Evolution Demonstrated In A Laboratory

[Cheerful Charlie]

Yes, evolution can be demonstrated. Checkmate creationists,

.....
Seven years ago, researchers showed that they could strip cells down to their barest fundamentals, creating a life form with the smallest genome that still allowed it to grow and divide in the lab. But in shedding half its genetic load, that “minimal” cell also lost some of the hardiness and adaptability that natural life evolved over billions of years. That left biologists wondering whether the reduction might have been a one-way trip: In pruning the cells down to their bare essentials, had they left the cells incapable of evolving because they could not survive a change in even one more gene?

Now we have proof that even one of the weakest, simplest self-replicating organisms on the planet can adapt. During just 300 days of evolution in the lab, the generational equivalent of 40,000 human years, measly minimal cells regained all the fitness they had sacrificed, a team at Indiana University recently reported in the journal Nature.
.....

Even Synthetic Life Forms With a Tiny Genome Can Evolve | Quanta Magazine

By watching “minimal” cells regain the fitness they lost, researchers are testing whether a genome can be too simple to evolve.

www.quantamagazine.org

 

[Tigers!]

From the article

In 2010, the team had engineered JCVI-syn1.0, a synthetic version of the natural bacterial cell. Using it as a guide, they drew up a list of genes known to be essential, assembled them in a yeast cell and then transferred that new genome into a closely related bacterial cell that was emptied of its original DNA.

Am I allowed to point out that all those steps required intelligent intervention? They did not occur by themselves or "naturally".

 

[lpetrich]

The "intelligent intervention" was in creating environments, not editing the genes. It wasn't evolution by genetic engineering.

 

[Tigers!]

Yes, evolution can be demonstrated. Checkmate creationists,

Perhaps what has demonstrated is variation within a kind or species.
Call me when a reptile gives birth to a bird.

 

[Tigers!]

The "intelligent intervention" was in creating environments, not editing the genes. It wasn't evolution by genetic engineering.

Yet without those environments the "evolution" could not occur. It is still not chance, random occurrences. Of course they edited the original gene structure to get what they desired.

 

[lpetrich]

Yes, evolution can be demonstrated. Checkmate creationists,

Perhaps what has demonstrated is variation within a kind or species.

How does one recognize a "kind"?

Call me when a reptile gives birth to a bird.

Evolution doesn't work that way.

 

[bilby]

Yes, evolution can be demonstrated. Checkmate creationists,

Perhaps what has demonstrated is variation within a kind or species.
Call me when a reptile gives birth to a bird.

When that happened, the telephone wasn't going to be invented for about a hundred and fifty million years.

 

[steve_bank]

Natural selection is seen in nature. Antibiotics kills off the bacteria it can, bacteria that survive the drugs rebuild a resistant population passing on its resistance.

I don't see the link as 'proving' evolution, it is inference.

At a macro scale evolution is specialization which happens slowly.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

The point is that a crippled single cell organism barely able to live, in 300 days evolved rather robust descendents. An impressive display of fairly rapid evolution. According to our creationist friends, evolution like this is not possible.

This was just a small and limited environment and 300 days while evolution had entire oceans and millions of years. The original experiment was to see if they could strip a simple single cell organism down to its bare DNA essentials that still lived. Then, it was, "What the hell, lets see if it can evolve". Yes, rapidly and with great success.

 

[Shadowy Man]

Call me when a reptile gives birth to a bird.

That's more likely to happen if there's a God than if evolution is true.

 

[Elixir]

Call me when a reptile gives birth to a bird.

Serious for one moment:

THAT WOULN‘T BE EVOLUTION, IT WOULD BE CREATION

Now back to levity… creationists often trot out glib crockoduck-type canards with a completely straight face, and can’t digest the fact that if their demands for evolution were met, they would be entirely disprobative to evolution, and supportive of Creationism.

 

[bilby]

Yes, evolution can be demonstrated. Checkmate creationists,

Perhaps what has demonstrated is variation within a kind or species.
Call me when a reptile gives birth to a bird.

This is as compelling a disproof of evolution, as saying "The Himalayas might just be mountains rising within a continent. Call me when Australia collides with Asia", is a disproof of plate tectonics.

It demonstrates that the speaker doesn't even understand what the theory that they're criticising actually says; That their understanding of it is based not on study of the theory, but rather on study of parodies of the theory deliberately designed to appear stupid.

