To my evo buddies: But isn't this still a case of pre-existing genes being turned OFF? I except the validity of the experiment as something that could happen in nature, but disagree with the idea that it makes shrimp to fly evolution more likely.
What you need is a way to show that new genes can evolve to create complex structures that were not there before. This only explains that genes for previously exisiting structures can be turned off. Unless you want to take the position that the original life form(s) had all the genes for all the potential animals in the Earth's history in it (them) from the git-go. This position strikes me at least as most improbable, though Behe has suggested it.
Even, as has been suggested, if you could get a T-rex from an ostrich by turning on genes, it does not mean that the latter evolved from the former. How did the T-rex "know" that someday it may need to evolve into the imrobable ostrich? How did it organize itself in advance with that kind of flexiblity, with all of those 'ostrich' genes turned off? Were they just waiting around in the T-rex for 60 million years?
To confirm evolution you must show how it can ADD NEW INFO in genes, not turn on or off swithces for previously existing info- unless that 1st cell had all that potential in it from the start. If that is the case, and it may be, it would support Theistic Evolution much more than the naturalistic kind.
Would it help to know that locusts are kosher?
To confirm evolution you must show how it can ADD NEW INFO in genes, not turn on or off swithces for previously existing info- unless that 1st cell had all that potential in it from the start. If that is the case, and it may be, it would support Theistic Evolution much more than the naturalistic kind.
New info is good and necessary, but don't discount the importance of losing your training wheels.
Take a look at that mosquito article I mentioned. It talks about two new genes, B1 & B2, which they didn't even have before 1984. Then the new pesticide resistant mosquitos have since duplicated them, "as many as 250 copies of the B1 allele and 60 copies of B2."
It'd be interesting to trace the study back from The Beak of the Finch (where Lindsay got the reference) & see if it's true that mosquitos didn't even have B1 & B2 before 1984. But even if they had, the duplications themselves represent an increase in information! You need a few more bits to specify that the B1 & B2 genes are duplicated instead of there being just a single copy of each.
It's a little more sophisticated than that. The mutations set up a gradient of expression from the existing gene, such that its expression ensures limb development in the thorax but not in the abdominal region of the fly. Fine-tuning and exact specification of genetic expression of this type is a gain of function, not a loss of function. Such gradients control the development of all organisms.