Quote:
Originally Posted by michealb
And the rebuttals :
Here is anotherQuote:
Literature - On the evolution of a "key innovation" in Escherichia coli
It is at least worth asking the question whether the E.coli bacterium had, in the past, lost the ability to metabolise citrate and what we are now seeing is a restoration of that damaged system. If this were the case, we should not be talking about "a major evolutionary innovation" but rather about the way complex systems can be impaired by mutations.
As yet, it is not known what mutations were involved. But clearly, if there were two, and if the first was needed before the second could complete the job, the experiments demonstrate how difficult it is to achieve orchestrated changes...
These mutations are not only rare, they are also useless without the pre-existence of a biochemical system that can turn the products of mutation into something beneficial
Quote:
Michael Behe's Amazon Blog: Multiple Mutations Needed for E. Coli Permalink
Now, wild E. coli already has a number of enzymes that normally use citrate and can digest it (it’s not some exotic chemical the bacterium has never seen before). However, the wild bacterium lacks an enzyme called a “citrate permease” which can transport citrate from outside the cell through the cell’s membrane into its interior. So all the bacterium needed to do to use citrate was to find a way to get it into the cell. The rest of the machinery for its metabolism was already there.
20 years, 44000 generations later, in a tightly controlled manmade environment
And this is all they can come up with :confused:
Where is the proof :confused: