Page 165 - The Evolution Impasse 2

Pleiotropic Effect, The 163

means that from a sin gle re sist ant but is far more com plex. With its
bac te ri um, a re sist ant bac te ri al col o - own unique move ments, the plat y -
ny can emerge in a very short time. pus sets up an elec tri cal cur rent in
However, noth ing about this the riv er wa ters and us es this to de -
mech a nism pro vides ev i dence for ter mine the riv er sur face.
ev o lu tion, be cause the genes that en - The plat y pus is a mo sa ic an i mal.
dow re sist ance in bac te ria are not However, if it be came ex tinct and if
formed as the re sult of mu ta tions. tra ces of it were lat er found in the
All that oc curs is the trans mis sion of fos sil record, ev o lu tion ists would
genes al ready ex ist ing among bac te - not hes i tate to sug gest that it was an
ria. in ter me di ate form be tween rep tiles
and mam mals. All the sup posed in -
ter me di ate forms cit ed to day are in
PLATYPUS fact the re sult of such dis tor tions.
The plat y pus, a mem ber of the
mar su pi al fam i ly that lives in
PLEIOTROPIC EFFECT, THE
Australia, is an ex cel lent ex am ple
that in val i dates ev o lu tion ist claims. One of the proofs that mu ta tions
Despite be ing a mam mal, cov ered in in flict on ly harm on liv ing things is
fur and pos sess ing milk glands, the the cod ing of the ge net ic code. In de -
plat y pus al so lays eggs. More in ter - vel oped an i mals, al most all the
est ing ly, it has a bill like a duck. known genes con tain more than one
Since this crea ture has mam mal i - piece of in for ma tion about that or -
an, avi an and rep til i an fea tures, ev o - gan ism. For ex am ple, a sin gle gene
lu tion ists point to it as a sim ple an i - may con trol both height and eye col -
mal and as an in ter me di ate form. Yet or.
the truth is very dif fer ent. The mo lec u lar bi ol o gist Michael
So high ly de vel oped is the plat y - Denton de scribes this fea ture,
pus that it pos sess es a lit er al sixth known as genes' plei o trop ic ef fect:
sense. Since it lives in mud dy wa - The ef fects of genes on de vel op ment are
ters, it has been equipped with a of ten sur pris ing ly di verse. In the house
mech a nism that al lows it to move by mouse, near ly ev ery coat-col our gene
use of elec tri cal sig nals. This elec tro - has some ef fect on body size. Out of
re cep tor sys tem bears no sim i lar i ty sev en teen X-ray-in duced eye col our
to the sys tems found in cer tain fish, mu ta tions in the fruit fly Drosophila

Harun Yahya - Adnan Oktar