So mutations are guided with respect to life? What does that even mean?
You talk about mutations not related to fitness. I talk about mutations related to the reality of life.
I spent an entire paragraph demonstrating that random mutations (with respect to fitness) are falsifiable. Perhaps you could do the honest thing and actually address what I said? Are are you saying that random mutations are unfalsifiable simply because you say so?It is falsifiable. If mutations are not random then we would expect a large portion of a single generation to share the de novo beneficial mutation. IOW, their parents would not have this mutation, but a large portion of the subsequent generation would have this mutation, and it would be shown to be triggered by an environmental cue.
So what do we observe? We do not observe the environment triggering the same beneficial mutation in multiple individuals at a rate beyond that expected from random mutations. What we do observe is the same mechanism of mutation producing mutations throughout the genome, including detrimental mutations that lead to genetic diseases such as achondroplasia and hemophilia. We observe that these mechanisms produce mutations in junk DNA where it has no effect on fitness.
You just relate unsupported conlusions, taking for granted that guided mutations would lead to what you like to be. You use inthe pocket mice example the highily unreliable notions of mutation rates and relative time frames to reach to your conclusions.The Luria-Delbruck flucutation test and the Lederberg's plate replica experiment are referring one cell organisms. I asked for for evidence about metazoans.
Here is a work that i would like you to coment on:
Journal of Theoretical Biology
Volume 78, Issue 4, 21 June 1979, Pages 573—591
Beyond neo-Darwinisman epigenetic approach to evolution
M.W. Ho
Department of Biology, Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, England
Abstract
We argue that the basic neo-Darwinian frameworkthe natural selection of random mutationsis insufficient to account for evolution. The role of natural selection is itself limited: it cannot adequately explain the diversity of populations or of species; nor can it account for the origin of new species or for major evolutionary change. The evidence suggests on the one hand that most genetic changes are irrelevant to evolution; and on the other, that a relative lack of natural selection may be the prerequisite for major evolutionary advance.
Contrary to the neo-Darwinian view, we point out that the variations of the phenotype, on which natural selection could act, do not arise at random; they are produced by interactions between the organism and the environment during development. We propose, therefore, that the intrinsic dynamical structure of the epigenetic system itself, in its interaction with the environment, is the source of non-random variations which direct evolutionary change, and that a proper study of evolution consists in the working out of the dynamics of the epigenetic system and its response to environmental stimuli as well as the mechanisms whereby novel developmental responses are canalized.
We postulate that large evolutionary changes could be the result of the canalization of novel developmental responses which arose from environmental challenges under conditions of relaxed natural selection, and moreover, that the canalization of novel developmental responses might involve cytoplasmic inheritance or maternal effects at least in the initial stages.
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