Re: "Flies: 36 Bristles" -- Anything new here?


John Burton wrote:
This was forwarded to me by "Dean", who sends me stuff only rarely now.
He must think there is something new here. Is there?

No. None of the references are less than thirty years old.

John [forwarded material follows; formatting removed]

---------------------------------

THIRTY-SIX BRISTLES

Flies--to almost anyone but a geneticist--are merely one of nature's
pests. * But to geneticists (biologists who deal with heredity and
variation among related organisms) they are extremely important:
especially the fly . There are at least a thousand species of this fly,
and, because it produces a new generation every twelve days, it is the
ideal animal for geneticists to use in the study of hereditary
characteristics. Thousands of pages have been written about Drosophila,
and its critical importance to genetics can be seen from this typical
remark from a book called Genetics and Heredity:

Drosophila is now used in laboratories all over the world and from
certain points of view one can say that the whole of modern genetics and
the science of heredity are due to it....

1

[*Flies are pestiferous. There is no arguing that point. Yet they
perform very specialized and very necessary functions. They help carry
out pollination functions in certain flowering plants (as we saw in the
section on "Pollination"). And, so fantastically interdependent are
"nature's" millions of aspects that--according to Eiseley--man could not
live without flowers. So the fly's role in this area alone is no minor
one. Then, of course, flies are busily occupied with helping to dispose
of tens of thousands of tons of animal and human waste that reappears
every day. In addition to this, one can imagine that there are tons upon
tons of animals and fruits that die every day and are partly removed by
flies. Some species of the fly Drosophila are so specialized in their
function that they eat only injured and rotting fruit and do not bother
uninjured fruit. (Think about that for a minute!)]

Evolution rocks !!

More up-to-date books by different authors still stress heavily the
importance of Drosophila. It's a Biggie where any discussion of genetics
is concerned, and, since genetics is about heredity and evolution cannot
escape matters relating to heredity, the importance of Drosophila
whenever evolution is discussed is difficult to exaggerate.

We wish to stress that importance here and now, because we intend to
show that the work of geneticists on this humble animal has given the
most concrete proof that mutations--the life's breath of evolutionary
theory--can never account for evolution.

Actually, examination of more recent data shows that mutations can
account for evolution.

Let us begin with an overview of the conclusions of thousands of pages
and tens of thousands of hours that science has devoted to studying
mutations and their effects on the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster.

Keep in mind first what has already been mentioned about Drosophila
producing a new generation every twelve days. This makes it possible for
scientists to study several hundred successive generations which would
correspond to fifty or a hundred or more centuries of human life. Armed
with this knowledge, T. H. Morgan and his collaborators, Bridges,
Sturtevant, and Muller obtained a lot of jars, some yeast and bananas,
and a few hundred thousand specimens of Drosophila and went to work.

The intention was to observe and catalogue information about mutations.
One difficulty about mutations, as we have already noted, is that they
are very infrequent, and then of the ones that do occur, all are harmful
and many lead to the early death of the mutant or its descendants.

ERROR - not all mutations are harmful, nor lead to early death of the
mutant or its descendants.

For example, a mutation that makes the flies wings yellower than usual
is hardly fatal to either that fly, or its progeny.

His article only goes downhill from here ....

Two
other characteristics of mutations that make them hard to study are that
there is no way of knowing when one is going to occur, and that most
that do occur, according to geneticists, are unnoticeable because their
effects are hidden or are so slight that they are invisible. (Surely
this is pure nonsense. If one can't see a mutation or in some way detect
it--if it is invisible--then how can anybody say it exists at all?!)

Enzymology - alcohol dehydrogenase has Fast and Slow alleles. Same
function, just runs at different speeds through a starch/agarose gel.

Molecular biology - isolate the genomic DNA and sequence it. There is
quite a bit of variation within a population.

In any case, Morgan published in 1915 his Mechanics of Mendelian
Heredity which laid the foundations for the arrangement of genes in the
chromosomes, and he became the leader of what is known as "the Morgan
school" which is known for this kind of work in connection with
evolution theory.

The upshot of all this was that:

Among hundreds of thousands of flies, it was possible to detect, over a
period of several years, more than 400 mutations.

The total is now up to about 3000+.

2

Though evolution was supposed to be proven by this Herculean effort, it
failed miserably and totally, for:..

Out of the 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....

CRITICAL ERROR ! NONE of the experiments were done to prove evolution;
at this point, all the researchers are doing is cataloging naturally
occurring mutations in one species.

