"Can you tell me how it is that gene transferred horizontally ( without going through selection ) validates darwinism , which says all beneficial traits must pass through selection in order to be adapted ?"
"Fascinating - you blew right through your own usual misunderstandings of Darwinism and Darwinists and ended up with a sentence that is actually meaningful . HGT ( along with genetic drift ) are important parts of modern evolutionary theory , but they do indeed have nothing to do with darwinian evolution sensu stricto , which does indeed insist on natural selection . This is why evolutionary biologists object to being called Darwinists in the sense that you and WW usually try to impose on us , and it is why we insist that there is more to evolution than natural selection or RM & amp ; NS alone , and it is why we talk about the Neodarwinian Synthesis and Modern Evolutionary Theory . HGT validates the modern ToE . Modern evolutionary theory incorporates Darwin 's version , and lot 's more . HGT is part of the `` lots more `` . Some versions of lateral gene transfer have been accepted and studied for many decades , notably versions of conjugation in bacteria . ( It was n't until biologists were able to start sequencing DNA in quantity that we were able to see all the retroviral DNA segments and so forth . ) When someone like Gould ( for example ) talks about Darwinian evolution , depending on context , they are talking about either 1 ) the historical early version of the ToE as Darwin envisaged it , 2 ) the position that natural selection is the dominant process in evolution , or 3 ) an instance of evolutionary change in which natural selection is inferred to have been by far the most significant process . Evolution has moved well beyond Darwin 's initial ideas to include mutations , recombination , and genetic drift , including HGT , in all sorts of combinations with each other and with natural selection . As Chemist says , once HGT has occurred , the new version with the new genes can easily find itself competing with the old version , providing another way that NS can be involved , but it does n't have to be . NS is just not all there is to evolution . I ca n't wait to see how you are going to misinterpret this next ."
"Can you tell me how it is that gene transferred horizontally ("
"Fascinating - you blew right through your own usual misunderstandings of Darwinism and Darwinists"