The creationist websites often suggest that the emergence of multicellular life in the Precambrian is a problem for “Darwinists.” If that’s one of the big accomplishments of the intelligent designer, it now appears that he’s out of a job and has to move into public housing and apply for food stamps.
At the website of the University of Minnesota appears this press release: University of Minnesota biologists replicate key evolutionary step. Here are some excerpts, with bold font added by us:
More than 500 million years ago, single-celled organisms on the Earth’s surface began forming multicellular clusters that ultimately became plants and animals. Just how that happened is a question that has eluded evolutionary biologists.
But scientists in the University of Minnesota’s College of Biological Sciences have replicated that key step in the laboratory using natural selection and common brewer’s yeast, which are single-celled organisms. The yeast “evolved” into multicellular clusters that work together cooperatively, reproduce and adapt to their environment – in essence, precursors to life on Earth as it is today.
Their achievement is published in the January 16 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Here’s a link to the paper: Experimental evolution of multicellularity. Back to the press release:
It all started about two years ago with a casual comment over coffee that bridging the famous multi-cellularity gap would be “just about the coolest thing we could do,” recall postdoctoral researcher Will Ratcliff and associate professor Michael Travisano, both from the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior.
So they decided to give it a try. Then came the big surprise. It wasn’t actually that difficult. Using yeast cells, culture media and a centrifuge, it only took them one experiment conducted over about 60 days, says Travisano, who is senior author on the PNAS paper.
Yeah, but the intelligent designer could have done it even faster. Let’s read on:
“To understand why the world is full of plants and animals, including humans, we need to know how one-celled organisms made the switch to living as a group, as multicelled organisms,” said Sam Scheiner, program director in the National Science Foundation (NSF)’s Division of Environmental Biology. “This study is the first to experimentally observe that transition, providing a look at an event that took place hundreds of millions of years ago.”
Here’s a bit of detail, but we’ll leave most of it for you to read for yourself:
In essence, here’s how the experiments worked. The two chose brewer’s yeast or Saccharomyces cerevisiae, a species of yeast used since ancient times to make bread and beer, because it is abundant in nature and grows easily. They added it to a nutrient-rich culture media and allowed the cells to grow for a day in test tubes. Then they used a centrifuge to stratify the contents by weight. As the mixture settled, cell clusters landed on the bottom of the tubes faster because they are heavier. They removed the clusters, transferred them to fresh media, and grew them up again. Sixty cycles later, the clusters – now hundreds of cells – looked roughly like spherical snowflakes.
And then what? We continue:
Analysis showed that the clusters were not just groups of random cells that adhered to each other, but related cells that remained attached following cell division. That was significant because it meant they were genetically similar, which promotes cooperation. When the clusters reached a critical size, some cells essentially committed suicide (apoptosis) to allow offspring to separate. The offspring reproduced only after they attained the size of their parents.
“A cluster alone isn’t multiellular,” Ratcliff said. “But when cells in a cluster cooperate, make sacrifices for the common good, and adapt to change, that’s an evolutionary transition to multicellularity.”
That’s enough to give you the general idea. So strike one big accomplishment from the list we’re often given of the mysterious miracles attributed to the intelligent designer. In due course they’ll all disappear the same way, and join the designer in richly deserved non-existence.
Copyright © 2012. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
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Oh boy! I can hardly wait for the Discoveroids to see this. I eagerly await Casey Luskin’s expert analysis.
I can already hear their response. It is going to be more “See it was “Designed”, and therefore proves ID”.
Oh, the yeast was designed to be able to do that. And the experiment was designed. And so were the centrifuges. Nice try, Darwinists.
I’m always amazed at the contribution that beer makes to science.
But, but, they’re still yeast!
Were these scientists biologists studying yeast, or just sociologists studying the demographics of certain counties in Kentucky?
Curmudgeon: “If that’s one of the big accomplishments of the intelligent designer, it now appears that he’s out of a job and has to move into public housing and apply for food stamps.”
Apologies if you or someone mentioned this already, but the DI’s gap-dwelling designer was always feeding off the trough. So every time a gap is filled, two more take its place, and the designer gets an increase in handouts.
Just as I’ve always suspected — our biological ancestors were beer.