

Bacteria make major evolutionary shift in the lab - chaostheory
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/dn14094-bacteria-make-major-evolutionary-shift-in-the-lab.html?feedId=online-news_rss20

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wallflower
Based on a News.YC recommendation, I'm currently reading "The Selfish Gene"
right now and in the book, Richard Dawkins, says at some point billions of
years ago a critical fundamental evolution happened - a particularly
remarkable molecule was formed by accident, a "Replicator" with the ability to
replicate itself. He said the chance of that happening was "exceedingly
improbable" and "but in our human estimates of what is probable and what is
not, we are not used to dealing in hundreds of millions of years". Improbable
accidents (like the one that probably occurred around generation 20,000 of the
bacteria) can shape the future.

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username2
It's like "Time of the Gaps" instead of "God of the Gaps". Just sprinkle some
fairy time dust on it and anything is possible? You should look into the law
of large numbers and gambler's fallacy.

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DTrejo
From the article:

>In the meantime, the experiment stands as proof that evolution does not
always lead to the best possible outcome.

Wow, the author forgot something critical--there are no time constraints in
this statement. It is as though the author tried a diet for a day and decided
the diet did not lead to weight loss.

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eru
What is the best possible outcome?

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deathbyzen
Interesting read. The little snip at the though about creationists seemed a
bit petty. Though I can understand why an evolutionary biologist might be a
bit miffed at Creationist organizations.

In any case, score one for science.

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timr
It's not petty. The experiment itself is fairly boring; it's a variant of a
routine genetic mapping that we've been doing since Mendel, and the form of
the outcome is unsurprising.

The only thing that makes this interesting is the length of the experiment,
and how it clearly illustrates a basic principle of evolution that the
creationists say is impossible.

(Also, iirc, Lenski is one of the experts who testified at the Dover
trial....)

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dhimes
I'm sure we'll now see the creationists' argument evolve (again) in another
attempt to survive the deft hand of science.

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mark-t
I posted a different version of this story a few days ago:
[http://scienceblogs.com/loom/2008/06/02/a_new_step_in_evolut...](http://scienceblogs.com/loom/2008/06/02/a_new_step_in_evolution.php)

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ntoshev
Your version is much better: it explains what happened in detail and it has
much less noise. I guess the one currently on the homepage is more upmoddable
because of the creationists reference.

