At Scientific American: How some bacteria have achieved “immortality”

A very interesting discussion you got here. Let me give you some advice to make them even better in the future: @Bornagain77 You might want to be a bit less condescending and better engage with your opponent's arguments. Your post 8 is just unnecessary. Try not to dismiss sources as "fake news", your opponent might do exactly the same with Evolutionnews, Sanford, or Spetner. It does not advance the discussion. @Seversky You wrote that Sanford cannot be right because if he was, we would not have evolved. This is utter nonsense as Sanford's point is that we indeed did not evolve. So if you dismiss his argument, try not to assume evolution's validity. That's circular reasoning at its best. The whole information debate is somewhat frustrating. From a YEC, OEC, or ID perspective, an organism has initially been equipped with a set of working and designed molecular machinery. While this system can be fine-tuned, e.g. think about the slight adaptation that caused bacteria to digest nylon based on a preexisting digestive pathway, natural selection and mutation cannot add whole new systems or body plans. From this point of view, it can and will only go downhill. While this process downhill might adapt an organism to a certain environment, e.g. think about Lenski's LTEE with its highly artificial settings, it only deletes information and reduces adaptability. Can a deleterious mutation be randomly reversed? Definitely. Is this adding new information? No, it just restores old pre-existing "information". i.e., molecular machinery. From an evolutionist's point of view, there is no initial optimum. Somehow, (may I suggest nearly magically), a cell arose and happily mutated until it found a protein that helped. As all is random and just good as long as it serves the organism, information is just the sum of stuff that is in the genome. Any mutation adds new information, and if it is selected, this new information is a step forward. There is no optimum, just fitness relative to an ever-changing environment. Jonathan11

Bornagain77/12

But anyways, for what it is worth, nobody even debates the fact that the vast majority of mutations are detrimental. Lee Spetner is merely saying that there are no demonstrated ‘information building’ mutations. Period!

Perhaps Spetner should have consulted the Talk Origins Archive

Claim CB102: Mutations are random noise; they do not add information. Evolution cannot cause an increase in information.

1) It is hard to understand how anyone could make this claim, since anything mutations can do, mutations can undo. Some mutations add information to a genome; some subtract it. Creationists get by with this claim only by leaving the term "information" undefined, impossibly vague, or constantly shifting. By any reasonable definition, increases in information have been observed to evolve. We have observed the evolution of increased genetic variety in a population (Lenski 1995; Lenski et al. 1991) increased genetic material (Alves et al. 2001; Brown et al. 1998; Hughes and Friedman 2003; Lynch and Conery 2000; Ohta 2003) novel genetic material (Knox et al. 1996; Park et al. 1996) novel genetically-regulated abilities (Prijambada et al. 1995) If these do not qualify as information, then nothing about information is relevant to evolution in the first place. 2) A mechanism that is likely to be particularly common for adding information is gene duplication, in which a long stretch of DNA is copied, followed by point mutations that change one or both of the copies. Genetic sequencing has revealed several instances in which this is likely the origin of some proteins. For example: Two enzymes in the histidine biosynthesis pathway that are barrel-shaped, structural and sequence evidence suggests, were formed via gene duplication and fusion of two half-barrel ancestors (Lang et al. 2000). RNASE1, a gene for a pancreatic enzyme, was duplicated, and in langur monkeys one of the copies mutated into RNASE1B, which works better in the more acidic small intestine of the langur. (Zhang et al. 2002) Yeast was put in a medium with very little sugar. After 450 generations, hexose transport genes had duplicated several times, and some of the duplicated versions had mutated further. (Brown et al. 1998) The biological literature is full of additional examples. A PubMed search (at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi) on "gene duplication" gives more than 3000 references. 3) According to Shannon-Weaver information theory, random noise maximizes information. This is not just playing word games. The random variation that mutations add to populations is the variation on which selection acts. Mutation alone will not cause adaptive evolution, but by eliminating nonadaptive variation, natural selection communicates information about the environment to the organism so that the organism becomes better adapted to it. Natural selection is the process by which information about the environment is transferred to an organism's genome and thus to the organism (Adami et al. 2000). 4) The process of mutation and selection is observed to increase information and complexity in simulations (Adami et al. 2000; Schneider 2000).

So, contrary to Spetner, there are ways in which information can be created.

The overwhelming rate of detrimental mutations, which even Darwinists admit to , by itself, is enough to prove that evolution is impossible.