There are other species of Drosophila besides melanogaster.
Examination of the same genes in several different species supports the
ToE.

Speciation in Drosophila IS taking place - Evolution Canyon, Mount
Carmel, Israel.
The canyon runs east to west, so it has north- and south-facing slopes.

One slope is more arid than the other.

Although the slopes are anywhere from 5 to 200 meters apart [flies can
cross the distance], female flies prefer males from THEIR side of the
slope 75% of the time.

The two populations are beginning to show genetic differences; they are
essentially in the earliest stages of speciation.

3

Given the fact that scientists generally agree that evolution without
mutations is about as possible as an omelet without eggs, this is a very
important finding.

Not really; all he's doing here is staring at his shoelaces while
everyone else is looking at the big picture.

But evolutionists do not give up so readily, and there is more to report
on their efforts to force old Drosophola melanogaster to provide the
evidence for evolution they are seeking.

Since the big problem that Morgan and his helpers had faced was the
scarcity of mutations, it was a major breakthrough when a way was
discovered to increase the mutation rate tremendously. From Principles
of Genetics we learn that:

H. J. Muller demonstrated in 1927 that the mutation rate of Drosophila
melanogaster
could be markedly increased by treating the flies with X-rays.
Expression of induced mutations seemed to be the same as those of
comparable mutations that occurred spontaneously, but the frequency was
increased as much as 150-fold.

4

Now, at last, it was possible to really go to work on the hapless
fruit-fly! Whereas, scientists had labored manfully to bring on
artificial mutations by extreme variations of heat and cold and light
and darkness (all with complete lack of success), they now bombarded the
stubborn rascals with X-rays and got their mutations.

Thus stocked with jars of mutant flies, scientists set about to change
them into something besides flies, and thereby demonstrate that animals
could indeed have changed from amoebas to fish to amphibians to
reptiles, to birds to mammals, and finally to Sergi Rachmaninoff.

OLYMPIC LEVEL BULL SH*T !! NONE of the experiments were done to prove
evolution !
These rounds of experiments were done to determine what genes do what,
and figure out where on the chromosome the genes were.

As of the late 1980s, mutations could be done at will using
transposable elements.

Researchers can produce a mutant allele of a given gene in about 1 in
5000 flies.

Some genes - like singed - mutate readily [about 1 in 50 is mutant via
this procedure]; other genes - like alcohol dehydrogenase - hit less
than 1 in a million.

Mutations generated this way are tagged - it is quite possible to
retrieve the DNA around the P-element, and sequence it. Thus locate
and sequence any gene that can be tagged. Which is much more effective
than blasting them with X-rays or chemical mutagens.

(The reader may protest that the average "evolving" fly or lizard or bat
out of the past never had the benefit of all this sophisticated effort
to help him/her along, and would therefore have hardly been able to
produce all those mutations in the first place. But the reader would
only be exhibiting a stubbornness that seems to afflict
non-evolutionists. After all, if things didn't evolve, one would only be
left with the reality that they were created; and that just can't be! So
say the evolutionary scientists....)

Too bad that evidence from many other fields of study all converges on
the same idea : EVOLUTION !

Too bad that there is no positive evidence FOR creationism - just
plaintive whinings about the supposedly deficiencies of evolution.

So the X-rayed the daylights out of ole Drosophila melanogaster. They
changed the eye colors from pink to white to red and back to the
original black again. They changed the wings this way and that. They
worked on the salivary glands. They increased and decreased the number
of bristles. They strained and sweated for thousands of hours to change
Drosophila into something else.

WORLD CLASS BULLSH*T ! They were NOT trying to change the flies into
something else. WHERE did he ever get the idea anyone actually was
?!?!

What happened? Two things: One, the mutant flies either died over a
period of generations, or, they came back to their original, normal
conditions!! They could not be changed!! Drosophila melanogaster,
frozen, steamed, blinded by light and darkness, and fried with X-rays,
remained Drosophila melanogaster.

Which is what all sane and rational people would EXPECT !!

The case of the 36 bristles will serve as a specific example:

Among its other features, Drosophila melanogaster has 36 bristles on its
body. Macbeth gives the gist of further extensive work done on the fruit
fly's bristles by Ernst Mayr in 1948:

Two experiments were run, one for decrease in the number of bristles,
which averaged 36 in the starting stock. Selection for decrease was
able, after thirty generations, to lower this average to 25 bristles,
but then the line became sterile and died out. A mass low line
....was started with 32 bristles and remained nearly stable for
ninety-five generations. All attempts to derive from this line others
with lower bristle numbers failed because the lines died out.... In the
high line, progress was at first rapid and steady. In twenty generations
the average rose from 36 to 56.

