DEMON38: …..if the mutation occurred before that time, it would have been lethal to the bacteria. This has been empirically supported, don't you realize this? Are you so consumed by ignorant fanaticism that you can't accept reality?!?!
DOUBLE SHALOM: Listen you uneducated fool. The nylon bug is not unique to the Japanese factory. It is not random phenomina and we all now know this. You evil-illusionists perceive wrongly that the bacterium suffered a frame shift mutation yet the “new” enzymes of this “mutant” bacteria do work on “old” food. Actually, they have a 2% efficiency of the “regular” enzymes. The so-called frame shift mutation affording the bacteria a whole new ecological niche is just but natural selection. And this type of phenomena has even happened more than once. I’m sure it can be replicated here in Africa too, and thus it is not random. There is no such thing as a nonrandom mutation triggered by the environment. Mutations are blind. May be if you cite nuclear radiation that does trigger mutation but not for positive gain.
"There are usually masses of variation held in any natural population, and that selection can get to work whenever the case arises. It is not necessary to wait for the appropriate new mutation [Addison-Wesley, 1982, p.94]
Environment does not code itself into DNA to direct the organism for better adaptation. The only plausible explanation is that perhaps sensors in an organism could trigger an already built in mechanism for change.
It’s not true that only a shift mutation could have caused the nylon bug. Though nylon did not exist before 1935, Although it is man-made and there are no "nylon deposits" that the bacteria could have lived in prior to 1935 this bacteria can survive on other macromolecules that are multiples of simpler chemical units called monomers. A possible macromolecule can be a tar derivative. After all, cyclohexane (C6H12 derived from crude oil) is turned into hexanedionic acid by oxidation with air first and secondly nitric acid. Hexanedionic acid is used in polymerized to form nylon.