Nylon eating bacteria problem

[Jet Black]

 

[Fozzwald]

So, this is REALLY new information and not at the expense of the old.

Taken from your nylon site is:
"This organism, Flavobacterium sp.K172, cannot live off of normal carbohydrates. It needs nylon to survive.
Nylon did not exist before 1935. It is man-made. There are no "nylon deposits" that the bacteria could have lived in prior to 1935. (See http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa980325.htm for the details.)
Therefore, this organism could not have existed before 1935. Where did it come from? Why, it evolved."

Do you disagree with their conclusions?

 

[nyj]

Yeah...in a few billion years it will be sprouting legs in order to Tiptoe Through the Tulips.

Nylon tulips though, right? Hobby Lobby better prepare themselves.

 

[Fozzwald]

Nylon tulips though, right? Hobby Lobby better prepare themselves.

Don't be silly. Your bacteria is going to undergo a huge population explosion and devour 98.7% of the world's nylon within the next five generations. I'm going to stockpile all the pantyhose I possibly can in a safe deposit box and make a fortune when that happens.

 

[Jet Black]

excellend debating tactic... when you are losing, mock. ad hominem

 

[Fozzwald]

excellend debating tactic... when you are losing, mock. ad hominem

Well, since I'm still waiting for anything to show how your bacteria is an example of evoltionary progression I need something to do.

 

[Jet Black]

it is new information, look at the other links I provided to show other examples.

 

[Zagadka]

it is new information, look at the other links I provided to show other examples.

On the face of it, it would appear that this is evidence of a mutation that created a genetic new function. That said, however, we must be able to show how evolution occured of this minute scale with many other ANIMALS. Bacteria are easy to work with. Animals are not, when it comes to mutations. If it can be shown how we sprouted legs, from a genetic level, and not from fuzzy math, then there is a sound argument. Until then, there is a lot of evolution you're taking on faith.

 

[Jet Black]

look up atavistic legs on whales

 

[Jet Black]

I'll discuss it later but I am off out now

 

[nyj]

evoltionary progression

Evolutionary progression? Why not argue something aside from a strawman for a change. Evolution does not concern itself only about "progression", it doesn't have to concern itself with "progression" at all. Don Quixote, stop tilting at windmills already!

Homework: Define evolution.

 

[Zagadka]

look up atavistic legs on whales

Again, when discussing atavistic legs, evolutionists have not confirmed that there is a reasonable pathway for evolution to occur in the DNA structure. The standard fuzzy logic is used that says "the animals are similar, so there must be a pathway to evolve between them!" However, this has not been conclusively shown to be the case, the best that has been done is speculation.

 

[Jet Black]

why would these legs just suddenly pop up on whales then? do you think hundreds of mutations occur which suddenly pop a leg back into existance? no, a fairly simple mutation leads to the leg not being destroyed in the embryonic stage of development, leading to a fully grown leg, complete with femur, tibia et al. note that I am not talking about vestigial organs, atavisms are something else.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section2.html#atavisms_ex1

then the human tail is just below that link, complete with an x ray.

in fact there are a whole bunch of things there worth looking at

 

[Jet Black]

I know biochemistry and stuff is complicated, so some completely novel metabolic pathways, multicellularity and some other things:

http://home.earthlink.net/~misaak/guide/CB/CB101_2.html

 

[Zagadka]

why would these legs just suddenly pop up on whales then? do you think hundreds of mutations occur which suddenly pop a leg back into existance? no, a fairly simple mutation leads to the leg not being destroyed in the embryonic stage of development, leading to a fully grown leg, complete with femur, tibia et al. note that I am not talking about vestigial organs, atavisms are something else.

then the human tail is just below that link, complete with an x ray.

in fact there are a whole bunch of things there worth looking at

Here's some info I've found with regard to atavistic limbs, to address you question from th other day.

