In summary, I'd say we've made some progress but not as much as I'd hoped.
Much of the recent debate has really been off-topic and if there's enough interest in mutation events in the human Y chromosome (which there seems to be), a new thread should be started.
We got somewhere with lizards and we got very close with mice. All that was missing with the mice was to be able to totally nail the gene(s) that had changed and rule out others.
The bacteria seems to me to be proof of novelty caused by mutation and selected for by the environment - all that could be discussed here was equivocation about the meaning of 'novel.'
(At the moment I'm happy 'novel' could include a feature that enables an organism to live or die depending whether the feature is present or absent - and a clearer meaning is hard to imagine or test.)
The bacteria though doesn't pass my own ambition to show mutation and selection in a beast big enough to be seen by the naked eye from a distance.
So close, but no banana.
My own reading around has produced very little that I can actually understand as the subject very quickly gets in detailed molecular genetics which is well above (or below ;-) my pay grade.
But it does seem strikingly clear that it is a very difficult question to answer because the more we learn, the more complicated it gets. There seems to be no simple tail to be told.
I'll leave with this, which, if anybody is interested, I'll use as a start to a follow-on topic How novel features evolve #3. But I'll need help understanding it!
The Evolution of Novelty in Conserved Gene Families
We argue that the partial data on genomic variation are already sufficient to indicate that no specific attribute of a given molecular structure can indicate a priori more potentials than others to contribute to novelty at a higher phenotypic level. Uncoupling and buffering of natural variation at various integration scales has been clearly demonstrated, implying that the number of molecular events that can be directly correlated with a phenotypic change at the organismal level is probably very low, and that they are the results of exceptional contingency and structural constraints [72]. The possibility to detect de novo such interesting changes in nonmodel organisms is thus also probably very low, and it decreases quickly with an increase of the phylogenetic distance. Additionally, one should not forget that to really understand the link between genetic variation and phenotypic diversity, it is necessary to be able to explain cases where a molecular change triggers novelty, and those where phenotypic traits are maintained in spite of molecular innovations in the genes that specify them.
Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android
™ Version 4.2
(1)
