Long-term experiment proves: Evolution is not happening

68,000 bacterial generations prove: EVOLUTION IS NOT HAPPENING

Richard Lenski began his long-term bacterial experiment on February 24, 1988, to prove that evolution is taking place. Today, after more than 68,000 generations of bacteria, we can scientifically (based on observations) find that no evolution has occurred in bacteria. This is also confirmed by research:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26833416

" We conclude that the rarity of the LTEE mutant was an artifact of the experimental conditions and not a unique evolutionary event. No new genetic information (novel gene function) evolved."

No new genetic information (new gene function) evolved. Instead, two out of 12 strains have already died out due to genetic degradation. This can be well compared to the so called  'weekend evolution of bacteria', where within two to three days the bacteria manage to activate a flagella to enhance their nutritional intake. As a result, they lost other properties. Adaptation comes at a price.

https://www.reading.ac.uk/news-archive/press-releases/pr624451.html

"But the hotwiring comes at a cost. The replacement key is a molecule borrowed from a system which regulates nitrogen levels. The mutant bacteria can now move, but it can't regulate nitrogen properly, which can build up and become toxic."

All the necessary information for these adaptation events is already coded in the bacteria. At population level, by using so called plasmids, they are able to share genetic information with each other, that they organize and utilize by using epigenetic mechanisms and factors.

Lenski's experiment proves that Darwinian mechanisms don't work. 68,000 generations is a huge number and the experiment is a nightmare for evolution believers. There are a lot of articles and papers regarding this long-term devolution experiment. For example:

https://www.logosra.org/lenski


"The bacteria have not experienced forward evolution, but rather the net effect has been reductive evolution (evolution going backwards). It is true that there has been some adaptation to the new artificial environment, but this has been primarily due to loss-of-function mutations. Such adaptive fine-tuning can at best be called microevolution, and has been accomplished through a net loss of information (broken genes/disrupted gene regulation). In all 12 experimental populations, the functional bacterial genome has shrunk - containing less total information. The resulting bacterial strains are still the same species, but have been seriously damaged. These disabled strains would quickly go extinct in any natural environment.

If any experiment could have validated large-scale macroevolution, it would have been this one. This famous experiment powerfully demonstrates that the mutation/selection process has very serious limitations. Even given huge populations and vast number of generations, all that was accomplished was a trivial amount of adaptive microevolution. Even while some superficial fine-tuning has been happening at just a handful of genomic sites, significant genetic damage has been accumulating throughout the rest of the genome, due to many slightly harmful deleterious mutations that cannot be selected away. This means that in the long run the net effect will be degeneration. This famous evolutionary experiment proves that in deep time, even given a model population that is optimal for validating evolution, populations do not evolve – but instead devolve - more"

Evolution has never happened. Don't get lost, dear friends.

Coronavirus mutates, but is it evolution?

Coronavirus mutates, but is it evolution?

We keep reading how the coronavirus is transformed and mutated, and evolutionary believers of course believe that this is evolution. Let's take a closer look at what this is all about.

Coronavirus belongs to the so-called RNA viruses, i.e. it has a single-stranded RNA sequence that it tries to replicate by hijacking mechanisms of the host cell. It thus hijackes the most important cellular mechanisms involved in RNA processing to produce its own protein for enhanced replication.

Transmission between organisms and viral replication burden this RNA sequence causing mistakes to its sequence. In general, RNA viruses mutate quite rapidly and also weaken and even disappear rapidly, but SARS-coV-2 is more resistant to normal coronaviruses because of its ability to produce enzyme called exoribonuclease for RNA strand proofreading mechanism, which acts as a repair enzyme for RNA produced by the virus. Thus, when normal coronaviruses experience about half a dozen mutations per every replication event, the SARS-coV-2 mutation rate is only about 2 mutations per every human-to-human transmission event. Researchers have found that if exoribonuclease is modified or blocked, the virus will mutate very quickly and the infected person will recover very quickly. Here could be one key to developing a working vaccine.

https://www.nature.com/articles/nrmicro3125

Excerpt: "The polymerase of RNA viruses lacks the proofreading capacity found in the polymerase of DNA viruses, leading to high error rates and low replicative fidelity. Although the high mutation rate of RNA viruses enables them to readily adapt to environmental changes, they also risk 'lethal mutagenesis' when accumulating mutations corrupt essential functions. Here, Smith et al. reveal that, in the case of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV), an exoribonuclease domain (ExoN) in non-structural protein 14 provides proofreading activity that protects the virus from mutagenesis.
 

Previous work in coronaviruses, the largest RNA viruses, had shown that ExoN deletion leads to reduced replicative fidelity and attenuation of virulence. Thus, Smith et al. speculated that ExoN is a proofreading enzyme. To test this hypothesis, they infected cells with wild-type (ExoN+) or ExoN-deleted (ExoN−) SARS-CoV in the presence of the mutagenic pyrimidine analogue 5-fluorouracil (5-FU). Indeed, loss of ExoN sensitized the virus to 5-FU, as shown by a 160-fold reduction in viral replication for ExoN− SARS-CoV compared with ExoN+ SARS-CoV. Furthermore, genome sequencing of viral populations after 5-FU treatment revealed that ExoN− SARS-CoV harboured 3,648 mutations, whereas ExoN+ SARS-CoV accumulated only 259 mutations. Of these mutations, 3,304 and 197 were U-to-C and A-to-G transitions, respectively, which are characteristic for nucleotide mismatches caused by the incorporation of 5-FU metabolites. Taken together, these results show that ExoN proofreading protects SARS-CoV from the deleterious effects of mutagens, such as 5-FU."

My comment: The virus can also be modified at the epigenetic level. More than 150 different types of RNA epigenetic markers are known. Even a small change at this level can cause significant changes in viral behavior, replication rate and susceptibility to spread. It is certain, however, that in any case, this serious coronavirus will also experience RNA base sequence mutations, i.e. errors, and over time will disappear or fall into harmless viruses. Evolution is still not happening, as modification and replication lead to corruption of biological information just as with organisms in nature. Don't get lost my friends.