Evolution Confirmed (Again); Single Celled Organism Evolves Into Multicellular

Originally posted by Bob Sholtz
reply to post by squiz

 

wow. that shut up the evolutionists pretty quick. personally i could care less if evolution was true. i'd live differently, sure, but evolution=bad science.

in short, the multicellular yeast resulted from a loss of function, not a beneficial mutation (i.e. evolution).

swing and a miss.

Creationists love to use the following as an argument against evolution...

"A single celled organism cannot turn into a multicelled organism"

This experiment shows that indeed it can happen.

From the paper:

Selection of Multicellular Traits. The evolution of multicellularity requires an increasing role for natural selection among multicellular individuals, relative to selection among cells within individuals (1, 3, 15, 17, 27, 28). We investigated the transition between unicellular and multicellular life by studying two emergent traits of multicellular snowflake-phenotype yeast, cluster reproduction, and settling survival. New clusters can potentially arise by production of either unicellular or multicellular propagules. Examples of both modes of reproduction occur among extant multicellular species, including plants; propagules that develop from a single cell are common among animals (6).

Originally posted by dusty1
reply to post by Confusion42

 

Interesting article.

I read the paper Experimental evolution of multicellularity on which the article was based.

I found this interesting.

We used gravity to select for primitive multicellularity in the unicellular yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Clusters of cells settle through liquid more quickly than do single cells, allowing us to easily select for clustering genotypes

So if I understand this correctly the whole purpose of this experiment is to induce these yeast clusters to sink faster.

What does this have to do with Natural Selection?

Settling selection was chosen not because it is widespread in nature, but rather because it is an experimentally tractable method to select for larger size.

Interesting, the researchers selected this benchmark, not because it has much relevance to the natural world, but because it was easy.

Here is what they used to show "natural selection"

After the first week, we modified the settling step to be more time efficient by using 100 × g, 10-s centrifugations of 1.5-mL subsamples from the shaken 10-mL

A centrifuge, used by nature?

A representative genotype (drawn from replicate population 1, day 30, of our first evolution experiment) was grown overnight in yeast peptone dextrose (YPD) media

YPD?

YEPD or Yeast Extract Peptone Dextrose, also often abbreviated as YPD, is a complete medium for yeast growth. It contains yeast extract, peptone, bidest. water, and glucose or dextrose. It can be used as solid medium by including agar. The yeast extract will typically contain all the amino acids necessary for growth. By being a complete medium, YEPD cannot be used as a selection medium to test for auxotrophs. Instead, YEPD is used as a growth medium to grow yeast cultures.

Link

So yeast can only grow in YPD, it literally cannot do anything but grow in this substance.

YPD cannot be used as a selection medium to test for auxotrophs.

It is important to remember that many living things, including humans, are auxotrophic for large classes of compounds required for growth and must obtain these compounds through diet (see vitamin, essential amino acid, essential fatty acid).

How is this in any way "Natural Selection"?

Also yeast has no correlation with auxotrophic organisms like humans.




Did the experiment truly show, that the yeast evolved into multicellular "creatures" in just 60 days?

Although known transitions to complex multicellularity, with clearly differentiated cell types, occurred over millions of years

So their experiment did not show differentiated cell types. This was not done in 60 days.

Multicelled snowflakephenotype yeast evolved in all 15 replicate populations, in two separate experiments, within 60 d of settling selection.

Multicelled snowflakephenotype.

Try and say that 5 times really fast!

Is that like a Sanitation Engineer?

So we have cells clumped together, so they will sink fast, and they are a "snow flake" phenotype

the term phenotype includes traits or characteristics that can be made visible by some technical procedure

The yeast now look different.

Yeast cosmetic surgery!!

We could make hundreds!!!!

we have shown that the first crucial steps in the transition from unicellularity to multicellularity can evolve remarkably quickly under appropriate selective conditions.

They certainly showed that with a guiding intelligence, yeast can be coaxed to clump together and sink really, really fast.


