Biological principles misunderstood

Editor,

Earnest Seablom's recent letter opposing evolution revealed a serious misunderstanding of basic biological principles.

Having taught college genetics, I recall one concept students often found difficult to grasp: reduction division. Mr. Seablom's 50 percent simplification loss by reduction process of meiosis, making each generation simpler genetically than their parents, reflects this misunderstanding.

The details are not necessary. Sexually reproducing organisms need to combine chromosome sets from each parent to make up the complement of each new offspring.

If there was no "reduction division" making sperm and egg each half the normal complement, then chromosomal numbers of the offspring would double each generation. Observation has verified this does not occur. Hence, reduction division assures the chromosome number of offspring remain the same as the parent, not less.

And if the buffalo complement is regularly halved into each new generation (not just into gametes) as Seablom suggests, after just seven generations not one complete chromosome would remain, let alone a less complex cow.

No such thing as cattle becoming "simplified" from more complex buffalo has ever occurred. Such nonsense is an attempt to lend credibility to Mr. Seablom's thesis that life began complex and has become simplified through time. Cattle are just as "complex" as buffalo, but because of mutations, some of their genes are permanently expressed differently (the normal chromosomal complement of buffalo is 68, and for cattle 60, but the number of functional genes is approximately the same).

If we agree with Mr. Seablom that cattle came from buffalo stock, they obviously did not come from modern buffalo. But they could have a common ancestor from which both are derived. This, of course, meets the definition of evolutionary change.

Sad to say, fundamentalists are completely dependent upon the scientific illiteracy of the population at large to promulgate their faith-based substitutes for science, especially into the classroom.

And while we owe our children many things, ignorance of the natural world is not among them.

Bill Bennington

Polson