Nat

A single sentence in your reply belies a fundamental misunderstanding that I believe is causing your confusion with the ToE:

"And not just any change, but one which, by sheer coincidence, happened to a COLONY (emphasis mine) of bacteria residing in a nylon choked environment, and hence could put it to good use?"

In actuality, the mutation likely occured during mitosis in a SINGLE bacterium. This mutation was then rapidly propogated because that single bacterium and its offspring were able to reproduce in that particular environment far better than the ones without this particular mutation. That is the fundamental power of natural selection - it makes organisms appear well designed for their environment when looking backwards, but while looking forwards it is nothing more than an iterative process ith the "mistakes" dying off.

In this particular example there were likely tens of millions of different mutations that were not propogated through into a colony, because their occurence in an individual was either harmful, neutral, or not as helpful as the nylon oxidase mutation that occurred in another individual bacterium. There is no coincidence that the one with the mutation survived - it had a significant advantage - abd thus, it is no coincidence that with a fast reproducing species like these bacteria, that the population rapidly contained exclusively bacteria that carried this particulr mutated gene.

Now, whether this mutation or any mutations have environmental cues is actually subject to some debate right now, but probably not in the way that you think. There are, it seems, particular places on the genome where mutations are less likely to be corrected by some of the natural error correction mechanisms, allowing their appearance to be more common.

Cheers

[ November 05, 2002: Message edited by: Nat ]</p>

Nickle

Why start a thread and then not respond to the comments?

Camaban

Because the only response would be to admit that there are plenty of good mutations

snoiduspoitus

&lt;Can anyone provide conclusive evidence on just one beneficial genetic mutation.&gt;

One should think that the numbers of just such mutations should speak volumes, when they have already multiplied to a point which allows you to post such an ironic question.

Happy Wonderer

But he did respond! I think he puts forth a rather enlightened counter-argument:

(That was a mere 10 days ago.) Face it, this is the most sensible argument you are going to see from him...

HW

Camaban

[quote]But he did respond! I think he puts forth a rather enlightened counter-argument:[/quote[

*Zen-buddhist guise*

Ah, yes, contemplating the emptiness of the void and finding the knowledge complained within

galiel

Does anyone else find that the topic would make a good title for a song?

Good, good, good
Good Mutations....

Sorry.

RufusAtticus

. . .I'm thinkin' about adaptation.

galiel

...I'm ready for some translation.

Albion

<img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" />