Experimental evolution of multicellularity

edit on 21-1-2012 by dusty1 because: (no reason given)

Why do you keep bringing up natural selection? This is something called selective breeding aka artificial selection. Can you please show me where in the article does it say that this experiment was meant to demonstrate natural selection?

Why do you keep bringing up natural selection? This is something called selective breeding aka artificial selection. Can you please show me where in the article does it say that this experiment was meant to demonstrate natural selection?

edit on 22-1-2012 by Firepac because: (no reason given)

Seconded.

Would "dusty1 please stand up"? lol

Originally posted by Confusion42
Why do you keep bringing up natural selection? This is something called selective breeding aka artificial selection. Can you please show me where in the article does it say that this experiment was meant to demonstrate natural selection?

Seconded.

Here you go Firepac.

Confusion already quoted from it.

Selection of Multicellular Traits. The evolution of multicellularity requires an increasing role for natural selection among multicellular individuals,

Experimental evolution of multicellularity

Originally posted by dusty1

Here you go Firepac.

Confusion already quoted from it.

Selection of Multicellular Traits. The evolution of multicellularity requires an increasing role for natural selection among multicellular individuals,

Experimental evolution of multicellularity

Now where in that quote does it say that this experiment was meant to demonstrate natural selection? They happen to use the words "natural selection" but say nothing about demonstrating or proving it. Even the title of the article clearly states that this experiment was about multicellularity and not natural selection. There are plenty of experiments out there that demonstrates natural selection, there's no need for it here.

Since you obviously have an issue with reading comprehension let me requote what I said before. I have even bolded the relevant part for your convenience:

Can you please show me where in the article does it say that this experiment was meant to demonstrate natural selection?

But then again we can't expect an honest answer. You are a creationist after all.

reply to post by Confusion42

sorry, but that is a strawman argument. i've never said anything of the kind. see my last post for the requirements to prove that evolution has happened.

if you prove it, i would gladly accept evolution. i have no moral or philosophical qualms against believing that we evolved, however i don't because the evidence isn't there. it evokes an almost religious zeal from believers, and i find it sad that people can't follow wherever the evidence leads.

Originally posted by Bob Sholtz
reply to post by Confusion42

 

sorry, but that is a strawman argument. i've never said anything of the kind. see my last post for the requirements to prove that evolution has happened.

Due to its usage there I'm not sure you know what a strawman arguement is.

Originally posted by Bob Sholtz
if you prove it, i would gladly accept evolution.

And what exactly would you accept as proof?

Originally posted by Bob Sholtz
i have no moral or philosophical qualms against believing that we evolved,

Judging by your previous statements here it is quite obvious that you do. However, lying is a hallmark trait of creationists so that's not surprising.

Now where in that quote does it say that this experiment was meant to demonstrate natural selection? They happen to use the words "natural selection" and says nothing about demonstrating or proving it.

reply to post by Firepac


Word games?

That's your comeback?


As stated in the article, Natural Selection is the supposed mechanism of multicellular evolution.

Selection of Multicellular Traits. The evolution of multicellularity requires an increasing role for natural selection among multicellular individuals, relative to selection among cells within individuals

Do you understand what the word requires means?

The experiment was about the evolution of multicellularity.

The scientists clearly state that an increasing role for natural selection is a REQUIREMENT for "evolution" to take place in this context.


Some of the posts in this thread give the impression that these experiments are simply replicating naturally occurring conditions. Which is false.

Firepac and Confusion

You have both agreed that artificial selection is the mechanism that the scientists actually used to get these "results".

Which supports my point of the need for an exterior guiding intelligence.





I don't know if you understand the implications of your current position.

The researchers were attempting to show the first steps in the "evolution" of a unicellular organism into a multicellular organism.

The point of the experiment was what?

Was it to show that a multicellular organism could exist? No, multicellular organisms already exist.

Was it to demonstrate HOW a unicellular organism could take the first steps in becoming a multicellular organism?

So according to you, the researchers were not attempting to show that natural selection was the mechanism in which unicellular organisms took steps to become multicellular?