A fist-sized bump on the side of a whale, with bony tissue inside, bears little resemblance to a "leg." Inside the bump is a piece of bone, some 12.5 cm (5 inches) ‘long’. There is no evidence given of anything which could reasonably be called a ‘leg’. Slijper calls the bone inside the ‘bump’ a ‘tibia’. But we have already seen that it doesn’t take much for evolutionary believers to label abnormal pieces of bone in ways to fit their naturalistic religion.

 

[Zagadka]

To clarify my personal problem with this, is how do you say that the mutation is an atavistic "leg." What solid evidence is there?

 

[Cantuar]

Did you actuially read that TalkOrigins link? They're talking about, and giving illustrations of and references to, actual named leg bones. Not just fist-sized lumps - real actual bones.

 

[lucaspa]

I'll add the conclusion from the nylon site here as well:
This organism, Flavobacterium sp.K172, cannot live off of normal carbohydrates. It needs nylon to survive.
Nylon did not exist before 1935. It is man-made. There are no "nylon deposits" that the bacteria could have lived in prior to 1935. (See http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa980325.htm for the details.)
Therefore, this organism could not have existed before 1935. Where did it come from? Why, it evolved.

Mike, I handled this two posts previous to yours. You are taking your quote from the beginning of the post. Scroll down toward the end where the author deals with creationist criticism that the mutation was in a plasmid and not the genome. It is there that we find that the author's claim here is incorrect.

"It turns out that the novel plasmid's mutated DNA for production of nylonase is almost identical to a non-coding repetitive DNA sequence on the original plasmid; the difference is the single nucleotide that triggered the Frame Shift. This mutation did not exist 60 years ago."

Notice the "NON-CODING" in the quote. That means the DNA sequences were never being translated to make an enzyme.

So, this is REALLY new information and not at the expense of the old.

1. The genomic DNA is intact and unchanged, complete with the old ability to eat sugars.
2. The altered sequence of the plasmid DNA NEVER was used for information. It was simply there.

The author of the site never went back up and corrected his previous mistakes, Mike

You already alluded to that in your above statement. You already heard the creationist viewpoint and know that i would say that the bacteria had the genetic code to eat nylon when it was created.

It can't have.
1. The previous version of the gene was NON-CODING. It wasn't until AFTER the insertion that the nylonase activity came into being.

2. IF an activity is not used, then it accumulates mutations that either destroy the activity or radically modify it. This has been seen recently when alternative developmental pathways have been found. These are normally suppressed and not used, but when the organisms are stressed, the suppression is removed and you get some really weird macromutations.

However, you go on to say, why didn't it evolve out of the species, since it wasn't used? Remember-im not the evolutionist here. Some genes remain dormant and exist in many or all members of a group, regardless of other traits.

But they don't exist UNCHANGED. For your creationist scenario to work, that gene has to exist UNCHANGED for at least 6,000 years and, in reality, 3+ billion years. Yes, organisms have pseudogenes -- genes that are no longer expressed -- but we use the changes between those genes to assess the time the lineages have been separate. Without natural selection eliminating non-functional mutations (by eliminating the individuals unlucky enough to have them), mutations render the gene non-functional.

 

[lucaspa]

Creation"ism" has NOT been falsified. Although some seem to feel that the YEC theory of Bishop Ussler from about 500 years ago has been falsified. This is the sort of mis information that you get from evolutionists that show they are just not reliable in what they say.

Nice attempt to hijack the thread, John. However, if you really want to argue this, go to the Coincidences, Biogeography falsifies creationism, and the other threads where the falsifications have been presented. You have to show how each of these is NOT a falsification.

 

[lucaspa]

Yeah...in a few billion years it will be sprouting legs in order to Tiptoe Through the Tulips.

Do you understand what CUMULATIVE or ACCUMULATE mean? It means that each tiny step never goes away, but is added to all the steps that went before and is present in the steps that come after.

Instead of arguing data, you are going for ad hominem. A sure sign you are out of arguments.