Molecular Population Genetics and Diversity through Mutation

I've never said a thing about the rightness or wrongness of what breeders do, at least not as part of my argument about the processes involved. These I claim are the same processes that occur in the wild because the source of selection doesn't matter in regard to the processes involved.Yes of course the sequence is what the allele DOES. I'm assuming Runx-2 is identified by its sequence. There are some variations in sequence that don't appear to change what it codes for of course. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

So now you're fixated with mutations being a disease..... they can be, but in evolutionary terms beneficial and deleterious mutations refer to an organism's fit to the environment it finds itself in, not whether it causes disease or not - tho' normally disease is not a good thing for survivability.But sickle cells can be both deleterious or beneficial depending on where and who you are.A deleterious colour mutation would be a black fur coat in a sandy desert or a black colouration on a pale tree. Perhaps moths and mice might declare those things diseases, but we don't.Would you call dwarfism in humans a disease?

You can call them what you will. But according to artificial human standards, which include neutering or other wise not allowing other dogs to breed, they would be more fit. But of course we don't generally apply the term fit where artificial selection occurs. It is probably not likely that natural selection would act similarly.Let's also recall that only a small percentage of dogs of any breed would have any chance of survival in the wild without human assistance, and an extremely small percentage of even those dogs would be able to compete against wolves if they found themselves in such a niche. Most healthy dogs are not fit by that definition. How much of that would you consider to be the result of mutation?

Yea, I guess to you everything is sick and diseased. Perhaps breeding programs aren't as good of an analogy to natural systems as you thought they were? No, it's the complexity of the interactions in nature. It's that nature doesn't fit into a nice neat mold that you have envisioned that it should fit into. Wrong. This is your strawman characteriztion One of my favorite professors had a saying: "Biology is the study of plants and their parasites." Think about it Faith, we are all parasites. This is simply not true. Especially in artificial selection systems. Runx-2 is a gene locus. Variations in the sequences at the gene locus are called alleles. These alleles are formed when the sequence of that gene locus changes and is passed on to the offspring. These changes are called mutations. Runx-2 in mice is at a different gene locus. Dogs and mice do not have the same genome. The knockout mouse is used for experimental purposes. This makes no sense. What is the evidence that mutations commonly kill alleles? What does "kill the allele" even mean? Uhmmm... I don't think you understand how genes code for products and what those products do after they have been produced. If you did, I can't imagine why you would say something like this. AlbinismHBD

The testiness, the irritability, the anger, even the hate, are getting to me. I need to take a LOOOOONG break from this atmosphere, but stup-idly just *have to* answer this or that. It's getting to the point that I couldn't care less what you say or anybody says. You make so little effort to make sense of my posts. Does it ever occur to you that you really might be enslaved to a false worldview? Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I never said a thing about the rightness or wrongness of what breeders do, either. You keep making the claim that breeders are selecting for specific traits. If they are selecting for a short snout, and a mutation in Runx-2 produces the trait they were looking for, wouldn't that be a beneficial mutation? If not, what would be in this situation?Also, this would produce the very thing you called an increase in genetic complexity. Prior to the mutation in Runx-2, you had several populations of dogs that shared similar alleles. Let's call that allele "A". Along came this new mutation and produce allele B. In the isolated bulldog population, this mutation was selected for and replaced the A allele.Before
not bulldogs= allele A
bulldogs= allele AAfter mutation and selection
not bulldogs= allele A
bulldogs= allele BHow is that not an increase in genetic complexity? DNA sequence is not a verb. Sequence isn't something that a gene does. Sequence is what a gene is.We are also talking about mutations in the Runx-2 gene that change the phenotype. You keep claiming that mutations can't produce changes in phenotype, yet here we have one.

