On "Reverse" Evolution
I wish that those trying to convince others about the reality of macroevolution would use examples like this one, instead of relying on elitism and such....
In the last few years, scientists have been discovering how to turn back on genes in the chicken that are no longer on and have caused all of the following to occur (This has all been done in chicken embryos):
A chicken embryo originally begins with 16 vertebrae -- a tail like a lizard. An adult chicken has 5. Genes in the chicken code for enzymes to shorten the embryonic tail to 5 before hatching. Scientists have inhibited this enzyme, which caused the shortening to stop at 8 vertebrae.
They have turned on a gene to give the chicken embryos teeth.
They have turned on a gene to cause chickens to grow feathers on their legs.
It seems that chickens still have "dinosaur" genes in their DNA. (You may recall that I mentioned before that mice apparently still have the genes to regrow lost limbs like newts.[1]) More amazing perhaps is that it only takes single-gene changes to bring back the dinosaur-like traits.
It is one thing to argue that similarities exist in two species because of a common designer instead of being related. However, it is deeper than that. Chickens don't just share similarities with dinosaurs; they have dinosaur genes sleeping in their DNA code. It doesn't make much sense for a chicken to have teeth genes unless A) its ancestors had teeth or B) it was designed to be able to adapt to the environment to grow teeth later on if necessary. Either case is a major change -- we are talking about entirely new body parts. This is not "microevolution".
Those who like to argue that "microevolution" and "macroevolution" are distinct claim that we cannot observe "macroevolution". But these experiments have shown that we can in fact observe "macro" changes as the result of simple, one-gene changes.
Interestingly, while this evidence is strongly against the idea that species were created as is, it is also against the idea of small changes in time to produce new body parts. On the contrary, it seems that evolution at least sometimes occurs from a simple turning on or off of entire pathways of genes that are already there. This matches more with the intelligent design crowd's ideas.
This also implies once again my hunch that evolution occurs more quickly than everyone once thought.[2]
In any case, it shows that no side of the evolution issue fully understands the truth yet.
an article
In the last few years, scientists have been discovering how to turn back on genes in the chicken that are no longer on and have caused all of the following to occur (This has all been done in chicken embryos):
It seems that chickens still have "dinosaur" genes in their DNA. (You may recall that I mentioned before that mice apparently still have the genes to regrow lost limbs like newts.[1]) More amazing perhaps is that it only takes single-gene changes to bring back the dinosaur-like traits.
It is one thing to argue that similarities exist in two species because of a common designer instead of being related. However, it is deeper than that. Chickens don't just share similarities with dinosaurs; they have dinosaur genes sleeping in their DNA code. It doesn't make much sense for a chicken to have teeth genes unless A) its ancestors had teeth or B) it was designed to be able to adapt to the environment to grow teeth later on if necessary. Either case is a major change -- we are talking about entirely new body parts. This is not "microevolution".
Those who like to argue that "microevolution" and "macroevolution" are distinct claim that we cannot observe "macroevolution". But these experiments have shown that we can in fact observe "macro" changes as the result of simple, one-gene changes.
Interestingly, while this evidence is strongly against the idea that species were created as is, it is also against the idea of small changes in time to produce new body parts. On the contrary, it seems that evolution at least sometimes occurs from a simple turning on or off of entire pathways of genes that are already there. This matches more with the intelligent design crowd's ideas.
This also implies once again my hunch that evolution occurs more quickly than everyone once thought.[2]
In any case, it shows that no side of the evolution issue fully understands the truth yet.
an article