Talk:Nylon-eating bacteria

message: I'm pretty sure there should be a hyphen in between the "nylon" and the "eating" in the title of this article. Can someone move it? Thanks. --24.11.177.133 04:59, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Hyphen, or No Hyphen

message: Why is there a paragraph discussing Creationism? It appears biased in favour of Creationism, and is irrelevant to the rest of the article.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.49.31.155 (talk) 20:27, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It was the role of this topic in the creation-evolution controversy, specifically the fact that the discovery seemed to refute a couple of prominent creationist claims, that made the topic noteworthy enough (in my opinion when I started the article back in Sept 06) to merit an encyclopedia article. Without the attention called to it by creationism critics and the responses from creationists I doubt these discoveries would have ever come to the attention of anyone other than micro-biologists, and biochemists intersted in enzyme evolution. Although at some point it might have become of interest to folks interested in doing toxic wast cleanup with bacteria. As to your comment that the text is somehow biased in favor of creationsim. I don't understand it. As I read the paragraph, it seems pretty clear that the scientific consensus is that this does represent a case where completely new information was added to a genome, and where a new useful enzyme (actually multiple enzymes) arose from already existing enzyme(s) as a result of mutation combined with natural selection. Both things that many creationists have said can never happen. Rusty Cashman (talk) 06:26, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I'm not too happy with the large emphasis on the evolution controversy here.  It doesn't seem to be a genuine scientific controversy, but rather the old "evolutionists versus creationists" battle fought out between people on either side waving citations of scientific publications at one another.  I hesitate to remove it myself, but wouldn't mind if we reach consensus to remove, or at least drastically trim, the discussion in this section.  Since the argument may have cultural importance in itself, perhaps the section could be merged into a more appropriate article or even (though I don't think it's likely to be that important) placed in a new stub article of its own. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 12:34, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  I note that the subject is currently mentioned in the Answers in Genesis article but not in creation-evolution controversy. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 12:37, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

text:  "Undue weight" is a criterion of neutral point of view--an article that contains a section giving undue weight to a facet of its subject is not neutral.  Since I'm not the only one to dispute the prominence and size of the section about Answers in Genesis in this article, and there's clearly a dispute, I've added the  tag to that section. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 12:55, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I think you're right when you say that the section gives undue weight to the creationist side of this controversy-which-isn't-really-a-controversy, but perhaps a simple link the appropriate article would be okay, no? Shinobu (talk) 07:49, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  I have stayed away from this for a month or so because I was busy pushing an article (History of evolutionary thought) through the FAC process. However based on the debate in the section below I think I will go ahead and break this article into two. One on the actual scientific research (this one) and one on the use of the research by parties in the public (but not scientific) creation-evolution controversy with a link in between them. This will hopefully satisfy both people like me who suspect that most readers who read this article will be doing so because they encountered a reference to it as part of the creation-evolution controversy, and those who object to so much space being devoted to a non-scientific controversy in a article that discusses scientific research. I will probably accomplish the split in the next couple of days (ie this weekend here in the US). Rusty Cashman (talk) 18:28, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Why Creationism

message: I think we are all starting to repeat ourselves, and, although the discussion has been pretty good at times, I don't think anyone is being persuaded to change their minds at this point. As I see it the vote stands as:
*Delete (2)
:Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The (now renamed to Jenny), Aunt Entropy
*Pare down (2)
:Atemperman,ZayZayEM (talk) 00:37, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: HiEv, Rusty Cashman, Mr Fink, GeorgeLouis,
As a compromise Atemperman and Rusty Cashman have stated that they would support creating a new article for the disputed material. If I have misrepresented someone's position or missed someone please let me know. At this point, unless some new voice is heard. I think that there is no current consensus for change. Therefore I would propose waiting another week or so, and if no one new expresses an opinion or no one makes a substantially new argument, closing this RFC and removing the banner from the article. Rusty Cashman (talk) 20:17, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

text: Please note my recent change of username (see above).  I wonder if we could converge on an agreement to have a separate article. --Jenny 21:30, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, I think we need to wait a little while longer since people are still voting, but I can live with that. I will be interested to see how Wikipedia ends up handling the Lenski citrate-eating E. Coli strain especially given the brouhaha it has caused on Conservapedia :) Rusty Cashman (talk) 15:25, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  Actually, That question has been answered: E. coli long-term evolution experiment. I suspect this is another argument for splitting the article since they have avoided discussing the controversy in this very good article. Of course NCSE or similar groups haven't started using this research as a hammer... yet Rusty Cashman (talk) 15:37, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: RFC Conclusion?