At this stage sterility became severe.... Average bristle number fell
sharply and was down to 39 in five generations.

A few problems here :

1. There is a mutation known as 'shaven nude' - they have NO BRISTLES.
And are sufficiently fertile. There is another mutation known as
'groucho' - has extra bristles over the eyes - and is also sufficiently
fertile.

2. Bristles are part of the flies nervous system, so their number may
be constrained more than one would naively suspect.

3. Strong selection in small populations does tend to burn out
variation; good thing that standard mutation can restock it.

4. Xrays tend to damage chromosomes, so it is not overly surprising
that sterility is a side effect. Looks like they have some damaged
alleles hitch-hiking along with the ones they were dealing with.

5. Other methods of mutagenesis - like P element mobilization - do not
go sterile OR revert back to wild type over successive generations;
thus, one leg of Dean's argument has been hacked off.

5

Amazing isn't it? The same thing happens to all breeding experiments, of
course, no matter what the animal or plant. Darwin got the same results
exactly on a smaller scale after he spent years working with pigeons.
There is just so much variability in any animal (or plant), and when it
is pressed beyond that limit by nature or by man it becomes sterile or
dies. In either case, obviously, the kinds of change demanded by
evolution theory are just as effectively stopped.

Not really, since standard evolution is slower, and it is KNOWN that
mutations can 'restock' variability, given sufficient time.

BTW - where does Dean 'think' the initial variability in a population
comes from ?

A day of reckoning is at hand for the Theory of Evolution.

Creationists have been whining that for nearly 200 years now. They
were wrong then, are wrong now, and probably will be wrong centuries
into the future.

And amongst
the most convincing witnesses to testify against the theory will be one
of the most humble, yet most triumphant reminders of God's immutable
laws, namely, Drosophila melanogaster...with its bristles intact.

Too bad that more recent research on the SAME organism supports the
ToE.

But that IS a problem with relying on 30+ year old, cherry picked data
!

(Postscript: This is one tiny excerpt from a book I wrote thirty years
ago which now available in its seventh printing (HERE). Testimonials
[incl. one from the ongoing publishers of Darwin' s book]
can be seen by going to the last two pages (HERE). The latest desperate
effort to keep the evolution myth alive is "Panspermia" and can be
evaluated (HERE). Keep in mind that the success and survival of the
evolution lie depends upon the continued poltroonery of the Creationist
Science Establishment in refusing to attack Copernican heliocentricity
which is just as factless as Darwinian evolutionism and which is
symbiotically connected to it historically, scientifically, and
philosophically (HERE).

He thinks HELIOCENTRISM is factless ? AND has anything to do with
evolution ?!?!

Bibliography

1 - Maurice Caullery. Genetics and Heredity, New York: Walker and Company,
1964, p. 42.
2 - Ibid., p. 43.
3 - Ibid., p. 119.
4 - Eldon J. Gardner, Principles of Genetics, (New York, London, et al:
John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1968. p. 146.
5 - Norman Macbeth, The Question: Darwinism Revisited, p. 629.

.

Relevant Pages

  • "Flies: 36 Bristles" -- Anything new here?
    ... Thousands of pages have been written about Drosophila, ... remark from a book called Genetics and Heredity: ... whenever evolution is discussed is difficult to exaggerate. ... The intention was to observe and catalogue information about mutations. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: "Flies: 36 Bristles" -- Anything new here?
    ... THIRTY-SIX BRISTLES ... Thousands of pages have been written about Drosophila, ... remark from a book called Genetics and Heredity: ... whenever evolution is discussed is difficult to exaggerate. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: "Flies: 36 Bristles" -- Anything new here?
    ... THIRTY-SIX BRISTLES ... Thousands of pages have been written about Drosophila, ... is concerned, and, since genetics is about heredity and evolution cannot ... mutations and their effects on the fruit fly, ...
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  • Re: Does anybody want to proofread and criticize a 7000 plus word
    ... Statistical Probability in the Evolution of Mendelian Populations ... advantageous mutations that frequently recur, ... and some elements of neutral molecular evolution. ...
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  • Re: Does anybody want to proofread and criticize a 7000 plus word
    ... Statistical Probability in the Evolution of Mendelian Populations ... advantageous mutations that frequently recur, ... and some elements of neutral molecular evolution. ...
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