Yes, research by evolutionary biologists has found that detrimental mutations greatly outnumber the beneficial. But if the majority of detrimental mutations occur in non-functional regions of the genome then that effect is mitigated. More importantly, detrimental mutations are those which, by definition, are going to be filtered out by natural selection, given sufficient time, leaving just the beneficial ones.

For example, Dr. John Sanford, (Genetic Entropy), via computer simulations, has proven that Darwinian processes cannot overcome the overwhelming rate of detrimental mutation..

If Sanford is right, that the rate of detrimental mutations is so devastating as to cause a catastrophic collapse then how are we here? How did life based on such a fundamentally flawed system ever get to the point of creating such complex creatures as ourselves? It should never have got that far. Is it possible that Sanford's simulations are not accurate? Seversky

KF@10:

H’mm, if I were YEC, I would throw a red flag. Entropy, entropy, entropy. KF

Thankfully you're not a YEC. Mung

Oh Goody, Severky references the Talk Origins website to try to defend his position. A 'fake news' website if there ever was one. But anyways, for what it is worth, nobody even debates the fact that the vast majority of mutations are detrimental. Lee Spetner is merely saying that there are no demonstrated 'information building' mutations. Period! And technically he is right, although you have to get into the technical weeds to prove it. And he has defended his position in technical detail. The article I cited, "Gloves Off", is a good example of his defending his position in detail. But that technical debate, of if there are any truly information building mutations, is all besides the point anyways. The overwhelming rate of detrimental mutations, which even Darwinists admit to , by itself, is enough to prove that evolution is impossible. So Dr. Spetner's technical point about there being no demonstrated information building mutations whatsoever is, therefore, somewhat moot to the point of proving evolution impossible. We can merely use what Darwinists themselves have already conceded in order to prove that Darwinian evolution is impossible. For example, Dr. John Sanford, (Genetic Entropy), via computer simulations, has proven that Darwinian processes cannot overcome the overwhelming rate of detrimental mutation..

Can Purifying Natural Selection Preserve Biological Information? Paul Gibson1*, John R. Baumgardner2, Wesley H. Brewer3 and John C. Sanford4 https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/pdf/10.1142/9789814508728_0010

Here are more resources from Dr. John Sanford's website that also disprove Darwinian evolution from many different angles https://www.geneticentropy.org/resources And if you don't believe Dr. Sanford, well then there is also Dr. Michael Behe's book (Darwin Devolves; 2019), which is the result of decades of research going through the finer details of adaptations showing that "we had already known that the great majority of mutations that have a visible effect on an organism are deleterious. Now, surprisingly, it seems that even the great majority of helpful mutations degrade the genome to a greater or lesser extent.,,,"

“The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain - Michael Behe - December 2010 Excerpt: In its most recent issue The Quarterly Review of Biology has published a review by myself of laboratory evolution experiments of microbes going back four decades.,,, The gist of the paper is that so far the overwhelming number of adaptive (that is, helpful) mutations seen in laboratory evolution experiments are either loss or modification of function. Of course we had already known that the great majority of mutations that have a visible effect on an organism are deleterious. Now, surprisingly, it seems that even the great majority of helpful mutations degrade the genome to a greater or lesser extent.,,, I dub it “The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain. http://behe.uncommondescent.com/2010/12/the-first-rule-of-adaptive-evolution/ Michael Behe: Darwin Devolves – 2019 video - Eric Metaxas interviews biochemist Michael Behe on "the new science about DNA that challenges evolution" as told in Behe's book, DARWIN DEVOLVES. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNe-syuDJBg

But hey Seversky, don't feel too bad about all this, it is just the Science itself that says Darwinian evolution is impossible. And science has never prevented you from believing is Darwinism before? So I see no reason for you to let such a little thing as the scientific evidence itself prevent you from continue believing in Darwinism now. :) bornagain77

Bornagain77/4

And as Lee Spetner, in his book ‘Not By Chance’ remarked, ‘Whoever thinks macroevolution can be made by mutations that lose information is like the merchant who lost a little money on every sale but thought he could make it up on volume.’

And is Spetner's position the only one in this debate? Is it even the majority view? What are the others? Do you even know or care?