message: Does anyone know how the various nylonases work to cleave the nylon byproducts?--Mr Fink (talk) 20:56, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Behavior of Nylonase

message: I'm sorry, but I take offense at a wholesale reversion of my well-thought-out edits. People have been complaining about this article, and my edits were an attempt to make the piece more neutral. It is not at all necessary to write a dispute in a chronological fashion. Who cares who started it? That sounds like two children in a playground squabble. The important thing is to give both sides of the controversy, and the best way to do that is just to lay them out, side by side.
In addition, all the copy editing and added links were deleted by a wholesale reversion. This is just not helpful.
I will grant that the POV tag should just apply to the Section, but that is not what the tag said: It referred to the entire article. If there is a way to edit the POV tag, that would make more sense.
Sincerely, GeorgeLouis (talk) 13:55, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: To make the article neutral, in my opinion, it would be necessary to remove the highly inappropriate emphasis on the views of politically-motivated non-scientists about a scientific matter on which there is a clear scientific consensus.  The current versions of the article about which people are squabbling at present, are in my opinion both as broken as a version of earth that gave undue prominence to the views of contemporary flat-earthers. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 18:58, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: There is an ongoing contoversy on this article on this talk page. Please refrain from any major edits until there is a consensus on how to proceed!Rusty Cashman (talk) 21:09, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

text:  I left the POV tag in both places, but I fundamentally can't agree with you about chronology not being extremely important in describing any controversy fairly. As Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The says the fundamenal dispute is whether or not the section belongs in the article or not pur WP:Undue not that the summary of the controversy as written was not WP:NPOV. I will respond to his comments about WP:coatrack in the section where he made them.Rusty Cashman (talk) 21:18, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

text: Ok, I have taken a different tack and gone with your basic organization (I agree the text needed the copyediting and reorganization) and just tweaked things so that the chronology is a little clearer and the statements are accurate with the appropriate citations. Hopefully if we decide to keep the section we can now all be happy witht the text.Rusty Cashman (talk) 16:30, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chronology? 

message: Most of the material on the role of this research in the creation-evolution controversy has been moved to Nylon-eating bacteria and creationism. Hopefully this will be acceptable to all the parties to the debate on this page. Rusty Cashman (talk) 05:38, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Article split

message: It is not clear from this does it digest nylon (as the title suggests) or a byproduct (as the article says).--Ollyoxenfree (talk) 15:22, 24 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Digests Nylon or Byproducts?

message: Should it be mentioned that a sort-of reference was made in an episode of Full Metal Panic Fumoffu, a Japanese Anime, where the class is exposed to a toxic substance thought to be a highly contagious poison, but ends up being an airborne bacteria that eats nylon (and thus, eats away the students clothing at the end).  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.75.238.10 (talk) 19:29, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: No, unless you have reputable sources that show that this episode was directly inspired by nylon-eating bacteria, as opposed to a generic super-eating germ of doom.--Mr Fink (talk) 19:32, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pop Culture Reference?

message: Under the section "Later Research"
"However, many other genes have been discovered which did evolve by gene duplication followed by a frameshift mutation affecting at least part of the gene. A 2006 study found 470 examples in humans alone."
from the reference's abstract:
Major novelties can potentially be introduced by frameshift mutations and this idea can explain the creation of novel proteins. Here, we employ a strategy using simulated protein sequences and identify 470 human and 108 mouse frameshift events that originate new gene segments
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0888754306001807
This should be self-explanatory.  The researchers were investigating potential frameshifts with simulations.  Nobody discovered that any of the genes actually did evolve this way, as is erroneously claimed in the article.
This seems somewhat off-topic to Nylon-eating Bacteria anyways. 
76.179.130.102 (talk) 15:11, 19 July 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Should that sentence be reworded or removed, then?--Mr Fink (talk) 15:20, 19 July 2013 (UTC)
replies: text:   I would suggest removing it but that's up to the editors.  I was just pointing out that it is a false claim.   If not removed, you might just change the wording to something like: 
"In computer simulations, many genes have been shown to potentially occur via frameshift mutations."  
But that doesn't have quite the same ring to it. 76.179.130.102 (talk) 21:09, 19 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: False claim about 470 frameshift mutations

message: While this article's "Role in evolution teaching" section was generally good, the Nylon-eating bacteria and creationism subarticle had important WP:GEVAL and WP:YESPOV issues.  Its heritage from an older Creation–evolution controversy (now Rejection of evolution by religious groups) that mispresented anti-evolution apologetics as part of a legitimate scientific debate was obvious.  I tried to improve it (), eyes/input welcome there, —PaleoNeonate – 14:10, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nylon-eating bacteria and creationism