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John Davison, Are You Listening?

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I haven’t even read the entire article yet. But I just had to post this. From what little I’ve read, this Physorg.com article positively jives with Davison’s theory on evolution.

And this “old” theory has now proven to exist in nature because we now have “the ability to sequence whole genomes”. As has constantly been said on this blog, as science progresses, Darwinism will regress.

The finding, reported in today’s issue of Science, reveals that scientists must reassess the processes involved in the origin of species. The beginnings of speciation, suggests the paper, can be triggered by genes that change their locations in a genome.

“In the 1930s there was speculation that parts of chromosomes that switch from one location to another might cause a species to split into two different species,” says John Paul Masly, lead author of the paper and doctoral student at the University of Rochester. “Showing that it was more than an academic idea was difficult, and required a bit of luck. Other genetic causes of speciation are clearly documented in nature, and it wasn’t until we had the ability to sequence whole genomes that we could even attempt to investigate the question.”

Curiously, the hypothesis nearly died twice.

Theodosius Dobzhansky, a well-known evolutionary geneticist, studied fruit flies in the infant days of genetic research in 1930. He mapped out how it might be possible for sections of chromosomes to relocate themselves in a genome. Those mobile sections can cause sterility in inter-species hybrids, which can act as a speciation pressure.

In theory, the idea was sound, but scientists long debated whether it actually happened in nature. Eventually a competing theory involving the gradual accumulation of mutations was shown to occur in nature so often that geneticists largely dismissed the moving gene hypothesis.

So there you have it. Science can now confirm that Davison’s theory acutally exists, while there is no evidence that RM+NS has ever brought about macroevolution. I wonder what the NCSE is thinking right now.

Masly’s work shows a back door through which speciation can start. If the right genes jump around in the genome, a population can begin creating individuals that can’t successfully mate with the general population. If other speciation pressures, like geographic isolation, are added to the mix, the pressure may be enough to split one species into two new species.

Here’s the link to PhysOrg.com