Their project in bacterial evolution in the lab has reached the milestone of 50,000 generations.
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Andy Schlafly is one persistent fool. After harrassing Richard Lenski not once, but twice, prompting one of the best smackdowns on the intertubes, Schlafly now wants to take some vague sort of legal action against Lenski to get his own copy of every bit of data Lenski has generated in 20 years ……
One of my readers asked: Why does genome sequencing cost so much?
My short answer is because it's big.
But I thought it would be fun to give a better answer to this question, especially since I'm sure many of you are wondering the same thing.
Okay, so let's do some math.
Don't worry, this math…
tags: faith-based birding, mass hysteria, endangered species, extinct species, conservation, politics, Ivory-billed Woodpecker, Campephilus principalis, IBWO, ornithology, birds, researchblogging.org,peer-reviewed research, peer-reviewed paper
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has posted a reward of…
John Noble Wilford in The New York Times has a piece titled The Human Family Tree Has Become a Bush With Many Branches, which reflects the current consensus thinking that the hominid lineage was until recently relatively diversified, with a host of species extant contemporaneously (the other view…
Well, durrrr. Lenski wouldn't give him the samples, would he now.
50,00 generations and have any of them evolved into strawberries? No? Evolution FAIL!
yeah right...
so if humans have evolved from bacteria why are there still bacteria?
The truly beautiful experiments are disarmingly simple in concept yet are able to probe deep into the heart of nature. Lenski's long term E.coli project is one of the most beautiful experiments in biology in my lifetime.
.
Probably should have stopped at two. By the time they got to Bacteria: Enterprise they had nowhere to go and had to reboot the series.
But I understand that they don't allow peanut butter in that lab, so who's to say, really?
Obviously, Lenski is lying, because all scientists lie. Lenski has also failed to send the bacterial samples that explain motherfucking magnets.
There are times in between the pillaging and football rapists in the news that actually make me proud of my alma mater.
Has the bacterial flagellum re-evolved?
If not, then Behe's right, because, uh, he ignored all of the evidence of evolution and demanded something that he knew couldn't be realistically reproduced.
So he wins -- the title of Anti-scientist.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
I can not wait to taste braised Crocoduck.
Wow, that's a lot of missing transitional forms!
So, my wife's a biology phd student, and I'm just a lowly film grad trying to get into a fiction MFA program. When I read The Greatest Show on Earth, I got really excited when reading about this experiment, so I started ranting about how awesome it was and all that. She just kind of said, "yeah, I know about it already."
Grrr. Damn scientists. Always lying knowing stuff before I do and getting me pissed.
I wonder if it'll taste like chicken, or just blasphemy.
But does it explain DWARFS + PYGMIES!!?!?
Mmmm.... blasphemy
Is crocoduck white meat or red meat? Inquiring minds want to know!
I hope both
mmmmmmm sacrilicious.
It doesn't even explain DWARF + PYGMY E coli.
They're still going? That is one long-term experiment! I wonder how much they've changed in 50k generations. I know some became able to digest a new substance (citrate IIRC); does anyone know any other cool things they've done?
But is it better than roasted baby with a side of watermatoes?
Sili stole my comment. :)
50,000 Andy Schlafly's? Eeeooowwwww…
(I now needs to go wash my traumatised brain with cilantrosoap.)
A serious question:
How does one count the number of generations of bacteria, especially to that level of precision? Is it possible that they're actually around 48,520, or maybe 53,211?
Or do they mean 50,000 iterations?
Shhh! I don't want my mother to hear.
"Hmph. So these bacteria evolved the ability to digest citrate and you can't even find yourself a nice girl to settle down with. And when are you going to get yourself a better job? Would it kill you to shave that scruff? Everyone's going to think I didn't teach you proper hygiene."
But they're all still the same bacterial "kind," right? Which baramin is E. coli, again? Must email Richard von Sternberg....
>Congratulations to Richard Lenski and his lab
Hmmmpphh, I thought this was going to be a nice "man and his dog" story.
Anyway, I do remember reading the Lenski/Schlafly story before but it was great fun reading it again. Lenski writes almost as well as PZ.
Inverted about 1/4 of their genome (2009 nature paper has complete genome sequencing data of a line at 2,5,10,15 and 20k generations showing the appearance of an abundance of conserved mutations - not sure the inversion is particularly meaningful in terms of adaptation, but it is rather nice to see such a dramatic genome alteration occuring), and altered their DNA topology so as to replicate better/faster (amongst other stuff)
Only 49.999. Still plenty more consistent than the Bible.
Who cares what she thinks? Go blow some more boys under the bleachers.
Wow - I can't believe I didn't hear about this back in '08!?!?
I had a terrific time reading through the entry on rationalwiki.
Behold! The Power of Science!
@23
Tell her your Great (x 49,997) grandkids will have it figured out.
Sili, what happens in the Endless Thread...
can and will be held against you....
Also cool: the 12 separate lines achieved similar (but not identical)increases in growth rate and cell size via substantially different genetic pathways, a striking demonstration of convergent evolution in molecular detail.
Ooo-ah. Don't mind if I do, matron.
Wow, in addition to being a brilliant biologist, Zachary Blount also has some pretty fine calligraphy skills.
I wonder how many generations it takes for creationism to get weeded out...
Yet the bacteria is still just a bacteria. *sigh* When will evolutionists learn that you just can't get from bacteria to bipedal ape human? In 50,000 generations there's no even a leg or even half a leg (which by the way is absurd *chortle*).
