Can natural selection produce new genetic information? Yes.

Lest there be any doubt, scientists seldom (if ever) sit around thinking up ways to discredit the Intelligent Design Movement. They just carry out experiments designed to test various hypotheses. A central claim of the Intelligent Design Movement is the claim that certain biological structures (including chemical ones) or phenomena are too complex, or unique, or both, to have arisen without some sort of intelligent intervention. An important statement of the ID view is Meyer's Signature in the Cell.

Dennis Venema, writing for the BioLogos Forum, has begun a series of posts which argue that new information can, indeed, arise without direct intelligent intervention. (Venema also wrote the review of Meyer's book, for Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, which review is referenced in the last link in the previous paragraph.)

The most important statement in Venema's first post is this:

Of course, it should be noted that describing how specified information can arise through natural means does not in any way imply God’s absence from the process. After all, natural processes are equally a manifestation of God’s activity as what one would call supernatural events. So-called “natural” laws are what Christians understand to be a description of the ongoing, regular and repeatable activity of God.

The second post refers to a long-time ongoing experiment, begun in 1988 (which was before the IDM had achieved any prominence) and proceeding for over 50,000 bacterial generations. This experiment has discovered good evidence for the development of new biochemical abilities by the common bacterium, Escherichia coli. In other words, new specified information arising through selective processes.

Thanks for reading.

*  *  *  * Added April 8, 2011:

Venema has now posted another part of his series. In this one, he presents documentation for the change, in higher organisms, of a gene that produces a protein that has one function into a gene that produces a protein with a different, but similar function.

* * * * *

January 4, 2013. As I haven't gotten a comment related to the post for over a year, I am blocking comments on this post, to save myself from having to clean out advertisements for loans, pet medicine, etc. If you have a comment on this post, please comment on another of my posts, and refer to this in your comment. Sorry.

Evidence that a new function evolved from an old gene

Biologists have long supposed that new abilities of living things have come about when new proteins, produced by new genes, modified from pre-existing genes, make such abilities possible. The new genes are thought to come from accidental duplication of a DNA sequence, done so that it is passed on to the offspring. Such accidental events are known to have occurred, and thought to have occurred many many times. But documented examples of such a process in nature, leading to a new function, have been rare or non-existent.

A press release from the University of Illinois indicates that there is good evidence for a specific example. The example is that a gene which helps a fish to survive Antarctic temperatures appears to have evolved from a duplicated pre-existing gene coding for a protein named sialic acid synthase.

The press release was published because a research article, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, details the research findings. Since the PNAS does not allow general access to its on-line publications without a price, I have not seen the original work. The PNAS has long been an important journal, and many significant findings have been first disseminated through it. Most likely, this one will join them. It sounds quite important.

Here and here are more comments on the original article.