If it helps, don't feel the need to reply to this post.No-one here hates you, but you're saying a lot of things that are factually and provably wrong, so people are going to point them out - some in a fairly frustrated fashion. Also I suspect you're having some doubts yourself simply because the evidence is so obviously against you which is understandably causing some stress. Because you know that you can't be wrong, you'll now have some time out to recuperate and come back after a while and repeat all the same stuff as though all this never happened. We understand this. Sure. Or at least it did when I was a Christian - but I grew out of that at about 14.I accepted science because it was taught in school and I trusted school to teach me stuff. It also taught me religion which was a bit confusing because when it said I could make potassium tri-iodide (a really cool explosive) by mixing ammonia with iodine I could test it myself, but when it said I was going to hell for wanking, it felt like a wanker had made it up and I couldn't test it.It turns out that everything religions say that can be tested is in error but when science says something it can be tested and if it's wrong it gets fixed. So on the balance of probabilities I go with science and rationality in the knowledge that the bits that are wrong will be corrected.Your problem is that for what you believe to be true - the earth is 6,000 years old, there was a global flood and evolution didn't happen - you have to throw away 200 years of science in practically all of it's disciplines from biology, physics, geology, palaeontology, astronomy and even mathematics. And you, Faith, personally, with no education or training in any of these disciplines have to invent substitutes for millions upon millions of scientific papers on the fly. No wonder you get stressed.

Not if it does harm to the animal. I don't define "beneficial" by human aesthetics. And this has nothing to do with my argument about genetic diversity. Genetic diversity. Meaning the sum of the genetic possibilities available in the population for creating new varieties of phenotypes (which you think of as mutations and I think of as Created for the purpose of variation of the Kind). [qs] Prior to the mutation in Runx-2, you had several populations of dogs that shared similar alleles. Let's call that allele "A". Along came this new mutation and produce allele B. In the isolated bulldog population, this mutation was selected for and replaced the A allele.Before
not bulldogs= allele A
bulldogs= allele A Genetic diversity, not complexity.And I answered you that it is an increase in genetic diversity. To try to be clearer then, the point is that it is the sequence that DETERMINES what the gene does. Yes? The protein it codes for and the phenotypic expression of that coding. Something is very unclear here too. I don't say mutations "can't produce changes in the phenotype," I just don't think they have much to do with that process in the normal run of things,When I'm talking about the production of phenotypes I'm talking specifically about how that process reduces genetic diversity. I'm not focused on how the pool of genetic diversity originated from which the new population developed, but when mutations get into the picture I do acknowledge that of course they WOULD contribute to that diversity if they really do what you all say they do. I have acknowledged that much as a hypothetical situation I don't know how many times.THEN I go on to my point which is how the isolated new population with its new gene frequencies (which may or may not include mutations although you would claim they are all mutations, but it doesn't matter for the sake of the argument at this point what they are -- they are whatever makes up the gene pool which is composed of a new set of gene frequencies in relation to the parent population -- at this point in the argument I don't consider it important whether they are mutations or not, because the point I'm trying to make is that this new gene pool brings out new phenotypes that didn't exist in the parent population, and they are brought out due to the recombination of the new set of gene frequencies.This would happen whether those new gene frequencies were mutations or built in. I have TRIED to say this a million times. I try to allow mutations for the sake of argument just to get the point across that it makes no difference to my argument what they are, but since I believe mutations really don't contribute anything beneficial to the organism I have to bring in the other alternative at the same time.I'm focused on the reduction of genetic diversity through the mere reduction in numbers of individuals that founded the new population, which works best in reproductive isolation. I'm claiming that recombination of existing alleles alone produces the new phenotypes, you don't need mutations and for the most part depending on when they occur they interfere with the formation of the new species or breed anyway.And yes I know a breed is not a species, but insofar as it is a new population with a different phenotypic presentation from other populations, and was formed by isolation of a smallish number of individuals from those other populations, it demonstrates the same process.I don't CARE if Runx-2 is one of the few mutations that doesn't do anything overtly deleterious.I'm actually trying to stop arguing about this because after saying it over and over for years nobody gets it anyway. Believe what you want, evolution is a lie but I'm tired of the whole debate.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Yes, we understand that you're "focused on" certain biological process, while completely ignoring others. This is what makes your argument so stupid. You: All birds are flightless.
Us: What about owls and robins and finches and hummingbirds and ...
You: I'm not focusing on those. I'm focusing on ostriches and kiwis.
Us: But the other birds exist whether or not you "focus on" them.
You: Also evolutionary processes must inevitably reduce genetic diversity until evolution grinds to a halt.
Us: What about mutations?
You: I'm not focusing on that.

