Their research is a significant milestone in establishing Darwin's theory of evolution at the mechanistic level
Evolution is deterministic, not random: this is the conclusion of a study carried out by an international team of biologists and its findings were published in the journals Current Biology and Developmental Biology.
The founding event in modern biology is the theory of evolution by the mechanism of natural selection first proposed by Charles Darwin in the middle of the 19th century. According to this theory, evolution occurs by natural selection of individuals with successful traits who pass on these traits to the next generation (deterministic inheritance). Over the generations, natural selection has created development trends - for example, the lengthening of the neck in giraffes as a trend created due to the inheritance of a preferred trait of a longer and longer neck.
Despite the centrality of Darwin's theory, in the middle of the 20th century other evolutionary mechanisms were proposed, such as the neutral theory. According to this mechanism, evolution occurs by changes that do not confer any advantage to the individual carrying them (neutral traits) and are inherited randomly (random inheritance). This theory predicts that developmental trends will not form, due to the fact that traits are inherited randomly without an advantage for a particular trait. For example, if the length of the neck does not give a giraffe an advantage, then there will be giraffes or different groups of giraffes with short or long necks without a uniform trend of neck extension.
Due to the importance of the question, many attempts have been made over the years to practically examine when evolution occurs by deterministic inheritance and when by random inheritance. However, these studies encountered many experimental difficulties that prevented a conclusive answer that would decide between the two mechanisms.
To this end, an international task force of scientists was established who examined the question by combining different approaches that are at the forefront of contemporary biological research such as analysis of DNA sequences and careful analysis of organs using an electron microscope. The team of scientists included researchers from four countries: the United States, France, Germany and Israel. The Israelis in the team were doctoral student Irena Kolutoyev and Professor Benjamin Podbilevich from the Faculty of Biology at the Technion.
"We concentrated on characterizing the development of the female genital organ in 51 species of worms," explains Professor Podbilevich. "This group of worms is one of the main groups in which evolutionary processes are studied and characterized both in the laboratory and in their natural environment. We marked about forty characteristics of the genital organ, including a model of programmed cell death, patterns of cell division and the shape of certain cells and of the organ as a whole. Similarity and difference in these characteristics between the worm species were examined when our initial hypothesis was that the changes that exist are the result of random inheritance and therefore no developmental trends were created. However, this hypothesis was contradicted by the fact that in the study we discovered unidirectional developmental trends (for example, a decrease in the number of cell divisions required until the development of the organ) during evolution. Most of the characteristics that were examined developed in a biased way, i.e. one-way, and since random development should not lead to such trends, we concluded that said development is not random but deterministic."
The results of the study showed unequivocally that the main mechanism that induces the development of the female egg-laying organ in worms is a mechanism of natural selection of successful traits. This research is a significant milestone in establishing and confirming Darwin's theory at the mechanistic level, and has many implications for understanding the mechanism through which evolution works in the entire animal world.
40 תגובות
You refer to the phenotype and make a distinction between it and the genotype as if a phenotype grows out of thin air, a phenotype is a consequence of a genotype even though different genotypes can cause the same phenotype.
Besides, also Aliba de the theory of neutral evolution neutral changes are eliminated in the long term by selection. Nature is thrifty and will not keep useless genetic information in the long term, even if this information is not harmful.
fresh:
From the article it is possible to understand what you understood only by mistake.
The article does not talk about evolution at the genotype level but about evolution at the phenotype level.
It does not contain any information about the multitude of mutations that occurred in the worms at that time, but only about the changes in the female genital organ.
In my opinion all this research was unnecessary because the claim that evolution at the phenotype level is random is so stupid that no one believes it at all.
Even Kimura, who proposed the idea of neutral evolution, admits that at the phenotype level, evolution must be a product of natural selection.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutral_theory_of_evolution
From the research it can be understood that neutral mutations of an organism that on the one hand do not harm it and on the other hand do not benefit it, do not survive in the long term, as I assumed before. I had a discussion with Roi Tsenza on this issue and he thinks differently.
Moshe:
It is not clear why you are responding and what you are asking.
If you elaborate maybe it will be possible to answer your question.
The mechanism for random evolution is known and clearly called mutation = errors, disturbances to the natural process of chromosome replication in the sex cells.
But what mechanism can be offered for evolution of the deterministic type?
How can a genetic change be carried out at the level of the sex cells, to create an advantage that the sex cell has no "awareness" about?
