My sources say that this is selective breeding, not evolution. And that the genetic information for yeast to become multicellular did not evolve, it was already in the genome. The study was published on January 16th, but the experiment was done last June so the skeptical scientists have had a chance to review it and make their statements.
My sources say that this isn't an example of a new kind of organism, but an awakening of a dormant ability that was already in an organism. Sorry evolutionists, that you had to get so excited. Maybe when a frog becomes a Prince naturally you can start shouting again.
:thud:
Man of Faith, one of the first things that confuses me about your post is that you say, "...this is selective breeding, not evolution." Are you insinuating that artificial selection isn't an evolutionary process? The Scientific American article was clear about this being artificial selection:
Scientific American said:
In the new paper, researchers at the University of Minnesota used a simple but elegant technique to artificially select for multicellularity in yeast.
(Color added for emphasis). I'm only pointing this out because I hope you understand that the selection mechanism in an evolutionary process is fairly inconsequential in terms of finding a proof-of-concept for the evolution of a particular system. For instance, also from the article:
Scientific American said:
Because the cells had to cluster together in order to sink to the bottom and survive, the artificial selection made it more advantageous for yeast to cooperate than to be solitary.
After just 60 generations, all of the surviving yeast populations had formed snowflake-shaped multicellular clusters. "Hence we know that simple conditions are sufficient to select for multicellularity," says biologist Michael Travisano, who led the research.
(Color added for emphasis). The breakthrough this study is hailing isn't an explanation of exactly how multicellularity evolved in nature -- it's that we now know it's not as difficult as might have previously been believed for multicellularity to evolve, period (
e.g., regardless of whether the selection pressures are artificial or not). That's what the discovery is here.
Another chief complaint that you raise is that "...this isn't an example of a new kind of organism, but an awakening of a dormant ability that was already in an organism." I just hope that you understand that's exactly how evolution of complex systems
works. New functions (such as the multicellular behavior) arise in evolution through novel uses of
already existing structures and functions. In effect, your complaint is true -- but it's not evidence against evolution; but rather affirming that evolution is
exactly what we're seeing here since that's
exactly what we'd expect to see.