Again, what is the point of the experiment? Is it to demonstrate that only artificial selection could be the cause of multicellular life?

reply to post by Firepac

it's a straw man against creationists because he set up what he says i believe, (i.e. single celled organisms cannot become multicellular because if they could this would be evidence of evolution), then attacked what he set up. classic straw man.

my requirements for evolution are near the bottom of the previous page.

i could care less what is true and what isn't, so long as i know what is true. i don't believe evolution is right. i've studied it a decent amount because i found it interesting and i wanted to decide for myself if it was valid or not. i found that evolution isn't science, and those who believe in it display a fervor only seen in religious fanatics.

Originally posted by dusty1

Now where in that quote does it say that this experiment was meant to demonstrate natural selection? They happen to use the words "natural selection" and says nothing about demonstrating or proving it.

reply to post by Firepac

 

Word games?

That's your comeback?

The fact that this experiment was about multicellularity and not natural selection is a FACT and has nothing to do with words. Are you really that confused?

Originally posted by dusty1
As stated in the article, Natural Selection is the supposed mechanism of multicellular evolution.

Yes in the past but not in this experiment. Do you actually have a point? Artificial selection is a perfectly valid mechanism for evolution and thus anything that's shown to be possible under artificial selection (as is the case with this experiment) is valid proof of evolution. Now what part of that do you not understand?

Originally posted by dusty1

Selection of Multicellular Traits. The evolution of multicellularity requires an increasing role for natural selection among multicellular individuals, relative to selection among cells within individuals

Do you understand what the word requires means?

The experiment was about the evolution of multicellularity.

The scientists clearly state that an increasing role for natural selection is a REQUIREMENT for "evolution" to take place in this context.

As I have said before, natural selection has already been demonstrated countless times in other experiments thus does not need to be demonstrated in this experiment. Even most creationists will agree that natural selection is real...or are you trying to say that natural selection does not happen?

Originally posted by dusty1
Which supports my point of the need for an exterior guiding intelligence.

"exterior guiding intelligence"......yeah we call that an experiment, yet another concept that's completely foreign to creationists.

evolutionfairytale.com...

this is a fascinating article on the amount of harmful/deleterious mutations that occur on average per human. the study that the paper is based on was done by evolutionists and published in nature magazine. ill post quotes to summarize the main points.

Let's first consider the recent Eyre-Walker & Keightley article in Nature magazine3. By comparing human and chimp differences in protein-coding DNA, they arrived at a deleterious (harmful) mutation rate for humans of U=1.6 per individual per generation. They acknowledge that this seems too high, but quickly invoke something called "synergistic epistasis" as a just-so explanation (I'll address this later).

It says that females need to produce over 10 offspring just to keep genetic deterioration near equilibrium! A rate less than 10 means certain genetic deterioration over time, because even the evolutionist's magic wand of natural selection cannot help (in fact Eyre-Walker & Keightley had already factored in natural selection when they arrived at a rate of 1.6)

Now consider that extremely favorable assumptions for evolution were used in the Eyre-Walker & Keightley article. If more realistic assumptions are used the problem gets much worse. First, they estimate that insertions/deletions and some functional non-genic sequences would each independently add 10% to the rate. Second, and more importantly, they assume a functional genome size of only 2.25% (60K genes). When they assume a more widely accepted 3% functional genome (80K genes), they cite U = 3.1, which they admit is "remarkably high" (even this may be a favorable assumption, considering Maynard Smith estimates the genic area to be between 9 - 27%7).

if the rate of mutation U=3 is used in the formula, that means statistically a human female must have 40 children to have 1 child that doesn't have a harmful mutation. that's 40 children to genetically break even. it would require many more to get a single beneficial mutation.

personally i haven't arrived at a date for when humans began, but from the journal Science they made this calculation based on mutation rates:

Mitochondrial DNA appears to mutate much faster than expected, prompting new DNA forensics procedures and raising troubling questions about the dating of evolutionary events. ...Regardless of the cause, evolutionists are most concerned about the effect of a faster mutation rate. For example, researchers have calculated that "mitochondrial Eve"--the woman whose mtDNA was ancestral to that in all living people--lived 100,000 to 200,000 years ago in Africa. Using the new clock, she would be a mere 6000 years old.

evolution is not science, nor is it feasible.

oh yes, i forgot to add a bit about "synergistic epistasis". simply stated, it assumes that harmful mutations always interact and produce a harmful effect greater than the individual sum of the harmful mutations. firstly, this has never been demonstrated, and secondly you would have to assume that women have more than 40 children each, and that statistically 39 would likely die before they could breed. this is obviously not the case.