To sparrow
Your initial conclusion is interesting as it gives another reason for the change that took place among the Jews in Europe and Yemen.
But from this to your conclusion that Darwinism is not proven??
Evolution has proven itself countless times and it's not bad if it is helped from time to time by the food available in the environmental conditions and sometimes also by the appropriate germs
may we have a nice week
Sabdarmish Yehuda
I just read here on the website that the bacteria in the human body include more different genes than the human. And they greatly influence our lives.
Let's say that in Africa or in hot areas there are bacteria or viruses that are able to affect the person so that he becomes darker like a negro, for example by inserting DNA segments or replacing them, or having some effect on them.
Is it possible that such a situation is possible and that a population that arrived there will be adapted to the hot climatic condition.
If this is true, it could help explain how the Jews scattered in the diaspora became black in Yemen, light in Ashkenaz within 2,000 years.
They may have mixed in with the population, but I'm not so sure.
By the way, this is just a theory that came to my mind at the moment and is probably not true, but just another idea that can undermine the Darwinian randomness that doesn't quite fit my intuition and in my opinion is not completely proven.
I think it makes a lot of sense that the environment affects genetics in a non-random way.
Pinchas,
Can you tell me the name of the book and the author?
Thanks
Pinchas,
Can you explain how you came to this conclusion from the research results? This is not the conclusion that the researchers reached (among other things because the study was not intended to test it at all).
Well, what is clear in this study and first presented in Eshel Ben Yaakov's study is that the mutations are not random. And the creature has a mechanism that prefers and creates mutations that advance it in its adaptation.
And no wonder about it. Our brain unconsciously creates thought structures and reacts to reality in a creative way. Therefore, a cybernetic system at the tissue level cannot be ruled out - and in fact a book was written about the genome system being a cybernetic system by the head of a department at the Weizmann Institute - which produces mutations "by order"
What is rational order?
Rational order = will, intention = creator.
To my father when I say that the evolution that exists in nature is intelligently manipulated. I'm not saying it's planned.
I say that the evolution that exists in nature is shaped and manipulated by reason.
You are basically saying everything I said, just not calling the child intelligent evolution.
age. You just don't understand.
What you call "intelligent evolution" (which by the way - Mabrok - you didn't used to recognize this either in the past) is a private case of natural selection. This is the case where we are part of the environment that selects the appropriate ones (and since we are the environment, we choose the appropriate ones for us).
Other environmental factors can serve exactly the same role.
You may also call the predator-prey co-evolution that my father mentioned intelligent evolution, but I am not sure if the fact that the eels today navigate the road between Africa and America to reproduce only because the ends of their journey were once close and moved away due to the movement of the continents will be called intelligent evolution.
Nor is the adaptation of organisms to their environments in general and particularly hostile environments in particular to be called intelligent evolution. Simply, as you are always told, the fittest survive and there is no need for the person who determines the fit to be wise.
Age - you are so passionate about inciting against evolution that you have forgotten and perhaps you do not know, that in the more than 20 years that have passed since his journey on the ship Beagle until the publication of the book The Origin of Species, Darwin bred pigeons, and several other animals and plants to get new varieties. He realized that nature does exactly the same thing, only over vast spans of time and without the need for planning.
Even the breeder does not know for sure that the next generation will come out as he wants, at most he can estimate statistically.
By the way, the cycle of predators and prey that causes the acceleration of changes in traits meant by the slight push - does not require any intervention at all. It is a feedback that feeds itself, until a new equilibrium is established.
Genetic errors are always there, but they will not be expressed and preserved.
The only way that a genetic error will manifest itself and be preserved is by a slight push from another species. An intelligent push.
Let's move on to the plant that all Darwinian evolutionists love so much, cannabis.
The amount of THC in the plant has increased 6 times in the last 50 years
When it is clear to everyone that the evolution of the plant is an intelligent evolution.
This is exactly how all the evolution that exists in nature is intelligently manipulated by the evolution that exists in a circular way so that one feeds off the other or uses it for its own needs.
to sparrow:
The point is that we do not develop nature but observe it and therefore, as long as no evidence of an event of the type you describe is received there is no reason to assume that the phenomenon you propose exists.
I saw a program that talked about epigenetics, meaning that events that happened to the parents resulted in gene expression changes for several future generations.
In my opinion, this line of thought should be continued or expanded.
That is, as a result of changes in the environment, the genetic code of future generations or expressions will change and not as a result of random mutations. Changes that will bring a competitive advantage.