Information Theory and Creationism Spetner and Biological Information by Ian Musgrave

Introduction Dr. Lee Spetner is an information theorist who has written a book claiming that random mutations can not produce the kind of "informational" changes in biology that is allegedly required by evolution (1). It is interesting that in a book supposedly about information theory, the classic formulation of information theory of Shannon and Weaver (2) does not get mentioned. Spetner's notion of information in biology has been taken up by several groups of evolution deniers, and while others have produced specific critiques of his work (3,4), there is no overall general analysis of his arguments. In this review I will consider if Spetner's metrics can be validly applied to biology, and how Spetner actually applies them to real world examples. Although his arguments are superficially plausible, a closer look with some knowledge of biochemistry shows significant flaws. I will first briefly describe Spetner's metric of information, I will then show that 1) Spetner's metrics depend on a binding mechanism that does not occur in nature, 2) that Spetner's metrics require that substances bind to enzymes in an all or nothing fashion, whereas real substrates do not bind in this way. Furthermore, I will show that Spetner himself is inconsistent in his application of his metrics. In his Xylitol example he does not actually use the measure he develops, and in the streptomycin example he swaps to a different metric, when his original metric would show increased information. Finally, I will show that his "directed evolution" model is based on a misunderstanding of one form of random mutation.

Seversky

H'mm, if I were YEC, I would throw a red flag. Entropy, entropy, entropy. KF kairosfocus

Bornagain77/3

In the following article, Casey Luskin states, ‘(an antibiotic resistant bacterium) reproduces slower than it did before it was changed. This effect is widely recognized, and is called the fitness cost of antibiotic resistance. It is the existence of these costs and other examples of the limits of evolution that call into question the neo-Darwinian story of macroevolution.’

How so? If bacteria find themselves in an environment awash with antibiotics, the one that is lucky enough to evolve some sort of adaptation that confers resistance has a much better chance of surviving and reproducing. So what if it slows the reproductive rate? That bacterium gets to survive and reproduce. The others don't. So what is the survival value of all that extra "information" that was lost? Seversky

Seversky is proof positive that Darwinists "don't need no stinking evidence" in order to believe wholeheartedly in evolution. In fact, Seversky is proof positive that it is possible to have blind faith that evolution occurred even when you have multiple lines of evidence telling you that Darwinian evolution could not have possibly occurred. Seversky may repeatedly claim that he 'believes in science', but his 'belief in science' is lip service only. His belief in evolution trumps anything and everything that science has to say about the impossibility of evolution. bornagain77

Bornagain77/2

Darwinists simply have no empirical evidence that it is possible to change one bacterial species into another bacterial species.

Can you provide a definition of bacterial species? We observe the capacity for environmental adaptation, yes, in antimicrobial resistance but also in Richard Lenski's LTEE which revealed the evolution by E Coli of aerobic growth on citrate and the bacteria that were able to metabolize the waste products of plastics manufacture. Without this capacity for adaptation, the chances of new species evolving would be lower. But it's observed so it's not. And as Linton points out, we've been doing bacteriology for around 150 years. Given the unimaginable number of bacteria that must have existed on this planet over 4 billion years and left no trace in the fossil record, we're in no position to know one way or the other how much bacterial speciation occurred. Seversky

Bornagain77/

Thus, these ancient bacteria are actually more resilient and robust than their modern day descendants. Which is exactly the opposite finding one would have expected from a Darwinian perspective.

Why would that be the opposite of what we would expect from a Darwinian perspective? Evolutionary fitness is a relationship between an organism and its environment. That the ancient bacteria could be revived is fascinating, as is their resilience under certain stresses. But how do we know that, if they were released into a modern environment, they would survive as well as their descendants? Seversky

It works because they have few needs and no ambitions.

So if we sacrifice the need for oxygen and bury ourselves deep in the mud and silt on the ocean floor we could survive for millions of years? Not sure that's a good trade-off from a human perspective. Seversky

Moreover, the fact that antibiotic resistance was being gained so rapidly in the video, as well as being gained rapidly in nature,,

A Tale of Two Falsifications of Evolution - September 2011 Excerpt: “Scientists were surprised at how fast bacteria developed resistance to the miracle antibiotic drugs when they were developed less than a century ago. Now scientists at McMaster University have found that resistance has been around for at least 30,000 years.” http://crev.info/content/110904-a_tale_of_two_falsifications_of_evolution

,,, should have been a solid clue for Darwinists that the adaptations to antibiotics are not being generated by random Darwinian processes as they assumed, but that antibiotic resistance is already 'programmed' into bacteria. And indeed, contrary to Darwinian thought, it is now found that antibiotic resistance, instead of being something that is 'new' for bacteria, is an ability that is ancient.