Does anyone seriously imagine that in the last 150 years, it's never occurred to evolutionary theorists that they have never personally observed a reptile giving birth to a bird, and that they have never noticed that this lack is a crippling logical blow against their ideas? Or, is it just possible that this objection has been considered, and been rejected as irrelevant to what the theory of evolution actually says?

 

[Elixir]

they have never personally observed a reptile giving birth to a bird

But they have observed birds growing reptilian teeth when some existing genes are switched on.

 

[Shadowy Man]

Yes, evolution can be demonstrated. Checkmate creationists,

Perhaps what has demonstrated is variation within a kind or species.
Call me when a reptile gives birth to a bird.

This is as compelling a disproof of evolution, as saying "The Himalayas might just be mountains rising within a continent. Call me when Australia collides with Asia", is a disproof of plate tectonics.

It demonstrates that the speaker doesn't even understand what the theory that they're criticising actually says; That their understanding of it is based not on study of the theory, but rather on study of parodies of the theory deliberately designed to appear stupid.

Right up there with “if the Earth is moving so fast through space why do we see the same stars every night?”

 

[Bomb#20]

Yes, evolution can be demonstrated. Checkmate creationists,

Perhaps what has demonstrated is variation within a kind or species.
Call me when a reptile gives birth to a bird.

Dude! Call me when a bird gives birth to a bird. Birds aren't born; they hatch.

(Now, if you mean, call you when a reptile lays an egg and a bird hatches from it, that happened back in the Jurassic period. The first bird, by definition, was the most recent common ancestor of a sparrow and an archaeopteryx. The animal that laid the egg it came out of was some dinosaur in the Velociraptor family, hence, a reptile. If you mean, call you when it happens again, a branch of the tree of life doesn't begin twice. You might as well ask to be called when your mom gives birth to you again. What, since that isn't a reproducible observation we should suspect you weren't born?)

 

[Learner]

Call me folks when this can be done without any cell in the first place. Actually start and demonstrate the process from scratch! (But then again, by creating the very simplest of cells would spoil the demonstration by the intelligent agency input)

I think the Chinese claimed a similar success a few years ago but I do recall a ready made cell was necessary.

 

[steve_bank]

Call me folks when this can be done without any cell in the first place. Actually start and demonstrate the process from scratch! (But then again, by creating the very simplest of cells would spoil the demonstration by the intelligent agency input)

I think the Chinese claimed a similar success a few years ago but I do recall a ready made cell was necessary.

HeeHeeHee.

We can jump to a cosmology thread.

For someone like me who thinks the logical answer to origins is an infinite universe that always was and always will be, existence and evolution of life on Earth is a point in an infinite sequence. No need for a creator.

If you invoke a creator from whence did he, she, or it come from?

Back in the 90s the Pope the day essentially said evolution might be considered part of god's plan. While there is no smoking gun or experiment that can demonstrate abiogenesis and evolution, the totality of evidence so far leaves evolution as the best model and explanation.

 

[Shadowy Man]

If you invoke a creator from whence did he, she, or it come from?

Yikes! Two “froms” with whence.

 

[bilby]

If you invoke a creator from whence did he, she, or it come from?

Yikes! Two “froms” with whence.

I wonder from whence from the second from came from.

But I agree with Steve; If someone is going to object to the idea that a single cell life form could spontaneously arise in the context of a wider environment that contains all the chemicals that are present in that cell, it is utterly absurd for them then not to object to the spontaneous existence of an all powerful creator god with the ability to scoff at the laws of thermodynamics, in the context of no wider environment of any kind.

But then, examples of humans who are really bad at thinking things through are two a penny, so absurdities are to be expected.

 

[Shadowy Man]

I was taking issue with both “froms”. Neither is needed with “whence”.

But I agree with Steve; If someone is going to object to the idea that a single cell life form could spontaneously arise in the context of a wider environment that contains all the chemicals that are present in that cell, it is utterly absurd for them then not to object to the spontaneous existence of an all powerful creator god with the ability to scoff at the laws of thermodynamics, in the context of no wider environment of any kind.

I’m not sure I understand. If one side is saying that the universe only works through specific natural laws but we don’t yet know what particular circumstances and environments allow for those laws to cause life to arise from non-life (and the distinction may not actually be that sharp) and the other side is saying there’s a magical creator who doesn’t have to follow any of those natural laws, why would the defenders of magic object that their creator uses magic?

As they say: With God all things are possible.