Re: [asa] evolution question

Hi Bernie--

First off, evolution has been repeatedly shown in the lab. Zillions of "new
creatures" have been created, from fruit flies, from zebrafish, from mice,
never mind bacteria.

What you're asking for is more and more and more evolution. It'd be fun, for
sure, to drive a fruit fly back toward its common ancestor with, say, a moth.
That divergence occurred about 200 million years ago. So if we accelerate
evolution in the lab – perhaps by some combination of hypermutation and strong
selection – to, say, 1 million times the natural rate, we would need a mere 2
centuries to succeed.

It seems to me that a better way is to work toward piecing together, even
modeling, outlines of the mutations and polymorphisms that can account for a
particular evolutionary divergence. Chimp and human would be an interesting
place to start, or perhaps mouse and rat, or perhaps a pair of fairly
closely-related insects or other invertebrates. All we need is a complete
genome sequence, and those are accumulating rapidly right now. Once we have
some sort of outline of the events that led to the construction of two
different genomes from that of an inferred common ancestor, then we can start
dreaming about modeling this.

Whether anyone would want to do it or not is another question. To me, it
sounds like trying to construct a gigantic slow-moving bulldozer that can push
on a continent to prove that the Himalayas actually were formed by the
collision of two landmasses.

Steve

>>> "Dehler, Bernie" <bernie.dehler@intel.com> 08/25/08 4:07 PM >>>

I accept evolution because of DNA evidence, but I still wonder why evolution
can't be shown in the lab... for example, creating a
new creature

from fruit flies. It seems like under controlled circumstances, we should be
able to do things quickly that might take nature millions of years to do.

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Received on Mon Aug 25 19:32:28 2008