Ready, set, mutate... and may the best microbe win

Rice University ^ | 18 May 2006 | Staff (press release)

[furball4paws]

Midnight's better.

I once ran 10 liters of a high cell density bacterial culture (80 g dry weight per liter, IIRC) through a French Press and got 10 liters of coagulated mess. It took a gram of purified DNAase and an hour to reduce the viscosity to a point where I could work on the proteins. It was so viscous that it couldn't be stirred conventionally and I had to use a stick. I cackled every step of the way.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

LOL!!

You need a long relaxing weekend.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

I won the Noah's ark game!!

[King Prout]

"Forcing Darwin's hand"

almost stopped reading there.

[js1138]

Getting the "right" mutation was inevitable in this experiment.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1634489/posts?page=57#57

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Took me almost 20 seconds.

Check the bottom of the page,Evolution 101 -25 Lessons

It's a series of zipped files.

I've had this exact argument dozens of times. For some reason uncovering fossils is not considered to be "experimental" to non-scientists. I guess because there are no test tubes or lab coats.

[Seamoth]

lol! Especially on the streets of DC :o)

[Seamoth]

PH didn't use any words that creationists don't use quite frequently. The most common I reason I read for evolution being pushed as a conspiracy despite allegedly overwhelming evidence against it is so scientists & atheists can justify their libertine lifestyles, especially their wild sex lives.

[aNYCguy]

This is my favorite line from your link so far:

There is discernable carbon on and near many fossilized dragon bones.

You can't make this stuff up, folks!

[ahayes]

That sounds awful!

I was actually after the DNA, lots of it. It wasn't my lab so I couldn't get in there at midnight, although that probably would have worked better when I was trying to amplify one plasmid with chloramphenicol. I never got it to work on a reasonable schedule.

[Junior]

CrevoSci Archive

[Stultis]

"The duplicate study suggests that the pathways of molecular adaptation are reproducible and not highly variable under identical conditions," Shamoo said.

Interesting.

Score a point for Simon Conway Morris over Stephen Jay Gould.

[Stultis]

Look! They're doing EXPERIMENTS! This PROVES that evolution isn't science!

LOL! Honest to you-know-who, I read your message at first without looking at the "by" line and was sure that it was a satire by a FRevolutionist. I guess some of the best satire is unintended.

[metmom]

"One of our most surprising findings is that an estimated 20 million point mutations gave rise to just six populations that were capable of vying for dominance,"

And this estimate was based on what?

"Though millions of mutations in the target gene are believed to have occurred, only about 700 of those were capable of creating a new variant of the target gene.

And they know this how? Where do they get the estimates for these figures? It doesn't sound like there is much to substantiate this.

[PatrickHenry]

[Gasp!]

[aNYCguy]

It doesn't sound like there is much to substantiate this.

And you know this how? What information do you have which leads you to suggest that the researchers are making things up? Do you have any information at all about this study other than the press release?

[onewhowatches]

Darwin Central -- Its real!

Cool.

[Right Wing Professor]

They've shown how highly specialized and difficult it is to get the "right" mutations.

They had 25 mutations, on average, in every base pair, far less than you'd have in any reasonabe sized population.

(Of course, "right" mutations being a subjective term, since evolution isn't driven towards any goal aside from those of humans.)

Sure. Why would thermophilic bacteria evolve to survive at high temperature, if people weren't doing the experiment?