Evolution: a different view with loss of traits (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, November 16, 2018, 02:02 (2199 days ago) @ David Turell

Disagrees with Lenski's e. coli twenty year long study:

https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/a704d4_0b58ae78418c49cfa629fe90ddaa5ba1.pdf

"The most significant evolutionary experiment of all time was started by Dr. Richard Lenski at Michigan State University on February 15 th 1988 . T h at experiment continues to this day. It h a s b e e n a r g u ed t h a t t h is e x p e r i m e nt s h o ws t h a t a strain o f t h e E . c o li bacterium is undergo ing dramatic forward evolution, allowing us to document in the test tube the same type of macroevolution that allows one type of life to morph into a fundamentally different type of life (such as ape - to - man evolution). Some have argue d that the resulting bacterial strains have actually morphed into entirely new species. It has been said this ex periment lays to rest any doubt s about macroevo lution . More specifically, it is widely claimed that this e x p e r i m e n t p r o v e s t h a t the neo - D a r w i n i an m e c h a n i s m ( r a n d om m u t a t i o n s plus natural selection) is fully sufficient to explain the origin of all forms of life , including man.

"In this paper we will docu ment that this experiment is indeed extremely significant, but for the opposite reasons. The bacteria have not experienced forward evolution, but rather the net effect has been reductive evolution (evolution going backwards). It is true that t here has been some adaptation to the new artificial environment, but this has been primarily due to loss - of - function mutations. Such adaptive fine - tuning can at best be called microevolution, and has been accom plished through a net loss of information (broken genes /disrupted gene regulation) . In all 12 experimental populations, t he functional bacterial genome ha s shrunk - contain ing less total information. The resulting bacterial strains are still the same species, but have been seriously damaged. These disabled str ains would quickly go extinct in any natural environment.

"If any experiment could have validated large - scale macroevolution , it would have been this one. This famous experiment powerfully demonstrate s that the mutation/selection process has very se rious limitations. Even given huge populations and vast number of generations, all that was accomplished was a trivial amount of adaptive microevolution. Even while some superficial fine - tuning has been happening at just a handful of genomic sites, s ignificant genetic damage ha s been accumulating throughout the rest of the genome , due to many slightly harmful deleterious mutations that cannot be selected away . This means that in the long run the net effect will be degeneration . This famous evolutionary experimen t proves that in deep time, even given a model population that is optimal for validating evolution , population s do not evolve – but instead devolve. "

Comment: Obviously there are dissident views of how evolution works. Sorry about the copy of the first paragraph. PDF sometimes does that.