Antibiotic resistance is ancient - September 2011 http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v477/n7365/full/nature10388.html?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20110922

i.e. antibiotic resistance is an ability that bacteria have had all along. In fact, one researcher, who found antibiotic resistance in four million year old bacteria, remarked 'that antibiotic resistance is hard-wired into bacteria and could be billions of years old.'

(Ancient) Cave bacteria resistant to antibiotics - April 2012 Excerpt: Antibiotic-resistant bacteria cut off from the outside world for more than four million years have been found in a deep cave. The discovery is surprising because drug resistance is widely believed to be the result of too much treatment.,,, “Our study shows that antibiotic resistance is hard-wired into bacteria. It could be billions of years old, but we have only been trying to understand it for the last 70 years,” said Dr Gerry Wright, from McMaster University in Canada, who has analysed the microbes. http://www.scotsman.com/news/health/cave-bacteria-resistant-to-antibiotics-1-2229183# Scientists unlock a 'microbial Pompeii' - February 23, 2014 Excerpt: "...The researchers discovered that the ancient human oral microbiome already contained the basic genetic machinery for antibiotic resistance more than eight centuries before the invention of the first therapeutic antibiotics in the 1940s..." http://phys.org/news/2014-02-scientists-microbial-pompeii.html

As antibiotic resistance itself indicates, supposed beneficial adaptations that are often falsely touted by Darwinists as undeniable proof for Darwinian evolution are actually the result of degraded molecular abilities. And as Lee Spetner, in his book 'Not By Chance' remarked, 'Whoever thinks macroevolution can be made by mutations that lose information is like the merchant who lost a little money on every sale but thought he could make it up on volume.'

"The neo-Darwinians would like us to believe that large evolutionary changes can result from a series of small events if there are enough of them. But if these events all lose information they can’t be the steps in the kind of evolution the neo-Darwin theory is supposed to explain, no matter how many mutations there are. Whoever thinks macroevolution can be made by mutations that lose information is like the merchant who lost a little money on every sale but thought he could make it up on volume." Lee Spetner (Ph.D. Physics - MIT - Not By Chance - 1997) http://theoutlet.us/SummaryofSpetnersNotbyChance.pdf

In 2016, Lee Spetner went on to remark, 'there is no example of a random mutation that adds heritable information to the genome, and that statement still stands.'

Gloves Off -- Responding to David Levin on the Nonrandom Evolutionary Hypothesis - Lee M. Spetner - Sept. 2016 Excerpt: I wrote in this book (as well in an earlier book) that there is no example of a random mutation that adds heritable information to the genome, and that statement still stands. The statement is important because evolution is about building up information (Spetner 1964, 1968, 1970). Some have offered what they think are counterexamples of my statement, but they are often not of random mutations at all, or they otherwise fail to be valid counterexamples. Levin finds the statement astonishing, and it may well astonish someone who believes evolutionary theory represents reality. But it happens to be true, and I am not surprised that it astonishes him because it deals a deathblow to evolutionary theory. https://evolutionnews.org/2016/09/gloves_off_--_r/

Thus in conclusion, bacteria, far from providing proof for Darwinian evolution as Darwinists often like to falsely portray, actually turn out to be the 'Darwinist's worst nightmare', (Hat tip too Jerry Coyne) :), in that bacteria consistently highlight the inability of the materialistic processes of Darwinian evolution to ever generate the immaterial information that is 'running the show' in life. Verse:

John 1:1-4 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.

bornagain77

In the following article, Casey Luskin states, '(an antibiotic resistant bacterium) reproduces slower than it did before it was changed. This effect is widely recognized, and is called the fitness cost of antibiotic resistance. It is the existence of these costs and other examples of the limits of evolution that call into question the neo-Darwinian story of macroevolution.'

