Of course it is relevant. You are claiming this is a favorable mutation, so it must be compared to how the bacteria functioned previously.
BTW - this is similar to the case of the nylon bacteria. -me-
Yes this is evolution. The selection of mutations which give rise to novel traits. You must be a closet Darwinist.
No, this is not evolution, this is adaptation - and adaptation for the worse:
I refer you again to the word COULD in the article. Further, the article did not show anywhere that there was any gene duplication. All it showed was that two DNA base pairs were altered. NO NEW INFORMATION WAS ADDED. In addition (and I am sure you forgot about it) one of the summaries you cited (see post#1213) said the following:
The specificities for the biologically selected substrates generally increased by at least an order of magnitude via increased Vmax and decreased Km for the substrate. These changes were very specific for the selected substrate, often being accompanied by decreased specificities for other related substrates. The single, double, or triple substitutions in the enzymes did not detectably alter the thermal stability of ebg enzyme. Post# 1213 .
So what we have here is another example of a mutation which decreased the functioning of the system except in the one specific circumstance, and which did not add any new genetic information to the organism, and does not show, in any way the expression of any new mutated genes.
As it is obvious to anyone, you cannot have evolution without the addition of additional genetic information. A single celled organism has some 600 genes and some one million base pairs of DNA, a human has some 30,000 genes and some 3 billion base pairs of DNA. You cannot get from a bacteria to a man without adding new genetic information and you (and evolutionists) are still unable to show it ever happening. And again I refer everyone to post#1271 where it can be clearly seen why this cannot happen by random means as evolution claims. It would require the co-evolution of an entirely new system to support the expression of the gene as well as an entirely new system of relating the new gene to the rest of the organism, as well as a complete rearrangement and addition to the developmental program of the organism to enable this new gene to work. In other words, utterly impossible.
1301 posted on 7/23/02 9:05 PM Pacific by gore3000
Your example does not show:
1. greater complexity.
2. greater genetic information.
3. the duplication of and expression of a new gene.
4. better functioning under normal conditions.
In short it does not show anything necessary for evolution to be true. What it does show is adaptation to the environment. One last thing, it is even doubtful that this can be called a mutation. The specificity of the change, suggests (but does not prove) that it may have been due to deliberate adaptation by transposons. As I said at the start of this discussion 4 - 2 does not equal 6. You need additional expressed genes for evolution to be true and such has never been shown.
The mutants are the only survivors in the lactose environment. Only an complete idiot would call this “adaptation for the worse”.
Further, the article did not show anywhere that there was any gene duplication.
The article never claimed any gene duplication occurred. Like everything else you write, you pulled that out of your posterior.
The specificities for the biologically selected substrates generally increased by at least an order of magnitude via increased Vmax and decreased Km for the substrate. These changes were very specific for the selected substrate, often being accompanied by decreased specificities for other related substrates.
The ebgA is a cryptic enzyme. There is nothing here saying the mutants did not survive just as well in the original conditions (It was probably never assayed since it is totally irrelevant to the study). The ebgA mutations were unquestionably favorable in that now they survive in the lactose only growth medium. There just isn’t any way to get around this fact.