Lynn Margulis’ “Endosymbiotic theory” is not a theory . It is an unverified hypothesis. I know exactly what testing means as I am a physiologist and certainly not a traditional Creationist by any means. The simple truth is that lateral gene transfer has yet to be experimentaly demonstrated as the device by which symbiotic relationships have been established.

I do not subscribe to Popper’s falsifiable nonsense either. Hypotheses are either verified or they are not. The Margulis hypopthesis has not been verified. Untl it is, I will stick to my Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis. Thank you very much.

Propenents of ID (in any form) tend to dislike Wikipedia because it is based on a process of peer review and citation of respected sources. As ID tend to not be published in reputable journals like Science or Nature, their ideas tend to not hold up within that kind of forum. That’s not bias but rather a good editorial process.

In this case, Margulis’ Endosymbiotic theory has been published and peer reviewed in major scientific journals.

As for testing, like many Creationists (of which ID is just the new flavor), you misunderstand what testing means from a sceintific perspective. It need not be something replicable in a laboratory (although there is an article cited above that suggest it may be able to be replicated in a laboratory). It can simply be a suggestion of what other discoveries we’d logically expect to find if it were true, and what we’d expect to find if it were false.

For example, if we were to apply your theory to the slug, then we’d expect to find unexpressed/unused genes for photosysthesis in other animals. That is a testable falsifiable hypothesis. To my knowledge we have not yet found such genes. It is also problematic when you consider that genetic evidence can “date” genes. Given that, we’d also expect evidence that these genes were acquired long ago, and not recently. Once again, a testable hypothesis.

I do not regard Wikipedia as a valid source. It is very biased in favor of the Darwinian atheist model. Natural selection and random mutation have never been instrumental in either speciation or the generation of any of the higher taxa. Quite the contrary, both are anti-evolutionary, serving to prevent rather than promote evolutionary progress. So is Mendelian (sexual) reproduction. Besides, creative evolution is a phenomenon of the distant past.

“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
John A. Davison

I don’t expect agreement but I do feel compelled to present my thesis here or anywhere else I am still allowed to speak. EVERYONE is welcome at my weblog.

jadavison.wordpress.com

Margulis’ theory regarding the symbiotic development of organelles during the early evolution of life is now very well established, even though it was very controversial only a decade ago. I spoken to people that were at scientific conferences where she was pretty much laughed of the stage, but now solid genetic evidence seems to be backing her up.

That said, she also maintains that symbiotic fusion wasn’t isolated to just a few rare events in early evolution, but continues to play an important role. This is still a very controvesial idea, but is slowly gaining ground as more evidence (like that above regarding the sea slug) continues to appear. In fact, the Human Genome project seems to confirm that we ourselves seem to have aquired genes from viruses and bacteria within relatively recent times.

I think Wikipedia does a fairly good job of summing up all this, including some of the points of controversy.

“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”

jadavison.wordpress.com

“An hypothesis does not cease being an hypothesis when a lot of people believe it.”
Boris Ephrussi

jadavison.wordpress.com.

Dr. Margulis wrote a book with her son Dorion Sagan about exactly this sort of genetic mixing; it is called “Acquiring Genomes“, and discusses the potential and known examples of genetic mixing.

Another fascinating example of this was the discovery that a few species of fruit flies had incorporated a huge portion of the genome of a bacterium, Wolbachia, inside their own genomes.

  Serendipitous discovery of Wolbachia genomes in multiple
Drosophila species
  http://genomebiology.com/2005/6/3/r23

Acquiring Genomes also discusses other odd and fringe-y biological hypothesis, including larval transfer, which is the idea that the reason insect larvae (and other larvae) look so different from the adult form is because they represent an ancient genetic transfer and combination from a different class of organisms.

Some of it is very far out near the fringe indeed, but strange as the ideas are, they are at least testable scientific hypotheses, which can be falsified or supported by comparative genomics. And as the green sea slug shows, some organisms are themselves far out on the fringe.

PS: This is an interesting and potentially relevant paper from 1969:

  Uptake of Isolated Chloroplasts by Mammalian Cells
  http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/165/3898/1128

jadavison.wordpress.com

and in particular to my “Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis” thread.

The popular Hong Kong Sci-Fi writer, Ni Kuang, published in the 80’s a novel titled “A second kind of human” about a group of “people” evolved from plants. The novel concludes with an intriguing moral point: being a vegetarian won’t ease your guilt of destroying life. The only moral lifestyle is to synthesize your own energy. Elysia chlorotica is almost a moral animal.