Thank Goodness the NCSE Is Wrong: Fitness Costs Are Important to Evolutionary Microbiology - Casey Luskin - March 8, 2010 Excerpt: it (an antibiotic resistant bacterium) reproduces slower than it did before it was changed. This effect is widely recognized, and is called the fitness cost of antibiotic resistance. It is the existence of these costs and other examples of the limits of evolution that call into question the neo-Darwinian story of macroevolution. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/03/thank_goodness_the_ncse_is_wro.html Helping an Internet Debater Defend Intelligent Design - Casey Luskin - May 3, 2014 Excerpt: ,,, antibiotic resistant bacteria tend to "revert" to their prior forms after the antibacterial drug is removed. This is due to a "fitness cost," which suggests that mutations that allow antibiotic resistance are breaking down the normal, efficient operations of a bacterial cell, and are less "advantageous. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/05/helping_an_inte085171.html

In other words, it turns out that instead of creating anything new, antibiotic resistant bacteria always degrades or modifies some preexisting molecular abilities in order to gain antibiotic resistance. This following site provides a list of some of the degraded Molecular Abilities Of Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria

List Of Degraded Molecular Abilities Of Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria: Table 1 excerpt: Actinonin - Loss of enzyme activity Ampicillin - SOS response halting cell division Azithromycin - Loss of a regulatory protein Chloramphenicol - Reduced formation of a porin or a regulatory protein Ciprofloxacin - Loss of a porin or loss of a regulatory protein Erythromycin - Reduced affinity to 23S rRNA or loss of a regulatory protein Fluoroquinolones - Loss of affinity to gyrase Imioenem - Reduced formation of a porin Kanamycin - Reduced formation of a transport protein Nalidixic Acid - Loss or inactivation of a regulatory protein Rifampin - Loss of affinity to RNA polymerase Streptomycin - Reduced affinity to 16S rRNA or reduction of transport activity Tetracycline - Reduced formation of a porin or a regulatory protein Zittermicin A - Loss of proton motive force http://www.trueorigin.org/bacteria01.asp

Darwinists simply never tell their audience that antibiotic resistance is actually proof for molecular degradation, and always act as if antibiotic resistance is undeniable proof for Darwinian evolution. In fact in 2016 a video was made by Darwinists of bacteria rapidly adapting to higher and higher doses of antibiotics and the researchers claimed to have captured 'evolution in action',,

Stunning Videos of Evolution in Action - Sept. 8, 2016 The MEGA-plate allows scientists to watch bacteria adapting to antibiotics before their eyes. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/09/stunning-videos-of-evolution-in-action/499136/

Evolutionary biologist, (and militant atheist), Jerry Coyne went so far as to claim that the video was a 'creationist's nightmare'

The creationist’s nightmare: evolution in action - Jerry Coyne - Sept. 9 2016 Excerpt: Over at the Atlantic, Ed Yong shows and describes some stunning videos of “evolution in action”: in this case bacteria evolving resistance to antibiotics. It’s a clever way to visualize the accumulation of mutations over time as bacteria evolve to survive increasingly large doses of antibiotics,, https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2016/09/09/evolution-in-action/

Yet, the fact of the matter is that no new information was generated in the rapid adaptations.

Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria May Be a Health Nightmare, but Not an Evolutionary One - September 9, 2016 Excerpt: If anything gives us nightmares, it’s not this.,,, Why? Because no newly evolved complex information has been demonstrated. https://evolutionnews.org/2016/09/antibiotic-resi/

As Michael Behe stated about the video, the “Antibiotic-resistant bacteria demonstrate evolution by breaking stuff,, what we have here is devolution, not evolution, the opposite of what needs to be explained”

Michael Behe: Is That MEGA-Plate Antibiotic Resistance Video Evidence for Evolution, or Devolution? - September 13, 2016 (with podcast) Excerpt: Antibiotic-resistant bacteria demonstrate evolution by breaking stuff — not by building it and certainly not by creating complex new biological information. On the contrary, information is lost. In other words, says Behe, what we have here is devolution, not evolution, the opposite of what needs to be explained by Darwinian theory. https://evolutionnews.org/2016/09/michael_behe_is/

bornagain77

Moreover, in terms of morphology, billion year old bacteria "surprisingly looked exactly like modern species," and the similarity in morphology is widespread among fossils of [varying] times,”

Static evolution: is pond scum the same now as billions of years ago? Excerpt: But what intrigues (paleo-biologist) J. William Schopf most is lack of change. Schopf was struck 30 years ago by the apparent similarities between some 1-billion-year-old fossils of blue-green bacteria and their modern microbial counterparts. "They surprisingly looked exactly like modern species," Schopf recalls. Now, after comparing data from throughout the world, Schopf and others have concluded that modern pond scum differs little from the ancient blue-greens. "This similarity in morphology is widespread among fossils of [varying] times," says Schopf. As evidence, he cites the 3,000 such fossils found; http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Static+evolution%3A+is+pond+scum+the+same+now+as+billions+of+years+ago%3F-a014909330

