Carissa, There are journals and books specifically on molecular evolution including molecular phylogenetics. You might want to examine the works of Kimura, Nei, Gillespie, Ohta, Felsenstein, Li, and many others. They might even help you in your systematics project.
Molecular evidence is finally helping to sort out the phylogeny of bees, for example, and a recent DNA-based phylogeny of bumblebees is available. The millennial breakthrough in mammal phylogeny at the order level depended critically on DNA evidence. When you examine the actual research being conducted on evolution, you will find that _most_ of it involves examination of molecular evolution. Although I am mainly a population/community ecologist/evolutionist, my PhD work was on molecular clock rates and genetic variability under nearly neutral selection. Presently I am helping work out the timing of evolution of a tick borne bacterial clade using DNA substitution rates, and I am modeling the evolution of recombination in the same bacteria under the natural selection imposed by ticks. Real DNA sequences are involved. Real DNA is being cycled through real bacteria through real ticks to find out what changes occur. The mechanisms of molecular evolution are modeled until they fit the data. Nobody is hiding molecular evolution from you. Instead there appears to be a conspiracy in this country to raise our kids ignorant about the facts of life. You might ask yourself who benefits from this deception. If you have no clue, pick up a few CD's by the punk group Bad Religion. Patrick Foley [EMAIL PROTECTED] Carissa Shipman wrote: > I am a biology student at Temple University and I have > conducted an NSF funded systematics project for the order > Hymenoptera at the American Museum of Natural History. My > question is why is the scientific community so convinced of > evolution? There are very few publications concerning > evolution at the molecular or biochemical level. Most > scientists are baffled at how such molecular systems such > as blood clotting actual evolved in a step by step manner. > It looks to me like many of the molecular inter workings all > needed to be there simultaneously for the end product to > function properly. The biosynthesis of AMP is just as > baffling. How could that have happened in a step by step > fashion? You can speculate, but no evolutionist has the > answer. So if you can not explain how the most nitty gritty > machines of life "molecules" learned to function in the > intricate ways that they do why are you so certain that > everything evolved? Science is looking at the details. All > science textbooks I have read have relayed very little > evidence of evolution at the molecular level. They just say > it happened. Since Darwinian evolution has published very > few papers concerning molecular evolution it should perish. > Systematics addresses genetic similarities between species, > but it does not address exactly how those genetic > differences and similarities came to be. There maybe fossils > and genes, but you need more than this. I am not convinced > of evolution, but still choose to educate myself in what it > teaches and believes. How do scientists explain how even the > slightest mutation in the human genome is highly detrimental > most of the time? If even the slightest change occurs in our > genome it is oftentimes fatal. Believing that this mechanism > lead to all the species we see today takes a great deal of > faith.For instance if even one step of the blood clotting > process were disturbed the effects would be disastrous. > Also, why does evolution leave out mathematical statistics > of how each mutation arose. TPA a component of blood > clotting has 4 domains. If we attempted to shuffle the genes > for these four domains the odds of getting all four domains > together is 30,000 to the fourth power, and that is just for > TPA! Calculating mutation rates and the odds of getting > certain genes to match up perfectly for the ultimate > function shows us that it takes more faith to believe that > we evolved from primordial slime. The earth has had > thousands of lightning bolts hit it every year and we have > not seen life spawn from molecules. If evolution happened we > would see it reoccuring time and time again from the bottom. > Why have we not seen it, because conditions have not been > perfect? I do not deny adaptation within species, but this > is far different than the assumptions of macro evolution. If > an evolutionist can challenge my arguments I would gladly > like to hear your rebuttal. Publications for molecular > evolution use many words such as "unleashed". How was it > unleashed, what were the step by step mechanisms that you > can say for certain occurred, leaving macro leapages out of > the picture? You see fossils, but you have no detailed > explanations as to how one may have turned into the other at > the molecular level. If you can not explain it at the > molecular level you have nothing to base your assumptions > on. Also all the breeds of dogs are very different from one > another and some of their skeletal structures look > unrelated. The different types of dogs that you see arrived > through intelligent interaction, not evolutionary processes. > Change occurs in nature to a limited extent. That is all. > Sincerely, Carissa Shipman > > >
