, by using fossil DNA, as has been dome in researching human origins. But what I can predict is the branches of the bush will be changed.


Tony: Personally, I think they will have a long, hard haul trying to make any sense out of the results unless they let go of common descent.

You know I am of a different thought pattern. I think life started single cells created by God and He then guided the stage of development at every level until humans appeared. The complexity of the process requires a planning designer. The persistence of life requires a vast diversity of living forms to provide a necessary balance of nature as a source for food energy for life to persist over millions of years, since life must exist in homeostasis constantly. Proof only by similar body plans cannot be accurate as the article shows.


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