For example, if in a certain period long fingers are needed, then the need will find a non-miraculous way to develop in future generations.
If this is true, then these mechanisms would be very interesting.
And what was said about the evolution of parasites?
To Charlie:
A trend is a direction. There is no intention in that. They also talk about the trend of an asteroid's progress. No one tried to claim that there are intentions behind the trends.
To Yair (and to a certain extent to Rotem as well):
The fact that a theory is understandable to us does not rule out conducting experiments - not to discover it but to confirm it.
To Judah:
No one associates the event of the destruction of the dinosaurs with evolution.
It is true that their disappearance created a different environment for the rest of the animals, but their destruction (probably by an asteroid, as you claimed) is not the result of evolution.
Livni, Jonathan and Gil:
I am waiting for Yehulak's response.
for everyone:
I think the article is good and can be used as another piece of evidence in refuting creationist arguments of all kinds.
The description of the mechanisms as summarized by Rotem was and remains the same but now we have additional evidence of its correctness
Evolution is intelligent evolution and it has always been so.
Rational evolution should be seen as the big picture of evolution which reflects the real evolution and includes Darwin's theory.
When the rational order controls it from the level of the genes to the levels of the human mind that has the thinking and the rational order.
So in the end the rational order is evolution.
The rational order rises, falls and balances in relation to the place.
A puzzling article!
Actually the article says nothing, just blah blah blah, no data, no explanations. Why does the article even talk about evolution? Were the worms observed as they evolve or are these inferences in retrospect? And if so, how will we observe?, how much? where? When?
It's a shame that the site deteriorates to such a level and for what? To prove at all costs that fantasy is reality?
Another puzzlement that arises is that there is no name of the author of the article.
Since when does the Technion institution sit down to write articles?
Oh of course! – He has evolved.
to my son,
Neurosis is the modern name for God.
Is "natural selection" the modern name for God?
to Roy Cezana,
I have to admit that I don't understand worms (actually there is no such thing as worms - it's a meaningless term like the word vegetables - from a zoological/botanical point of view respectively, there is no such thing). Either way, accelerated creation of mutants under laboratory conditions is based on looking at an electron and thus changing its movement and position. In general, experiments in laboratory conditions and super-specific experiments like the one described here (observing one object and watching its development/change over time) is a problematic thing. It's easy when you want to use it to say something general about all animals or about the principle evolutionary mechanism.
Skepticism, restraint and other studies for comparison - are, in my opinion, the next step that will strengthen or eliminate the importance of the Deskinan experiment.
To my father
True, and there he also said that his opinion on the importance of randomness is greater than what is stated in his book "Seder Man Akraai" and he is going to write a new book about it. It was one of the things he had planned to do besides math, physics and history. He was very interested in evolution, but not only biological. He also mentioned, for example, the evolution of universes. Also, as a result of another meeting with him, I wrote the articles "Evolution of Theories" in which I shared, with his permission, a number of his ideas. Here on the science site.
What a shame.
Of blessed memory.
Sabdarmish Yehuda
my people -
I am somewhat familiar with the experiments of Professor Povdilevich, and I must say that he proved that the gynae - the genital organ - of the worm is much more than a reproductive vessel. In the example mutant worms he created, there was no vagina, but they still managed to produce offspring. Simply, instead of laying the eggs through the vagina, the eggs hatched inside their bodies and the offspring ate their way out of the mother.
If such a thing had happened in nature, it might have been considered a new species of worm, and who knows where evolution and natural selection would have taken this species next.
To Yehuda, as you remember, you participated with me in a meeting with the late Yuval Naaman - in an interview I conducted in honor of his eightieth birthday. One of the many things he said that I was unable to incorporate into the article in Galileo was that evolution is a process that includes two input "pipes" - slow-acting mutations constitute only one input, extinctions Taxis that clear niches constitute the second input.
The reason for publication - the article was published in peer-reviewed professional journals, and the researchers work in a highly respected academic institution (in fact, in respected academic institutions). If this had been an article published on a creationist website, it would not have come to light. under responsibility
This is called "cumulative selection"
The article on the science site is in its place and for its wife: it creates a scientific discourse of the readers (talkbacks).
I wanted to warn the Danes against terminological entanglement so that they don't fall into a pit of words due to the personification of a concept like "natural selection". The terminology itself affects our thinking and thus sentences like "natural selection chooses/wants" etc.
