The Seven Questions Creationists Cannot Answer (II)

can multiply by 10 000, as found in a recent 2003 study in Science, on 787 different strains of bacteria. A similar study on fruit flies was published in November 1985, published by the National Academy of Science, called "Rapid change in mutation rate in a local population of Drosophila melanogaster". In 1986, a study in Genetics called "Selection for increased mutation rates with fertility differences between matings" found that mutation rates got higher when more mutations led to greater fertility of matings.

As a recent study from the Annual Review of Microbiology put it :

From site-specific recombination to changes in polymerase fidelity and repair of DNA damage, an organism's gene products affect what genetic changes occur in its genome. Through the action of natural selection on these gene products, potentially favorable mutations can become more probable than random.. With examples from variation in bacterial surface proteins to the vertebrate immune response, it is clear that a great deal of genetic change is better than "random" with respect to its potential effect on survival. Indeed, some potentially useful mutations are so probable that they can be viewed as being encoded implicitly in the genome

("NATURAL SELECTION AND THE EMERGENCE OF A MUTATION PHENOTYPE: An Update of the Evolutionary Synthesis Considering Mechanisms that Affect Genome Variation", Annual Review of Microbiology, October 2003)

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