A colleague wrongfully disses modern evolutionary theory « Why Evolution Is True
A colleague wrongfully disses modern evolutionary theory « Why Evolution Is True
Shapiro, it seems, has devoted much of his writing to pointing out that the modern theory of evolution (“neo-Darwinism”) is deeply flawed and needs a new paradigm. (…)
This uptake of DNA between species, also called “horizontal gene transfer” (HGT) happens sometimes, and although rare (especially in animals), may be more common than we think. I regard it as a form of mutation, since the acquired gene is, after acquisition, subject to evolution via natural selection. Given its rarity (if it were common we wouldn’t be able to make good DNA-based trees of various species) and the subsequent modification of the acquired DNA by natural selection, it’s doubtful whether HGT qualifies as “instantaneous evolution.”
- We can do excellent trees of many things that are not so good (by pruning the data that might interefere with this excellency e.g. masking regions, electing homologs, etc.)
- It might be rare for eukaryotes, but not for archaea of bacteria
- even if we have several “good DNA-based trees” for different genes, they might disagree between themselves. The effect of HGT is not to decrease the ‘quality’ of trees
- I don’t see the “rarity” — or frequency, in general — of a phenomenon as indicator of its validity as a counter-argument. (but anyway, I don’t see HGT as a threat to the Modern Theory; we know that “mutation” can be something more than the usual nucleotide mismatch, unknown by Darwin. And still be subjected to natural selection — which btw may purge a lot of HGTs….)
