House Dust Mite Study Shows Reverse Evolution Possible

[n2doc]

A new study shows that certain organisms can undergo reverse evolution, that is, go back to the way they were living before evolving new traits. The study challenges the idea that evolution is uni-directional and an organism can't undo changes.

The idea that organisms can't revert back is held by Dollo's law, which states "that evolution is not reversible; i.e., structures or functions discarded during the course of evolution do not reappear in a given line of organisms. The hypothesis was first advanced by a historian, Edgar Quinet."

The present study was conducted by a research team led by two biologists from University of Michigan who conducted the study on common house mites that live on mattresses, sofas and carpets. These mites have evolved from parasites that have in turn come from free-living microbes.

"All our analyses conclusively demonstrated that house dust mites have abandoned a parasitic lifestyle, secondarily becoming free-living, and then speciated in several habitats, including human habitations," according to Pavel Klimov and Barry OConnor of the U-M Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

more
http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/781/20130309/house-dust-mite-study-shows-reverse-evolution-possible.htm

[yourout]

1. Republicans have been proving that for years.....every generation of them seems to get dumber.

[StrayKat]

2. What? This study and this article don't make sense.

When I took evolution in college, the first thing that was taught was that evolution doesn't have a direction. Evolution is simply change.

Sometimes 'evolution' is used in the vernacular as a synonym for 'progress', but that's not the definition of evolution in biology.

[Orsino]

6. Certain genes can be activated and deactivated.

There are attempts being made to engineer a dinosaur from a modern chicken.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/dinosaurs/8847499/The-Jurassic-Park-scientist-who-plans-to-turn-a-chicken-into-T-Rex.html

[StrayKat]

8. Right, what you're talking about is gene expression and regulation.

We are all carrying vestigial or dormant genes from our ancestors that are usually suppressed in normal development. But, occasionally development doesn't proceed as normal, and we see humans who are born with tails or full body fur, for example. Some of these genes can be artificially stimulated to be expressed such as in the planned experiments with chickens and dinos that you posted.

The appearance of changes in these cases is not reverse evolution, it's an alternative gene expression.

Dollo postulated something that made statistical sense in the 19th century, but was not based on a thorough understanding of genes or evolution. His notion that evolution has a direction is something often used in eugenic and creationist arguments. It's false and dangerous to perpetuate.

Evolution has no direction.

[hunter]

7. Yep. Bad science reporting.

In this case the scientists show exactly how wrong it is to claim that evolution has a direction, yet even the headline of the article entirely misrepresents the research.

It's not possible to "reverse" something if it was never going in any particular direction.

The story is NOT how the mites were moving "forward" to become an improved form of mite, and then they moved "backwards" to become a parasite, and then they "reversed" direction and started moving "forward" again.

The story is that the parasitic mites had a genetic toolkit that allowed them to adapt to changing environments -- from living on birds and animals as parasites, to living in nests, including human nests.

In this random walk of life most species become extinct. Eventually most species will find themselves in a place where their genetic toolkit is not adequate to cope with a changing environment. Then that species is no more. The End. This is as true for those species we disparage as "parasites" as it is ourselves.

Everything alive today has ancestors that were able to cope with changing environments. That tells us nothing about the future. Something that makes a species "successful" today can be the species ruin tomorrow.

[Geoff R. Casavant]

3. It seems like a foregone conclusion to me.

Evolution happens when organisms adapt to better survive in their particular environment. Change the environment, and eventually the population will evolve a new trait to exploit the change. There has never been a reason that a discarded feature can't make a return appearance, if the environment changes to favor that feature once again.

[Lint Head]

4. Hench Devo!

Crack that whip!

[doc03]

5. Evidence the Bush family n/t

[Paulie]

9. This paragraph makes me cry

The idea that organisms can't revert back is held by Dollo's law, which states "that evolution is not reversible; i.e., structures or functions discarded during the course of evolution do not reappear in a given line of organisms. The hypothesis was first advanced by a historian, Edgar Quinet."