Predicting Evolution: A Beginner's Model

Silance writes "According to ScienceDaily , Scientists have developed a method of accelerating evolution in the lab that accurately mimics natural evolution. Drug-resistant E.coli strains from the 1940's that were subjected to the evolutionary speed-up process indeed followed the same evolutionary path as their natural bretheren. It is believed that the process could be used to predict the future monkey-wrenches that evolution might lob our way. Neat-o!"

Comments

This only shows Natural Selection, not Evolution

[young-earth]

Natural selection is obvious, it's visible to all. And micro-evolution is the clear outcome of it, things like antibiotic resistance. But in most cases that's due to a loss of genetic information. Think about it - if you have your limbs removed you're resistant to handcuffs. But you lost something to achieve that.

That's why once the antibiotic is removed the population drifts back to the norm - the un-selected bacteria are more fit, have more diversity to draw on, in other situations..

Yet another headline that is a bit over the top