There is no way these yeast cells are going to individualise themselves for specific separate functions, as in true multicellularity. That involves an increase in genetic information. What we have here is the opposite.

No experiment and no beneficial mutation has ever resulted in an increase of genetic information.
To say that these macro changes and simple mutations involving loss can accumulate into large scale new features and functions is in complete contrast to what the evolutionary experiments actually show. And quite frankly a little illogical.

But arguing against the ingrained dogma won't get you any grants, it usually gets you outcast, fired or threatened.
That's science for ya.

reply to post by squiz


I take it you're a scientist that has spent decades studying this stuff right? The rest of you as well? If that's the case, familiarize me with your work. If not, get outta here criticizing modern science for doing its job and testing hypotheses with experiments. What a joke that anyone would dispute this or the rest of the "wall of links" that show without a doubt evolution has happened. If you don't believe it and feel so passionately about it, become a scientist and work on experiments to prove YOUR hypothesis, or prove the existing experiments wrong. People think they understand something when they know little to nothing about it, or the related fields of scientific study. If the movement had any real support in the scientific community it would be different, but it's nothing more than fundamentalists being stuck in their literal interpretation of a scripture, rather than using evolution to show how much greater 'god' would be. I don't understand that in the least.

reply to post by Barcs

your whole post is a logical fallacy. the validity of someone's argument doesn't rest on how many titles they have. care to actually contribute to the discussion?

the usual line of those supporting evolution is "there is so much evidence for evolution", but when you actually examine it, it falls to pieces. take the last article i posted. it is based on research done by evolutionists that show humans couldn't have evolved because the ratio of beneficial mutations to deleterious mutations is too low so the gene pool loses more information than it gains.

Originally posted by squiz
There is no way these yeast cells are going to individualise themselves for specific separate functions, as in true multicellularity. That involves an increase in genetic information. What we have here is the opposite.

No experiment and no beneficial mutation has ever resulted in an increase of genetic information.
To say that these macro changes and simple mutations involving loss can accumulate into large scale new features and functions is in complete contrast to what the evolutionary experiments actually show. And quite frankly a little illogical.

Since you seem to know it all care to give us an example of what an "increase of genetic information" would be like? I love how creationists always talk about genetic information like they know what it means but never actually bother to define it (sort of like how they refuse to define "kind")

Originally posted by squiz
But arguing against the ingrained dogma won't get you any grants, it usually gets you outcast, fired or threatened.

That's probably one of the best descriptions of creationism I have ever seen. Congratulations!

Reply to post by Confusion42

"i am the Original Poster. The Original Post does not mention God. The title does not mention God"

Thats why I asked the question you replied to. I see the discussion of god as off topic to your OP

Posted Via ATS Mobile: m.abovetopsecret.com

"Um, again, I didn't mention God. Evolution has nothing to do with God. ...?"

Hahahaaaa... Your name suits you well! exactly why I said god is off topic because this thread is about evolution. I never claimed you mentioned god, I was directing that question toward those who are discussing god because YOUR THREAD has nothing to do with god...

Just ignore me, it seems what im saying is going over your head. think of my 1st reply as thinking outloud.


