Well please forgive me because the last post here came from a very jumbled mind late at night, school has been making me insane lately so I apologize if some things were not making sense, I realize that there was not much organization in there.
That's just plain old circular reasoning. I agree with you on the protein thing, but obviously this whole thing came about a bit unexpected
Right, I think I just phrased it wrong, my mind was just jumping around. There would be no change rate if we had no idea which proteins had changed, I can understand how you might call that circular reasoning.
The scientists in this article are trying very hard to find out what happened in the 20000th generation. Right now it is still experimental. Saying this is 'evolution before our very eyes' is a bait and switch tactic from the media.
The rate at which evolution takes place isn't constant. It makes perfect sense that a large being like a dinosaur takes a couple of million years to change 'into' a new species, just like it makes sense that a couple of 'cells' in a lab only take a few years adapting to their environment. Apparently there must have been conditions that forced a change.
I know that the rate isnt constant between species, but to date, and I have looked extensively and queried extensively, I have never found any kind of reliable rate of macroevolution. Not just an overall rate of all species, but not a rate for any species.
Why is that significant? Because evolution(at least Darwinist evolution) supposedly occurs as a result of the change of resources which occur as a result of the environment changes. So the cause is constant, but the alleged effect is random. Which doesn't make any sense to me.
A change is a change... the overall outcome is evolution. It doesn't have to be beneficial for it to be part of evolution,
No? So maybe you will place a pregnant woman 5 hrs a day under a radiation machine and see what kind of evolution happens when she has the child?
Evolution has to cause a change in a species which will cause it to become more suited for its environment. It has to cause a better chance of survival of the soecies and it's offspring. I dont think that this adaptation in ecoli could be catagorized as a beneficial mutation, but maybe Im misunderstanding something.
What drives you here? Did they gain this ability by loosing some gens?
No, I just doubt that the gained ability to metabolize citrate is going to help the species survive. And I dont know how they gained the ability. But there really is too much left out of the article to form a healthy hypothesis.
Also according to the article, they_dont_know what happened. The citrate-processing ability may be due to the activation of a latent function. Thats why I posed so many alternatives. You should always look at alternative solutions and possibilities when you dont know something specifically.