I like the mechanism proposed by Rotem. At the same time I find the experiment and the choice of the genital of that worm as an object as a bug in the system. With all the importance of the genital organ in worms, and with all due respect to the careful study of the features, it seems to me that such research should focus on a critical and new feature that is created in the developing organism. The genital organ of the worm was and remains a functioning reproductive vessel that the pressure to morphological/anatomical/physiological change in it creates at most an upgraded reproductive vessel. Even in the previous stage of this sexual organ, fertile and competitive offspring were created for us, and therefore the choice to focus on it is puzzling in my eyes.
It is common in science to test what is easy to test and apparently it is about choosing an organ in an experimental animal that is easy to grow and easy to measure and look at. The changes in a worm's genitalia may be completely accidental, but this does not indicate that "evolution" is accidental. It seems to me that nowadays with the existing technology, it is still difficult to prove or disprove the matter of evolution in its details.
Lair
How would you explain the destruction of the dinosaurs by an asteroid, isn't it a random thing?
As far as I know, an asteroid is not a mutation.
I must mention the book by the late Professor Yuval Na'eman "Seder Man Akraai" which deals with randomness apart from the mutations.
Sabdarmish Yehuda
I am surprised to read such an article on the "Hidan" website, anyone who has a basic knowledge of evolution knows that the only randomness is the formation of mutations, everything else (the development of the animal) is directed by natural selection, so what exactly is the new discovery here??? Is this an article For creationists? What is its place on a scientific website?
As with most problems, a large part of the solution is to understand the words used to define the problem and then all that remains is to formulate an adequate solution.
In evolution there is some ambivalence in the definitions, it must be understood that the genetic mutations that occur in the formation of a living creature are the primary and basic cause of evolution, this part takes place in a completely random way, (that is, during the formation of a mutation, the creature does not know what the weather is like outside, how tall the tree is from it He is going to eat etc...).
The non-random part of this whole process is the part of natural selection that manifests itself after the creature steps on the soil of our beautiful world, what natural selection does is dilute or vice versa the concentration of genes in a certain population and results in the fact that if a certain trait is an advantage to the creature, the gene responsible for growth will spread in the population and a situation will arise in which there is more chance of genetic change towards the particular trait for which the particular gene is responsible.
Because of these two confusing parts, I think an illusion is created that the genetic mutations that ultimately lead to the development of the living thing, occur non-randomly which is not true on our planet.
Unless we are in the laboratory of a more intelligent creature 🙂
Charlie –
I don't see where the article contradicts what you say. As you point out yourself, the trend strengthens, weakens and sometimes is replaced by another. All that is written in the article is that apparently the trend in giraffes was that - 'longer neck == more food', and environmental pressures maintained this trend for a long enough time.
There are no trends in evolution. We look for the trends retrospectively. It is true that the evolutionary process is not completely random, but it is only in certain ways. Natural selection is not random in the sense that it selects certain individuals or genes and eliminates others, but natural selection has no trends. It is random in the sense that it is not directed and does not see the future. Did the ancestors of modern giraffes know they would grow long necks? Did evolution know? Selection pressures are constantly changing, therefore natural selection adapts the organism to what is here and now regardless of what was yesterday or what could be tomorrow. Some of the famous trends that are known are, for example, the relative increase in the volume of the modern man's brain compared to his ancestors, or the trend in the evolution of horses, which grew over time and lost their toes. But these trends are wrong, and do not reflect reality. Human brain volume did not always increase, and not all horse ancestors gradually shrank and grew hooves. In fact there lived a number of hominids that had a larger brain volume than modern man. And the story of the horses is even more complex, because the horse in the past had a multitude of different species, each of which was adapted to its environment in a different way in terms of size and number of toes, they did not all go in the same direction, each one found its own solution and the modern horse is not a final link or a peak of any A trend that went gradually like a ladder. The trends disappear as soon as you look at all the branches of the discourse of the splitting of the species. When you look at each of the branches of a certain lineage of a species, you can see that the so-called trend sometimes got stronger, sometimes weakened, and sometimes went back or disappeared completely and was replaced by another.
It's a shame that you continue to spread wrong views about evolution and thus mislead the public who don't understand it properly anyway.
If you mean the announcement about the prize at the Hebrew University for young researchers, this is what it says in the source sent from the Hebrew University.
I took my attention.
Where is the Hebrew date?
Quite surprising. Father, is the Hebrew date on the website a new thing?