Posted Via ATS Mobile: m.abovetopsecret.com

reply to post by Firepac

Since you seem to know it all care to give us an example of what an "increase of genetic information" would be like?

an increase in genetic information is exactly like what it sounds. genetic information that was previously absent from a strand of DNA is inserted. this would be an increase of genetic information.

now, the vast majority of mutations are deleterious, or harmful and about 0.01% are beneficial in some way. of that .01%, almost all of them occur when the DNA in an organism is damaged or corrupted. the number left (it's too small to accurately quantify) is the amount of beneficial mutations that result from genetic information being added to an organism's genetic code. this can happen from viruses and (i believe) an error in copying genetic information can cause some of the information to copy twice. there may be other methods, but whether it has or hasn't happened is often debated.

this is where the problem for evolution lies. lets say lighting strikes some muck, or whatever scenario you choose, and a living cell is created (personally i've never seen how this is much different than a god creating everything, but humans are good at lying to themselves). that single cell has the genetic information for itself, but not higher forms. it starts to replicate over and over, and errors occur. evolutionists hold that beneficial mutations arose that added to the information in it's DNA, and those cells survived and passed on their superior "mutated" genes and it continued until you have all life on the planet.

the problem is that not enough beneficial mutations that add to an organism's DNA actually happen. much more information is lost than gained. this has been proven over and over, i even summarized an article on it above.

the variety of animals that we have today resulted from incredibly complex general genomes that have been whittled down as the animals needed certain functions for different climates. this is why we have so many breeds of dogs, why darwin's finches have different kinds of beaks (to account for the different food varieties), and why evolution can't happen.

Originally posted by squiz
It's evolution alright, as in adaptive change, not evolution in the darwinian sense. This is more like survival of the most cooperative. Just like Alfred Russel Wallace's interpretation of natural selection, the cofounder of that theory and one of the fathers of modern ID. He was infact much more qualified than Darwin.

What's really interesting is It seems as though the yeast were directly involved, making sacrifices by dieing off as well as a sacrifice in fitness overall with reduced reproductive cycle. They are displaying cooperation and not competition. That's not Darwinism. There also doesn't seem to be anything random happening here.

Many species of yeast evolved originaly from a multicellular form. Seeing that it occurred within such a short time with very few generations it's fair to say this feature may have been simply dormant and reenabled through enviromental pressures and selecton although not the natural kind. The ability, considering the speed, I'm betting was already available within the genome.

It's good stuff overall. Experiments always trump the speculative stories that come along with evolution.

edit on 19-1-2012 by squiz because: (no reason given)

I'm glad someone else came away with this.
Here's another example of "evolution" not truly occuring, and simply dormant traits being brought to the surface.

www.geekosystem.com...

It's fascinating, but this is hardly proof of evolution, or anything, other than it is proof the yeast once had traits that they lost. I suppose that much is evolution at work, although not the kind of evolution any educated Christian would debate.

Originally posted by Bob Sholtz
reply to post by Firepac

 

Since you seem to know it all care to give us an example of what an "increase of genetic information" would be like?

an increase in genetic information is exactly like what it sounds. genetic information that was previously absent from a strand of DNA is inserted. this would be an increase of genetic information.

It's obvious that you've never heard of gene duplications and point mutations. When a sequence of genes get duplicated any point mutations that occur on these new genes introduces new information to the genome while keeping the old ones intact.

Originally posted by Bob Sholtz
this is where the problem for evolution lies. lets say lighting strikes some muck, or whatever scenario you choose, and a living cell is created

In a previous post you claimed that you've studied evolution a decent amount and I actually believed you. However your above statement proves otherwise and shows that you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. The origins of life has absolutely nothing to do with evolution. Serves me right for believing that a creationists would study anything.

Originally posted by Bob Sholtz
(personally i've never seen how this is much different than a god creating everything, but humans are good at lying to themselves).

Most scientists would agree with you and that is exactly why "lighting strikes some muck" is not an accepted model for the origins of life.

reply to post by Barcs


I'm all about the science, the experimental science that is, I think my posts reflect that. I actually thought this was something more special, latent genes etc.. I was wrong, it's more of the same.

All experimental science shows adaption by loss of function. I am not critisizing the experimental science, as they said there aren't too many actually doing it. I'm quite familial with the evidence and the claims. I'm using the experimental evidence it to support my case.

I use science to cut through the BS.

How is it that when I say no experiment is shown to increase genetic information, all I get is bitching and moaning? creationist this creationist that, scriptures bla bla bla.
When all you have to do is cite the conclusive empirical experiment that demonstartes it?

More moaning to come....