Claim CB101.2:
Mutations only vary traits that are already there. They do not produce
anything new.
Source:
Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. 1985. Life--How Did It Get Here?
Brooklyn, NY,
p. 103.
Morris, Henry M. 1985. Scientific Creationism. Green Forest, AR:
Master Books, 51.
Response:
- Variation of traits is production of novelty, especially where there
was no variation before. The accumulation of slight modifications is
a basis of evolution.
- Documentation of mutations producing new features includes the
following:
- the ability of a bacterium to digest nylon (Negoro et al. 1994;
Thomas n.d.; Thwaites 1985);
- adaptation in yeast to a low-phosphate environment (Francis and
Hansche 1972; 1973; Hansche 1975);
- the ability of E. coli to hydrolyze galactosylarabinose (Hall
1981; Hall and Zuzel 1980);
- evolution of multicellularity in a unicellular green alga (Boraas
1983; Boraas et al. 1998);
- modification of E. coli's fucose pathway to metabolize propanediol
(Lin and Wu 1984);
- evolution in Klebsiella bacteria of a new metabolic pathway for
metabolizing 5-carbon sugars (Hartley 1984);
There is evidence for mutations producing other novel proteins:
- Proteins in the histidine biosynthesis pathway consist of beta/alpha
barrels with a twofold repeat pattern. These apparently evolved
from the duplication and fusion of genes from a half-barrel
ancestor (Lang et al. 2000).
Laboratory experiments with directed evolution indicate that the
evolution of a new function often begins with mutations that have little
effect on a gene's original function but a large effect on a second
function. Gene duplication and divergence can then allow the new
function to be refined. (Aharoni et al. 2004)
- For evolution to operate, the source of variation does not matter; all
that matters is that heritable variation occurs. Such variation is
shown by the fact that selective breeding has produced novel features
in many species, including cats, dogs, pigeons, goldfish, cabbage, and
geraniums. Some of the features may have been preexisting in
the population originally, but not all of them were, especially
considering the creationists' view that the animals originated from a
single pair.
Links:
Max, Edward E. 1999. The evolution of improved fitness by random
mutation plus selection. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/fitness/
Musgrave, Ian, Steven Pirie-Shepherd, and Douglas Theobald. 2003.
Apolipoprotein AI mutations and information.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/information/apolipoprotein.html
Thomas, Dave. n.d. Evolution and information: The nylon bug.
http://www.nmsr.org/nylon.htm
References:
- Aharoni, A., L. Gaidukov, O. Khersonsky, S. McQ. Gould, C. Roodveldt
and D. S. Tawfik. 2004. The 'evolvability' of promiscuous protein
functions. Nature Genetics [Epub Nov. 28 ahead of print]
- Boraas, M. E. 1983. Predator induced evolution in chemostat
culture. EOS 64: 1102.
- Boraas, M. E., D. B. Seale, and J. E. Boxhorn. 1998. Phagotrophy by a
flagellate selects for colonial prey: A possible origin of
multicellularity. Evolutionary Ecology 12: 153-164.
- Francis, J. E. and P. E. Hansche. 1972. Directed evolution of
metabolic pathways in microbial populations. I. Modification of the
acid phosphatase pH optimum in S. cerevisiae. Genetics 70:
59-73.
- Francis, J. E. and P. E. Hansche. 1973. Directed evolution of metabolic
pathways in microbial populations. II. A repeatable adaptation in
Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Genetics 74: 259-265.
- Hall, B. G. 1981. Changes in the substrate specificities of an enzyme
during directed evolution of new functions. Biochemistry 20:
4042-4049.
- Hall, B. G. and T. Zuzel. 1980. Evolution of a new enzymatic function
by recombination within a gene. Proceedings of the National Academy of
Science USA 77(6): 3529-33.
- Hansche, P. E. 1975. Gene duplication as a mechanism of genetic
adaptation in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Genetics 79:
661-674.
- Hartley, B. S. 1984. Experimental evolution of ribitol dehydrogenase.
In: Microorganisms as Model Systems for Studying Evolution, R. P.
Mortlock, ed., New York: Plenum, pp. 23-54.
- Lang, D. et al. 2000. Structural evidence for evolution of the
beta/alpha barrel scaffold by gene duplication and fusion. Science
289: 1546-1550. See also: Miles, E. W. and D. R. Davies, 2000. On the
ancestry of barrels. Science 289: 1490.
- Lin, E. C. C. and T. T. Wu. 1984. Functional divergence of the
L-Fucose system in mutants of Escherichia coli. In: Microorganisms
as
Model Systems for Studying Evolution, R. P. Mortlock, ed., New York:
Plenum, pp. 135-164.
- Negoro, S., K. Kato, K. Fujiyama and H. Okada. 1994. The nylon oligomer
biodegradation system of Flavobacterium and Pseudomonas.
Biodegradation 5: 185-194.
- Thomas. n.d. (see above).
- Thwaites, W. M. 1985. New proteins without God's help.
Creation/Evolution 5(2): 1-3.
http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/articles/4661_issue_16_volume_5_number_2__4_10_2003.asp
created 2003-7-3, modified 2004-12-17