I can never get to the end of the Lenski Dialogue, I'm always laughing too hard at how severe a beat-down Schlafly got.
In the over-used terminology of the internet generation: Epic pwnage
Raises glass of lemonade in Prof. Lenski's honor.
Happens to scientists themselves all the time, too. Which is why they get so excited when they're the very first to discover something. (Only for it to be discovered five years later that some schmo had basically the same idea 10, 20, 50 or even 200 years ago, but never published....)
New mutant versions keep popping up due to memetic drift every 10 years or so. Hmm, if we could calibrate this with the creationist fossil record ("cdesign proponentsists" dates to circa 1989? Or was it 1993?), we could develop a memetic clock for data idiocy.
Oops. That's "dating idiocy".
On second thought, "data idiocy" is a perfect descriptor of Dembski.
@sacredchao2305
I just finished writing a play that includes a scene in which a man regales his date with the finer points of the Lenski experiment. It's implied that she pretends that she hadn't heard of it in order to let him tell her something sciency for once (instead of the other way around).
It's both fun AND educational! It may even get produced someday. Perhaps a film version? *wink wink nudge nudge*
I'm focusing on 'blowing boys under the bleachers'.
Apparently I should read the endless thread more often. :P
KJ
I'm focusing on 'blowing boys under the bleachers'.
good luck with that.
O.o
Boy that came out wrong.
I'm going to go over here and be embarassed now. :P
KJ
rrpostal... It's always a good day to be a Spartan. Mainly because of this sort of research and Izzo.
Maybe one day I'll explain how I briefly earned the moniker of "Mr. Hoover."
[/intentionally vague and misleading partial details]
Yay MSU!
This is just such a beautiful, beautiful experiment. Such fascinating results, and the discipline and determination to stick with it all this time.
A brilliant experiment, and no doubt incredibly fiddly. I'm sure I would have accidentally spilled my coffee all over it before it got to 10 generations. I can't wait to see what happens at 100k. With or without coffee.
Schlafly is an idiot. And a world-class ignoramus. He says since he's never heard of University College, London, it must be a crap school. Oh, and he says that nobody has ever seen a black hole, so scientists just invented them to stop people reading the bible.
The sarcasm in this thread is so thick it has gained physical form and is suffocating me. *gack*
Soon Lenski will be able to announce that his E coli have evolved to a level of intelligence equal to Andy Schlafly's.
(Actually, it was a act of kindness that Lenski did not make the announcement after generation 1.)
I love that the Lenski affair link PZ posted contains the phrase 'response to creationism' which has an integrated link to the wiki for the word 'Pwned'. Sums it up perfectly.
Congratulations, Professor Lenski! Next step's to let it evolve until it feeds off very very old paper and loose it in the Vatican...or it would be, in an ideal world. XD
Both Lenski and Schlafly are fools. I designed a new citrate-using bacterium and created a prototype in Lenski's laboratory, for reasons that only I can understand in My infinite wisdom. Even Behe hasn't seen the light yet.
Speaking of dating idiocy, it angers me to no end. Why can't people simply buy their brides according to My principles?
Maybe they should start feeding their microbes oil. Actually, I think there are oil-eating bacteria, and we really don't want them to mutate to the point where they are munching oil reserves, gas, kerosene, and plastic.
Eating BP executives might be better.
Each generation you have twice as many bacteria as before. Just measure how many spill out of the experiment every day.
Alternatively, someone is finding your lack of faith... disturbing.
Bah. They still haven't evolved into GOATS ON FIRE!
ahha! it's so obviously fake, because now there are 49,999 missing transitional forms!
with that many missing pieces, it can't possibly be reliable!!!!1111oneoneoneone
@ Brownian, OM (#45)
Once upon a time, a feast in Cavalier style was held. At the conclusion of said feast, the clean-up crew discovered that the vacuum cleaner on the premises (I believe it was a church) was out of order. Upon hearing this information, the young lady hostess of the event turned to the various members who were lingering in convivial gossip, as people do at such things, and announced,"The vacuum cleaner isn't working so we're going to need your help. Everybody down on your knees and suck!"
I didn't know people could turn that shade of scarlet! (No, it wasn't me. But I understand how these things can happen...)
Actually they control the nutrient supply to get 7 doublings per 24-h period, if I remember correctly.
I think there should be a song written of the "begats" along the lines of "Dem Dry Bones."
I read about a high school science project where the kid had collected earth samples from whatchmacallems garbage heaps and then grew the bacteria in them on slurries of ground-up plastic. Turned out some of them lived nicely off the synthetics. I certainly hope more'll be made of such discoveries.
What have you got against those poor innocent microbes?
Nothing deserves the torture of being force fed that kind of poison.
If you want to hear an awesome rendition of the "begats" then look no further than this:
http://www.chriscoltrane.com/lee_and_herring/downloads/Richard%20Herrin…
Richard Herring's comedy monologue "Christ On A Bike" from the 2000 Edinburgh Festival.
Realising he was 33, the same age as Jesus when he died Herring compares himself to Christ, "I'm not claiming to be the Messiah, that's for others to decide."
In order to sort it all out he challenges Jesus to a bicycle race.
It's the full show so it's quite long, but I think it's hilarious. Well worth downloading.
Herring's old partner Stewart Lee and his show, "Jerry Springer, The Opera" was the driving force behind the changing of the UK's blasphemy law.