Is Evolution A Science?

[notto]

Interesting. Can you post references? Also advise what changes occured to the DNA, and how this occured. Was it the result of mutation, or was this an in built genetic response to environmental factors. If the latter, then this in not evolution, since evolution assumes random change, and natural selection.

Can you clarify what you mean by 'an in built genetic response to environmental factors'? Can you give an example of this? What would 'an in built genetic response to environmental factors' look like? How would it affect an individual at birth?

I'm guessing that all the genetic changes on the fruit fly population was random change and natural selection so it would be evolution. Not all of the flies survived, but only ones with a mutation that allowed them to use a new food source.

 

[gluadys]

Interesting. Can you post references?

http://www.christianforums.com/t42512&page=16

This includes the reference to the original paper (which I have not read myself) and the item on the difference in the DNA from lucaspa (who has read the paper).

Also advise what changes occured to the DNA,

That would be in the original paper. I am sure you can look it up.

and how this occured. Was it the result of mutation, or was this an in built genetic response to environmental factors. If the latter, then this in not evolution, since evolution assumes random change, and natural selection.

A distinction without a difference. A "genetic response to environmental factors" is another way to say "mutation". That is how genes respond to environmental factors---by changing, i.e. mutating.

 

[Micaiah]

Do you know how enzyme synthesis is controlled?

 

[rmwilliamsll]

Do you know how enzyme synthesis is controlled?

start with lactose operon, the classic model:
http://www.mun.ca/biochem/courses/4103/topics/lac_operon.html
http://oregonstate.edu/instruction/bb492/lectures/Regulation.html

then check out the .mov files:
http://www.cat.cc.md.us/courses/bio141/lecguide/unit4/genetics/protsyn/regulation/regulation.html

an undergrad level can be achieved in a few weeks of intensive study online.
but the answer is no one knows it all. there remains lots to yet discover.

 

[Micaiah]

So, what do you think gluadys.

It looks a complicated process to me. Too complicated to call a mutation, and yet I understand that this type of genetic change allows an organism to survive short term environmental changes.

 

[gluadys]

So, what do you think gluadys.

It looks a complicated process to me. Too complicated to call a mutation, and yet I understand that this type of genetic change allows an organism to survive short term environmental changes.

First, the pages referred to have nothing to do with the Drosophila experiment which resulted in a new digestive physiology and a 3% difference in coding DNA from the parent.

Whether any of the genes which mutated included operons or other regulatory genes, I don't know. The specifics would be in the research paper.

"Too complicated to call a mutation"? Why? Do you think Drs. Gary Kaiser, Martin E. Mulligan and the unnamed professor at Oregon U. also think its "too complicated" to be a mutation? Why would complexity rule out mutation?

In fact, it is ironic that one of those pages refers specifically to the lac operon. This was the subject of a classic experiment on mutation in which a strain deprived of the enzyme to digest lactose re-evolved not only the enzyme, but the whole 3-part lactose processing mechanism.

http://biocrs.biomed.brown.edu/Darwin/DI/Parts-is-Parts.html

Here are the followup responses by Behe and Miller.
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=441
http://biocrs.biomed.brown.edu/Darwin/DI/AcidTest.html