So what becomes of all the Darwinian casuistry around “fitness” and “costly fitness” if things can happen so simply as this?
The finding, reported today in Cell, is the first known example of a natural gene transfer from a plant to an insect. It also explains one reason why the whitefly Bemisia tabaci is so adept at munching on crops: the gene that it swiped from plants enables it to neutralize a toxin that some plants produce to defend against insects.
Early work suggests that inhibiting this gene can render the whiteflies vulnerable to the toxin, providing a potential route to combating the pest. “This exposes a mechanism through which we can tip the scales back in the plant’s favour,” says Andrew Gloss, who studies plant–pest interactions at the University of Chicago in Illinois. “It’s a remarkable example of how studying evolution can inform new approaches for applications like crop protection.”
Heidi Ledford, “First known gene transfer from plant to insect identified” at Nature
The article emphasizes the benefits of studying “evolution.” Indeed, but that can’t mean fronting Darwinism 101 any more.
The paper is open access.
See also: Horizontal gene transfer: Sorry, Darwin, it’s not your evolution any more
as to: “It’s a remarkable example of how studying evolution can inform new approaches for applications like crop protection.”
Well, actually Darwinian Evolution never predicted or expected Horizontal Gene Transfer.
Horizontal Gene Transfer is actually an example of Darwinists refusing to accept experimental falsification for their theory.
Denis Noble used Horizontal gene transfer (HGT), (also known as lateral gene transfer), as one of the evidences that has now falsified the modern synthesis of Neo-Darwinism
So actually, HGT is not even close to being a remarkable example of “how studying evolution can inform new approaches”, but is instead a remarkable example of how Darwinian evolution can take evidence that falsifies one of its core assumptions, act as if nothing happened, and then later on claim that ‘studying evolution’ somehow led to the HGT evidence that falsified it in the first place.
It is Orwellian doublethink at its finest.
Moreover, directly contrary to what the authors tried to claim, evolution is completely useless, even detrimental, as a heuristic, i.e. guiding principle, in science, (for example, the false Darwinian predictions of Junk DNA and Vestigial organs)
BA77:
“So actually, HGT is not even close to being a remarkable example of “how studying evolution can inform new approaches”, but is instead a remarkable example of how Darwinian evolution can take evidence that falsifies one of its core assumptions, act as if nothing happened, and then later on claim that ‘studying evolution’ somehow led to the HGT evidence that falsified it in the first place.”
Nicely stated.
Let me add this: years ago, on these digital pages, I very clearly stated that “whole genome analysis” will either reinforce Darwinian theory or completely undermine it. That so-called “Junk-DNA” has been found to have function–and, actually, the most critical of functions, has undermined the Darwinian narrative.
Now, this piece of evidence, found using BLAST searches of genome sequences, again undermines the Darwinian narrative. But Darwinists are generally of the liberal political persuasion, and liberals never admit that they’re wrong. They simply change their tune and say something like: “This happens all the time,” a la Biden’s reference to the Border crisis. So, eventually evolutionary biologists will say, perhaps, “As we’ve known for a long time, evolution (Darwin having been completed forgotten about just as Freud is in psychology) has many mechanisms by which inherited change leads to co-adaptation.” In fact, as BA77 has already pointed out, the author of this study has already sounded such a emendation.