Five years ago: Examples of regulatory gene change producing body change termed “scarce”

From Science Daily (Nov. 14, 2006), we learned: Geneticists succeeded in getting fruit flies with two rows of bristles on the thorax to become flies with four rows of bristles on the thorax, by tweaking some control genes.

Then we read,

These results show that slight changes in the control regions of genes lead to slight changes in the organism, and accumulation of such small differences may result in the creation of a new species. While this is widely accepted by evolutionary biologists, actual examples directly linking small changes in regulatory parts of genes to morphological differences have been scarce.

Especially if no one is around to do the tweaking under laboratory controls.

It’s a good thing the bristles probably don’t matter much. The big news was when researchers altered useful fruit fly halteres and produced a useless second set of wings (photo) , and also produced legs where antennae should be. That’s not evolution or intelligent design, it’s a kludge.

The money shot would have been to produce flies that could carry off the whole fruit bowl instead of just flitting around your mouth while you are eating a peach.

Little admissions add up. The information deficit between what Darwinism needs to prove its case and what actually happens has only grown in the subsequent five years.

Note: The fruit fly image was taken by Muhammad Mahdi Karim in Dar es Salaam and is offered here under the Gnu Free Documentation License.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy: