Summations Only

Zaius my friend,My friend, you're misinterpreting me, my good friend. Those weren't claims, my excellent friend, of what we've found, but of how you'd respond if they *were* found, my exquisite friend. Yes, we know you think that, my splendid friend. "Citrate isn't novelty," you again claim, my admirable friend. And I repeat, this time without examples that will confuse you, my fine friend, that in response to evidence of evolution producing novelty you'll just argue it isn't really novel, my superb friend.--Percy

I think I'm going to intervene here and make a OP's decision.If something is new and different; it's novel. As we are definately not going to see a bacteria evolve to become a fruit fly - because that would be a miracle, not evolution - it's fair to say that a strain of bacteria previously unable to metabalise citrate in the presence of oxygen, that has changed so that it now can, is a good example of a novel feature evolving.What's more, we have found the genes that have changed in order to do it. To remind ourselves: My only quibble with this is that it's a change that's happened in a bacteria and not something bigger - but heyho, needs must.

This is the image of a human limb bud at 6 weeks. As you can see it's a fairly flat plate like structure. It is known that controlled cell death causes this plate of tissue to become divided into five sections to form fingers. It is easy to see how changes in expression could instead cause this plate to elongate into a fin. Yes Haeckel got it wrong that the embryonic form replays ancestral species in our evolution, but some of his ideas do hold true.Also I find it interesting that you view this sort of change as impossible, yet in Message 216 you pass off the transition from a completely herbivorous to an omnivorous diet as no big deal.Anyway sorry this was a bit rushed and I'll have to get back to your other post later.Edited by Malcolm, : No reason given.

Percy LOL.

So were you unable to speculate or did you lack the revelation to actually respond to that?

Malcolm, A transition from a hand to a fin (macroevolution) by what we understand and observe is scientifically impossible.Not even the studied cases of Fruit flies have ever shown to exhibit any form of macroevolution. In fact, no matter what selective pressure is applied to fruit flies they stubbornly stay fruit flies and only adapt. This statement also applies to E. coli and the evidence only confirms adaptation and not species modification.

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In 1977, the late evolutionary biologist Pierre-P. Grass commented, The fruitfly (Drosophila melanogaster), the favorite pet insect of the geneticists, whose geographical, biotopical, urban, and rural genotypes are now known inside out, seems not to have changed since the remotest times.3 In 2010, this summary is even more scientifically accurate. Fruit flies have not evolved because they cannot evolve.

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Grass, P. P. 1977. Evolution of Living Organisms. New York: Academic Press Inc., 130. Quoted in Sherwin, F. 2006. Fruit Flies in the Face of Macroevolution. Acts & Facts.

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Here is a very old quote that is still true to this day.

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After decades of study, without immediately killing or sterilizing them, 400 different mutational features have been identified in fruit flies. But none of these changes the fruit fly to a different species.
"Out of 400 mutations that have been provided by Drosophila melanogaster,there is not one that can be called a new species. It does not seem, therefore, that the central problem of evolution can be solved by mutations."*Maurice Caullery, Genetics and Heredity (1964), p. 119.
2021, 10 .

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Why these adaptations cannot be evolution:

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"Recent research on evolutionary genetics has focused on classic selective sweeps, which are evolutionary processes involving the fixation of newly arising beneficial mutations. In a recombining region, a selected sweep is expected to reduce heterozygosity at SNPs flanking the selected site. [. . .] Notably, we observe no location in the genome where heterozygosity is reduced to anywhere near zero, and this lack of evidence for a classic sweep is a feature of the data regardless of window size." http://www.arn.org/.../experimental_evolution_in_fruit_flies

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About the transition of humans to eating meat, that happened when Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden. Decidedly a significant event.

Zaius, this thread is not about macro-evolution so I've no idea why you keep trying to drag us back to it. But I see that with this..... .....you have decided to opt out of the thread - and reality - entirely.Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

My not-so-good friend zaius137, please don't try to derail this thread.To me, not being a biologist, this was facinating to learn how new features can evolve. The citrate digestion research stated here really was excellent (well, the parts that I more or less could follow). I learned an enormous amount and I'm very grateful to the contributors who shared their expertise so freely.Please don't try and derail this thread.

Do you have an argument not bases on skepticism? You are correct that no one has ever personally witnessed an animal become a new 'kind'. Is that the extent of your argument; that you will only believe evolution is correct when a time machine is produced?

Zaius,Gee, I'm not your friend anymore? Did the belittling way in which you were employing the term finally dawn on you?You're ignoring the question. Your definition of novelty appears to depend upon whether or not it was produced by evolution, and not on the actual definition of novelty. If that's to be your strategy then there will never be any novelty for you to discuss.Why don't you just pretend to yourself, for the sake of discussion, that evolving the ability to digest citrate in the presence of oxygen is novel. It's certainly complex and non-trivial.--Percy

Percy You are still my friend but I will abstain from making any more overt friendly granting because I see you feel slighted. Is anyone here actually concerned about the actual definition of novelty? If so let us cut and paste that definition all agree on it and let the thread die.I do not believe that transport threw the cell wall of citrate by E. coli was any major innovation. It was a complex and coordinated adaptation. The evolutionist is apt to blow up any such adaptive finding way out of proportion and must grok the evidence to their paradigm.I commonly speak to scientists and researchers face to face. If they focus on very narrow evidences, it is easy to obscure the overall picture. Remember the old saying that the forest is obscured by all the trees. I am not a scientist but only a lowly novice employing the common sense that God gave. When I see that outrageous conclusions are put forth as science, it incenses me.If the participants here wish to narrow the field to the Yes it is no it isn’t argument; I believe it is a vote for ignorance. I am perfectly willing to stick to the science and am very comfortable in that position. So lets continue in reasoning whichever why it leads and if a the direction is not acceptable, let it be quenched by ignoring it. Opposition to my opinions thrills me and I appreciate it.I am not here to win an argument because it is an empty victory when nothing is learned. I hope that some of these participants can share this view as common ground.

Tangle, OK I herby drop the inference to macroevolution in this thread, you are right.

Hi Zaius,You are ignoring the point. Again, to you whether or not an adaptation is novel depends upon whether evolution was involved. That's why you were earlier making the error of claiming that evolution has nothing to do with adaptation.Let me state your position more plainly and in the language you were using earlier: If an adaptation involves evolution then it can't be novel.In other words, you've defined evolution and novelty as mutually exclusive. You're assuming the consequent (i.e., you're treating as a fundamental premise that which you are trying to prove).There's no point in discussing the production of novelty through evolution with you if you're simply going to dismiss any example as "not novel."So before we come up with yet another example I think you need to provide your criteria for novelty, otherwise coming up with more examples is pointless because you'll just dismiss them as "not novel" for arbitrary reasons.--Percy

We're not looking for major innovations (whatever they are). We're looking fot a novel feature, no matter how small, that is new, creates a selective advantage and can be traced directly to a genetic mutation.It's an amazingly difficult task, as we've seen, but the citrate example seems to do it for us and the mice got very, very close.Waving your arms around and saying that it's not novel enough for you or just an 'adaption' isn't working. Soon now, as our understanding of molecular genetics improves, you're going to be presented with evidence you can't make excuses for. Have you thought how you'll deal with that?

A novel feature's a novel feature
No matter how small