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To: Southack
So you think that you have a single instance of an insect "evolving" due to pesticides, and that all other arguments must be thrown out because of your soletary example?!

Did I say that was the only known beneficial mutation in existence? It doesn't take much to get you reaching, does it?

Every time a disease microorganism "conquers" a drug that used to kill it, it does so via beneficial mutation. The disease of sickle-cell anemia is caused by a mutation that was originally beneficial in the malarial tropic context of its origin. (But what was beneficial once can be harmful when the selection pressures change. Just ask the dinosaurs.)

From HERE:

Here's a tested recipe for isolating successful mutations... Grow a batch culture of Salmonella typhimurium strain SK2979 at 37 deg. C on Neidhardt's MOPS-based minimal medium with 0.4% glycerol as the carbon source and 10 mM L-aspartate as the nitrogen source. Dilute and subculture for several days. L-aspartate fast growing mutants will take over the culture in something under 3 days. These typically have a doubling time of 60 minutes on asparate, compared to about 120 minutes for the parental, wild-type strain.

Even better, starting with the fast-growing strain, one can easily isolate secondary mutation(s) which permit growth on aspartate as the sole carbon and nitrogen source -- which the parental strain simply cannot do. This demonstrates how cumulative mutations can arise.

Basically, techniques involving the natural occurrence of spontaneous, beneficial mutations are commonly used by bacterial geneticists.

Admit it, you flunked (or didn't even try to take it) biology in college, didn't you.

Had the usual freshman course, probably got a B. (You're talking 30 years back in my case.) Did you take it? Sure isn't doing much for you if you did.

13 posted on 09/27/2001 6:56:57 PM PDT by VadeRetro
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To: VadeRetro
Also,in every instane of interbreeding of species, we observe that the offspring are sterile. End of the evolutionary theory. Proven to be an impotent theory!

baa

15 posted on 09/27/2001 7:11:08 PM PDT by woollyone
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To: VadeRetro
"Every time a disease microorganism "conquers" a drug that used to kill it, it does so via beneficial mutation."

Really?! So we get new species of microorganisms instead of natural selection? After all, I was reasonably certain that most microorganisms had various levels of built-in tolerances for a variety of drugs/antibodies. The drug kills all those without the natural tolerances, leaving only those with pre-engineered tolerances left to thrive. Those versions may very well comprise most or all of the new population of said microorganisms over time, but they were already around prior to the drug first being used, and they were always part of the same species in question, NOT new to the species as require for speciation.

18 posted on 09/27/2001 7:27:47 PM PDT by Southack
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