Focus 45(1)
creation news and views
Rise of the chickens
It may come as a surprise, but chickens aren’t mentioned in the Old Testament. There is a reason for that.
In a recent investigation, the oldest chicken bones (from Thailand) were deemed to be 3,250–3,650 years old. Noting the ‘age-expanding’ assumptions secularists work with, that is a lot younger than was previously believed (8,000–11,000 years ago). The study also found that chickens first appeared in the Middle East more recently still; even in their framework, only about 2,800 years ago.
This makes sense from a biblical perspective. God sent representatives of a fowl kind to Noah (possibly corresponding to the genus Gallus or the family Phasianidae). After coming off the Ark these would have settled into new areas and diversified into different species, including the domesticated chicken subspecies (Gallus gallus domesticus).
- Gibbons, A., How the wild jungle fowl became the chicken, science.org, 6 Jun 2022.
Adaptive degeneration in cave fish
Astyanax mexicanus is a variety of blind cave fish which live in harsh conditions where food is scarce. They regularly experience short periods of abundant food, followed shortly after by a long period of scarcity. Yet, these fish don’t just survive, they thrive.
Through the deletion of DNA in the gene hpdb, they have lost the ability to make the ‘sunscreen’ pigment melanin. This is unnecessary in a dark cave, so the damaged gene is not eliminated by natural selection. It actually gives these albino fish an advantage in their environment. An ingredient (tyrosine) normally used to make melanin can instead become an additional nutrition source.
But this example of mutation giving a survival advantage does so by removing information from the genome. Obviously, one cannot go from a microbe to a human over millions of years by deleting genetic information.
- Callier, V., Blind cave fish may trade color for energy, scientificamerican.com, 1 Sep 2022.
Largest bacterium ever discovered is remarkably complex
A new bacterium discovered living in the Caribbean mangroves is about 5,000 times bigger than any other previously known microbe! The cells of this bacterium can grow into long threads up to 2 cm long.
This bacterium also stores its DNA in a separate compartment in the cell, something which was only thought to occur in the cells of ‘complex life’ such as animals.
As Chris Greening, a microbiologist at Monash University, said, “All too often, bacteria are thought of as small, simple, ‘unevolved’ life forms—so-called ‘bags of proteins’. But this bacterium shows this couldn’t be much further from the truth.”
- Pennisi, E., Largest bacterium ever discovered has an unexpectedly complex cell, science.org, 23 Feb 2022.
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