Four (4) Winged Fruit Fly

Go Vikes! Wouldn't it be great if the Vikings were able to make it (and win?!) the Super Bowl? I am still in the afterglow of last week's Vikings victory, and a wonderful evening at Alpha. But today's topic has nothing to do with football, but instead is the ubiquitous fruit fly. I am once again responding to my oft-commenting friend Edward Oleander's request for me to provide evidence of what Darwinism can do in an organism. Although it is very clear from scientific studies that organisms like E-coli, malaria and HIV/Aids can mutate to develop very helpful resistance to medications, although its' ability to mutate appears very small. And so, perhaps the mutation rate for living creatures (like the fruit fly) is much higher than for malaria. I started (see January 3, 2010 post) by showing that although evolution is helpful in providing something like malaria with resistance to Chloroquine, the mutation rate is far too small to accomplish anything more significant. In this post, I will take a look at the fruit fly to see if Darwinism can more easily modify something more significant like body shape (called a morphological change) in a living creature.

The fruit fly is a two (2) winged insect that is one of the most intensively studied organisms in biology and genetics. It is widely studied because of its short lifespan, and the fact that the heredity of a fruit fly can easily be studied because it has a short generation time of about 10 days. The female lays about 100 eggs each batch, and up to 2,000 during its lifetime. It also only has four (4) pairs of chromosomes, which makes it an ideal study for studying genetic changes from generation to generation. With 10 day generations and 100 offspring the application of these genetic studies is obvious – they can replicate changes / mutations with an eye toward longer lived animals (like mammals), to see what Darwinism can really do, especially for changes to an organism's body.

So can Darwinism make the sort of large scale changes to an organism's body (called morphological changes) as Darwinism predicts? My conclusion is that the fruit fly experiments show that through the scientific study and expertise of genetic study, we can manipulate a two (2) winged fruit fly to have four (4) non-functioning wings, but otherwise Darwinism once again fails to show the possibility that large scale genetic changes can take place. Again, as I asked after reviewing the malaria studies, is that it? I was hoping for something that would help me to believe that we can go from a squirrel in one generation to a kitten in the next. Or at least a significant step in that direction. But as I will show, the four (4) winged fruit fly studies show that random mutation + natural selection (this is the core of Darwinian belief) is NOT the mechanism for the claimed changes of Darwinism, and even with intelligently designed manipulation of the fruit fly's DNA, a body shape can be changed over several generations, but only in a harmful way. The question is straightforward, what changes do we see in living creatures in the world around us?

The bodies of fruit flies are divided into segments. What is cool about the genes of a fruit fly is that they divide into segments just as is shown in the fruit fly's body. The anterior (forward) section has the wings. In 1978, California Institute of Technology geneticist Ed Lewis reported his findings from an extensive study of the genes of a fruit fly that he conducted: he was able to manipulate the fruit fly's genes over three generations, where he was able to grow a second set of wings, but this time on the fruit fly's posterior (rearward) compartment. A single mutation cannot cause the second set of wing's mutation. Instead, only a fly with three mutations (called anterobithorax, bithorax, and postbithorax mutations – these mutations affect a single large gene called Ultrabithorax) will have the second set of wings. Dr. Lewis was able to manipulate the Ultrabithorax genes regulatory sequences so that the rearward compartments wings rather than halters (minute appendages that appears on the normal fruit fly) would appear.

This picture or sketch of a fruit fly with four wings is a common example in textbooks of an example of what Evolution can do in a living organism. But is this really something that Darwinists can show as proof of what Darwinism does? No, what Dr. Lewis has shown is that even with intensive, intelligent manipulation of the fruit fly's genes, through successive generations, that four wings can be added to a creature with two wings. But this is a horrible example of Darwinism because the second set of wings don't work. The genetic manipulation by Dr. Lewis is impressive, but apparently is possible through intelligent engineering. And even with this genetic manipulation, the changes that were done did not include muscles for the fruit fly to use with this second set of wings. Dr. Lewis' four-winged fruit fly could not use the second set of wings because it did not have the muscles to use these extra wings. Instead of showing that body changes are possible through Evolution, the four-winged fruit fly shows that major changes to a living creature are much more complicated, involving more than just adding extra wings. It also takes changes to the muscles, the circulatory system (if needed), and the additional instructions for the creatures brain, etc. In Dr. Lewis's study he has only added the second set of unusable wings, an evolutionary disadvantage. There is no survival of the fittest advantage here.

So in summary, living organisms face the same mutation problems shown in my previous post on malaria. Morphological changes are much more complex, and involve more than even what Dr. Lewis' genetic manipulations adding a second set of wings to a fruit fly over three generations. The second set of wings were unusable, because there was no muscles, and so no way for these wings to be used. And the observed natural mutations of a fruit fly again reveals that Darwinism cannot accomplish the large scale changes needed. If large scale changes cannot take place in the fruit fly which has 10 day generations, what hope is there for Darwinism to show large scale changes in mammals, where there are years of generations? Again, the fruit fly shows that Darwinism cannot turn a squirrel into a kitty, or even a significant step in that direction, and so something else is needed. My hope is that the reader of this blog will start looking at the evidence and see that Darwinism isn't the reason why you are here today. There are big questions in life. Why are we here is a one of the biggest. Where are you looking for these answers?

I hope I've given you something to think about. In Christ, /s/Tom