Can Mutations Produce New Species?

Many details of a plant or an animal are determined by the instructions contained in its genetic code, the blueprints that are wrapped up in the nucleus of each cell.d Researchers have discovered that mutations​—or random changes—​in the genetic code can produce alterations in the descendants of plants and animals. In 1946, Hermann J. Muller, Nobel Prize winner and founder of the study of mutation genetics, claimed: “Not only is this accumulation of many rare, mainly tiny changes the chief means of artificial animal and plant improvement, but it is, even more, the way in which natural evolution has occurred, under the guidance of natural selection.”

Indeed, the teaching of macroevolution is built upon the claim that mutations can produce not only new species but also entirely new families of plants and animals. Is there any way to test this bold claim? Well, consider what some 100 years of study in the field of genetic research has revealed.

In the late 1930’s, scientists enthusiastically embraced the idea that if natural selection could produce new species of plants from random mutations, then artificial, or human-guided, selection of mutations should be able to do so more efficiently. “Euphoria spread among biologists in general and geneticists and breeders in particular,” said Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig, a scientist from the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Germany, who was interviewed by Awake! Why the euphoria? Lönnig, who has spent some 28 years studying mutation genetics in plants, said: “These researchers thought the time had come to revolutionize the traditional method of breeding plants and animals. They thought that by inducing and selecting favorable mutations, they could produce new and better plants and animals.”e

Scientists in the United States, Asia, and Europe launched well-funded research programs, using methods that promised to speed up evolution. After more than 40 years of intensive research, what were the results? “In spite of an enormous financial expenditure,” says researcher Peter von Sengbusch, “the attempt to cultivate increasingly productive varieties by irradiation, widely proved to be a failure.” Lönnig said: “By the 1980’s, the hopes and euphoria among scientists had ended in worldwide failure. Mutation breeding as a separate branch of research was abandoned in Western countries. Almost all the mutants exhibited ‘negative selection values,’ that is, they died or were weaker than wild varieties.”f

Even so, the data now gathered from some 100 years of mutation research in general and 70 years of mutation breeding in particular enable scientists to draw conclusions regarding the ability of mutations to produce new species. After examining the evidence, Lönnig concluded: “Mutations cannot transform an original species [of plant or animal] into an entirely new one. This conclusion agrees with all the experiences and results of mutation research of the 20th century taken together as well as with the laws of probability. Thus, the law of recurrent variation implies that genetically properly defined species have real boundaries that cannot be abolished or transgressed by accidental mutations.”

Consider the implications of the above facts. If highly trained scientists are unable to produce new species by artificially inducing and selecting favorable mutations, is it likely that an unintelligent process would do a better job? If research shows that mutations cannot transform an original species into an entirely new one, then how, exactly, was macroevolution supposed to have taken place?

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A mutant fruit fly (at top), while malformed, is still a fruit fly

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© Dr. Jeremy Burgess/​Photo Researchers, Inc.

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Plant mutation experiments repeatedly found that the number of new mutants steadily declined, while the same type of mutants regularly appeared (Mutant shown has larger flowers)