“Are there any technological advances that have been made because of a belief in evolution?”
So asks an essay published by Answers in Genesis, an organization promoting their soon-to-open Creation Museum. The museum directly challenges modern scientific understanding, so Answers in Genesis is justifiably concerned that the enterprise may be seen as “anti-science.” Their response to this concern includes the same empty rhetoric that evolution-deniers have been trotting out for ages: evolution isn’t relevant, because none of the scientific technologies of our time have anything to do with evolution.
Nonsense, of course. In medicine alone, the case for the importance of evolution has been made again, again, again and again. But why not have another go at it? This week in PNAS, researchers describe how they tracked the evolution of a deadly Staphylococcus bacterial strain in a single patient using genomics technology. The problem of antibiotic resistance and how it evolves is old news, but unfortunately it remains both grave and immediate. But that’s what’s so exciting about this article, which demonstrates a method of identifying adaptations in bacterial strains evolving in real time in real patients. By characterizing the pathogen as it mutated, these scientists were able to determine which new changes increased its lethality. Now, other Staphylococcus strains can be screened in other patients to predict how they will respond to antibiotic therapies, potentially increasing patient survivorship and constraining evolution of antibiotic resistance.
The paper describes how the Staphylococcus aureus bacterium is a serious threat to public health, as it is both prevalent and highly evolvable. Some strains have acquired so many adaptive mutations that they are essentially invulnerable to antibiotics. These deadly strains are called multidrug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA. But until now, exactly which mutations confer drug resistance has been virtually unknown. To identify those changes, scientists took sequential blood samples from a patient with a Staphylococcus infection and sequenced the entire genome of the bacterium. At first, the bacterial strain was susceptible to vancomycin, the antibiotic the patient received to fight the infection, but over time, susceptibility to vancomycin decreased as resistance evolved. A total of nine samples were taken, and genotyping revealed that 35 mutations occurred between the first and last sample. By correlating genotypic changes with changes in the susceptibility to vancomycin along the stepwise progression, the researchers were able to specifically identify which of the 35 mutations conferred resistance. Armed with this knowledge, physicians will be able to identify MRSAs in other patients and monitor the emergence and spread of these deadly bacteria. The good news is that the large-scale genotyping technology that made this methodology possible is becoming more efficient and more affordable every day. Therefore, by applying genomics techniques to evolutionary theory, we may soon have a powerful new technology that will improve our public health management of bacteria-borne diseases.
So there you have it. I don’t think I could imagine a technology that relies more on evolutionary theory. Would this research have been done if the scientists rejected evolution? Not hardly. Is it self-evident that the authors of this paper believe in evolution? Just about. But I will concede one point: it’s not technically necessary to have a belief in evolution to conduct good science. No, it’s not belief, but understanding that is critical. This technology was developed with a careful, thorough understanding of the complex process of evolution. Introduce me to a creationist who respects the investment in learning evolution to understand the mysteries of biology and I’ll work alongside them any day. And together we’ll watch pigs fly!