Aren't you supposed to be a genius? You are certainly obtuse for a genius. The mutations don't count because they would only function as normal alleles anyway, which I'm arguing have to be reduced in the formation of a new species or breed. It's the reduction of the genetic material, whether that material is made up of mutations or built-in alleles, that is the point. Mutations can not change the fact that to get a new species REQUIRES reduction of genetic diversity. You have to LOSE them to get a new species or breed, you HAVE to, Adding anything at this point is redundant or destructive.But I know I'm talking to a box of rocks. This has been explained at least a hundred times and you continue to have your obtuse silly straw man you made up yourself without ever getting for half a second what I'm talking about. Then you have the gall to call me names. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Yet another keeper.Assuming that they do function as normal alleles, unlke the old ones which were normal and already present, new alleles do increase diversity because they don't necessarily displace or remove the old alleles from the population, just from the individual gaining the mutation. Absent yet another selection event (like a breeder deciding that the new allele is "icky", what you have just acknowledged is a mechanism for increasing diversity within a breed or species.Nice work. Whose side are you on anyway?

My conversion from "Christian" to atheist occurred at age 15 under the tutelage of atheist friends and a charmingly funny and brilliant atheist propagandist math teacher. Something over thirty years later I learned that Christianity is a lot more than what I barely absorbed in church as a child anyway. So did I. School taught me no religion, and the religion I got in church didn't include any knowledge of salvation and didn't stick for long when I encountered atheists. I don't remember being told anything about hell or about evolution in church, it seemed to be the atheists who cared about all that. Of course if there are areas of reality that aren't subject to scientific testing because they have nothing to do with the physical world but another realm of reality altogether, and you've arbitrarily rejected them for simply being a different kind of reality, that's pretty irrational of you isn't it? That's not a problem if science has gone off the rails, and it went way off with Hutton and Lyell and Darwin for starters. I have to throw away everything that has to do with presumptuously declaring as fact mere hypotheses about what in true fact cannot be observed or tested, events in the remote past, and unfortunately there's a lot of that irrational nonsense in those sciences. But despite that there's also objective reality in all of them that I consider to be true science. Remove the evolutionary hypothesis from all of them and they'd be a lot better able to do their work as sciences. I inhabit an entirely different paradigm than the one that corrupts the minds that write those papers, so that whatever is true in them is always being subsumed under a Big Fat Lie that skews it all beyond any real scientific usefulness. The science in them would stand without the lie, but that would require some intricate epistemological surgery.Anyway, there's no excuse in any of that for the attitude creationists have to put up with here. I've often given as good as I get but I've been knocking myself out to avoid metaphorically punching you all in the teeth for weeks now. God loves you all so I have to learn how to no matter what you throw at me, even when it's really too much to take.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : correct spelling

So, you're not "focusing on" the bit where diversity is added.Yeah, my point. Again, we are familiar with your desperate, impotent attempts to evade reality, and we understand them perfectly. We are merely unconvinced.

You are seriously delusional if you think you understand anything of what I've been arguing.

Let's try this again.Selection. Decreases. Genetic. Diversity.Mutation. Increases. Genetic. Diversity.If only the first of these processes existed, we would indeed see an inevitable monotonic decrease in genetic diversity. But it doesn't, so we don't. If we choose only to "focus on" the first of these processes, this does not actually alter reality, because reality doesn't care which bits of it you ignore.