0057 In the next chapter, Venema notes that something remains.

0058 What about intelligent design?

0059 For me, the question should be: What about the niche?

0060 Advocates of intelligent design argue that DNA mutation alone cannot account for the dramatic changes found in the fossil record.

For example, the Cambrian Period starts with new body designs and highly modified versions of earlier body designs.

Another example is the immune system, which is very complex.

0061 Venema argues that these examples can be explained through methods other than simple mutation, such as insertion and doubling.

However, simple mutations remain foundational, because…

0062 …simple mutations produce evolution directly observed in the laboratory.

Here is an example:

0063 Imagine a culture composed of 1% of bacteria with receptor R and 99% with receptor S.  The culture is then infected with a virus that latches onto receptor-R bacteria but cannot infect S bacteria.

Well, the virus kills all the R bacteria and that is that.

0064 Okay.  Let me try that again, starting with 5% R bacteria and 95% S bacteria.

This time, the virus passes through enough generations that one mutated virus latches onto the S receptor.  Now, the virus can further adapt to the presence of the S-receptor.  The S-receptor bacteria start to die.

At the end of this petri-dish wipe-out, the virologists isolate the virus to see how it has changed.  As it turns out, the latching protein changed by 5 amino acids, meaning that its original DNA underwent at least 5 separate mutations.

0065 Note how the virologist plays god.  The virologist defines a niche_1b.  The 95% S bacteria constitute an actuality independent of the virus_2a, offering the potential of exploitation in the normal context of natural selection_3b.

0066 Here is an example of gene doubling.

Two different species of fruit flies express different suites of transport proteins.  One has a single transport protein, deriving from a DNA-site labeled eclair.  The other has two transport proteins, eclair and p24.  The second recipe came from a doubling of the eclair DNA.  Then, the second copy underwent mutations, resulting in the second recipe for a transport protein, p24.

0067 Next, entire chromosomes may double.  Or they may break and connect to other chromosomes. 

Large-scale gene duplications go a long way in explaining huge changes in phenotype.  For example, animals with backbones came from animals with spinal cords without backbones.

0068 Finally, here is an example of the activation of a completely new recipe.

Nylon is an industrial polymer.  In the 1970’s, Japanese scientists discover a bacteria that lives off of nylon in an industrial waste pond.  The bacteria do so with a completely novel enzyme, which the scientists labeled nylonase.

0069 Venema concludes that intelligent design adds no explanatory value.  Living forms have inherent creativity in their DNA.  Simple mutations, gene duplication, and similar mechanisms account for descent with modification.

0070 Maybe, changes in genotype is the same as intelligent design.

Or, maybe, intelligent design is the niche.