Here are a few more references to drive this point home:

AMBER: THE LOOKING GLASS INTO THE PAST: Excerpt: These (fossilized bacteria) cells are actually very similar to present day cyanobacteria. This is not only true for an isolated case but many living genera of cyanobacteria can be linked to fossil cyanobacteria. The detail noted in the fossils of this group gives indication of extreme conservation of morphology, more extreme than in other organisms. http://bcb705.blogspot.com/2007/03/amber-looking-glass-into-past_23.html Scientists find signs of life in Australia dating back 3.48 billion years - Thu November 14, 2013 Excerpt: “We conclude that the MISS in the Dresser Formation record a complex microbial ecosystem, hitherto unknown, and represent one of the most ancient signs of life on Earth.”... “this MISS displays the same associations that are known from modern as well as fossil” finds. The MISS also shows microbes that act like “modern cyanobacteria,” http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/13/world/asia/australia-ancient-life/ Geobiologist Noffke Reports Signs of Life that Are 3.48 Billion Years Old - 11/11/13 Excerpt: the mats woven of tiny microbes we see today covering tidal flats were also present as life was beginning on Earth. The mats, which are colonies of cyanobacteria, can cause unusual textures and formations in the sand beneath them. Noffke has identified 17 main groups of such textures caused by present-day microbial mats, and has found corresponding structures in geological formations dating back through the ages. http://www.odu.edu/about/odu-publications/insideodu/2013/11/11/topstory1

Darwinists simply have no empirical evidence that it is possible to change one bacterial species into another bacterial species. In the following paper, Alan H. Linton - emeritus professor of bacteriology, states that 'Bacteria are ideal for this kind of study, But throughout 150 years of the science of bacteriology, there is no evidence that one species of bacteria has changed into another,'

Scant search for the Maker - 2001 Excerpt: But where is the experimental evidence? None exists in the literature claiming that one species has been shown to evolve into another. Bacteria, the simplest form of independent life, are ideal for this kind of study, with generation times of 20 to 30 minutes, and populations achieved after 18 hours. But throughout 150 years of the science of bacteriology, there is no evidence that one species of bacteria has changed into another, in spite of the fact that populations have been exposed to potent chemical and physical mutagens and that, uniquely, bacteria possess extrachromosomal, transmissible plasmids. Since there is no evidence for species changes between the simplest forms of unicellular life, it is not surprising that there is no evidence for evolution from prokaryotic to eukaryotic cells, let alone throughout the whole array of higher multicellular organisms. - Alan H. Linton - emeritus professor of bacteriology, University of Bristol. http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=159282

Darwinists often claim that bacteria becoming resistant to antibiotics is proof for evolution. What they leave out of their supposed proof for evolution is that there is always an associated 'fitness cost' for bacteria becoming resistant to antibiotics. The following video, at the 2:15 minute mark, shows that there is always a 'fitness cost' associated with bacteria gaining antibiotic resistance.

Investigating Evolution: Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-Peboq0AqA

Here is a more recent video on the subject that was made a few months ago:

Antibiotic Resistance & Bacterial Evolution: What’s the Real Story? (Long Story Short, Ep. 3) - November 2020 - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlmgFFBBopM

bornagain77

In comparison to their younger offspring, the only thing the researchers stated was,

It was a really long 100 million years down there. The toll of all that time was not zero, though. The oldest cells multiplied about half as fast as their spryer brethren that had “only” been there a few million years.

There was a somewhat similar study that was done not too long ago with bacterial spores in which the bacteria were 'revived' from their dormant state. In fact, Ancient bacteria spores recovered from amber crystals and salt crystals, which are tens to hundreds of millions of years old, have been 'revived',,,

Ancient Bacteria - 2008 Excerpt: “Raul J. Cano and Monica K. Borucki discovered the bacteria preserved within the abdomens of insects encased in pieces of amber. In the last 4 years, they have revived more than 1,000 types of bacteria and microorganisms — some dating back as far as 135 million years ago, during the age of the dinosaurs.,,, In October 2000, another research group used many of the techniques developed by Cano’s lab to revive 250-million-year-old bacteria from spores trapped in salt crystals. With this additional evidence, it now seems that the “impossible” is true.” http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=281961 “After the onslaught of publicity and worldwide attention (and scrutiny) after the publication of our discovery in Science, there have been, as expected, a considerable number of challenges to our claims, but in this case, the scientific method has smiled on us. There have been at least three independent verifications of the isolation of a living microorganism from amber." - R. Cano http://www.asmscience.org/content/book/10.1128/9781555818128.chap37

,,, And these ancient 'revived' bacteria have been compared to their living descendants of today,,,

Revival and identification of bacterial spores in 25- to 40-million-year-old Dominican amber - 19 May 1995 Excerpt: Dr. Cano and his former graduate student Dr. Monica K. Borucki said that they had found slight but significant differences between the DNA of the ancient, 25-40 million year old amber-sealed Bacillus sphaericus and that of its modern counterpart, http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/268/5213/1060

,,, To the disbelieving shock of Darwinists, “Almost without exception, bacteria isolated from ancient material have proven to closely resemble modern bacteria at both morphological and molecular levels.”

The Paradox of the "Ancient" (250 Million Year Old) Bacterium Which Contains "Modern" Protein-Coding Genes: Heather Maughan*, C. William Birky Jr., Wayne L. Nicholson, William D. Rosenzweig§ and Russell H. Vreeland ; - 2002 “Almost without exception, bacteria isolated from ancient material have proven to closely resemble modern bacteria at both morphological and molecular levels.” http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/19/9/1637

Evolutionists were so disbelieving at this stunning lack of change, (far less change than was expected from the neo-Darwinian view), that they insisted the stunning similarity was due to modern contamination in Vreeland's experiment. Yet the following study laid that objection to rest by finding some ancient DNA sequences that were completely unique:

World’s Oldest Known DNA Discovered (419 million years old) - Dec. 2009 Excerpt: But the DNA was so similar to that of modern microbes that many scientists believed the samples had been contaminated. Not so this time around. A team of researchers led by Jong Soo Park of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, found six segments of identical DNA that have never been seen before by science. “We went back and collected DNA sequences from all known halophilic bacteria and compared them to what we had,” Russell Vreeland of West Chester University in Pennsylvania said. “These six pieces were unique",,, http://news.discovery.com/earth/oldest-dna-bacteria-discovered.html

I wrote an e-mail to Dr. Cano and asked him if he had performed a 'fitness test' on the ancient bacteria he had revived to see if they were more fit than their modern day descendants. He wrote back and said that he had done such a test and that "we surmised that the putative "ancient",,, isolate was capable of utilizing a broader scope of substrates” than the modern strain

"We performed such a (fitness) test, a long time ago, using a panel of substrates (the old gram positive biolog panel) on B. sphaericus. From the results we surmised that the putative "ancient" B. sphaericus isolate was capable of utilizing a broader scope of substrates. Additionally, we looked at the fatty acid profile and here, again, the profiles were similar but more diverse in the (ancient) amber isolate." RJ Cano and MK Borucki - Fitness test which compared ancient amber sealed bacteria to its modern day descendants

Moreover, the ancient yeast that Dr. Cano had also isolated was also found to be more resilient than modern day yeast in terms of making beer:

Amber Ale: Brewing Beer From 45-Million-Year-Old Yeast - July 20, 2009 Excerpt: Cano,,,brought back to life something that had been trapped in amber for more than 25 million years.,,, Cano identified it as a bacterial spore,,, Ambergene's board of directors decided to confirm Cano's claims of reanimation. "I was very skeptical," says Chip Lambert, a microbiologist tapped by Ambergene to try to duplicate Cano's results. The company provided him with amber and all of Cano's sterilization and extraction protocols. Lambert doubled all of the cleaning processes and added some of his own. He was still able to duplicate Cano's discovery.,,, In April 1995, during his amber-cracking spree, Cano made another important discovery. A piece of fossilized resin from Burma yielded,, brewer's or baker's yeast. Normally, Hackett ends the primary fermentation process by "crashing the tank"—lowering the temperature to shock the yeast into dormancy. But that didn't work on Cano's yeast. "It was just sitting on the bottom and nibbling on the sugar like a couch potato," Hackett says. A strain that had survived 45 million years in suspended animation was not about to go quietly. https://www.wired.com/2009/07/ff-primordial-yeast/

Thus, these ancient bacteria are actually more resilient and robust than their modern day descendants. Which is exactly the opposite finding one would have expected from a Darwinian perspective. bornagain77