Summations Only

Huh????That is the second most completely nonsensical creationist statement that I have ever seen. Please, please, please stop and learn something about evolution before you post more such nonsense! I just search for random mutation on each page of this topic and could find nothing even closely resembling your statement above except for this message of yours that I am replying to right now. You are the only source we know of for that nonsense.If you wish to insist that either or both RAZD and caffeine made that statement, then please cite the exact message in which they are supposed to have made that statement and quote them exactly.

intellen, you are obviously very confused about evolution and mutation and selection, undoubtedly by the creationist/ID misrepresentations of evolution that you have learned. Well, I do think there's a far amount of confusion about mutation, which is compounded by creationist misuse.First, there are different types of mutation, but only one kind is of any interest in evolution, namely only heritable mutations. Any mutation which cannot be inherited is of no use to evolution.What the general public and most creationists mean by "mutation" are gross physical changes that are readily apparent. These changes manifest themselves during embryonic and fetal development and can caused either by the DNA inherited from the parents or by external environmental factors (eg, thalidomide). Obviously, the mutations caused by external factors are of no interest, because they cannot be inherited; if such a mutant were to be able to reproduce, its mutation could not be transmitted to its offspring. Only the changes due to changes in DNA that could be inherited are of any interest.Therefore, the only mutations that are of any interest are genetic mutations, and even then only one type. An individual has basically two types of cells: somatic cells, which are the cells of its body, and germ cells, which are the cells that produce its gametes, either sperm or egg or spore. If a mutation occurrs in a somatic cell, then while it may well affect the operation of that cell and of the cells that it produces (eg, creating a lesion or a tumor) it will be of no evolutionary interest because it could not be inherited by the individual's offspring. However, if a mutation were to occur in a germ cell, then it could be copied into a gamete and, if that gamete were to be involved in reproduction, passed on to the individual's offspring. Now that is of interest to evolution and can be used by evolution!And those heritable genetic mutations are themselves of certain specific types, all of them of evolutionary interest, such as base substitution, base insertion or deletion, sequence duplication, sequence transposition, etc. The Wikipedia article, Mutation, lists them much more completely and describes them in much more detail.So then, mutation happens all the time, though the rate and types of mutation can be affected by the presence of mutagens (substances or factors, such as radiation, which cause mutation) in the environment. The only time that any mutation could possibly be involved in evolution is when it is passed on during reproduction. The physical changes that a mutation may cause is implemented and established in the individual body during development. Despite what you've seen in sci-fi films and TV, a mutation that happens during the individual's lifetime does not cause that individual to completely change form, but rather could only cause somatic changes in the individual's offspring.Since creationist misrepresentation of evolution has included misrepresenting it as being equivalent to mutation, perhaps part of your gross confusion is due to that. Mutatution is one factor that contributes to genetic variability (another factor in sexual reproduction is genetic recombination). When a population reproduces, the genetic variability of its offspring increases. But then the environment selects which offsprings' traits are more optimally suited for survival through the fact that those who are more able to survive will be more likely to reach reproductive age and be able to pass their traits on to their own offspring. Evolution is the combined effects of increased variability (partially due to mutations, which can also introduce new traits and modification of old traits) and selection by the environment.That is also described in terms of the genotype (the genetic make-up of an individual) and the phenotype (the individual's physical body created by its genotype during development). It is only the phenotype that selection and the environment works with, but it's only the genotype that can mutate and be inherited.In summary:Mutations happen all the time, independent of any ecological factors or "opportunities". Only those mutations that are heritable might be passed on to one's offspring. Only genetic mutations are heritable.Offspring are selected for or against (most commonly against) based on how well they are able to survive to reproductive age. This is where ecological factors or "opportunities" can come into play. Selection knows nothing about genetics; selection only knows about how well an individual's traits work in that particular environment.Evolution is the net effects of selection working on genetic variability. It is not mutation alone! It is not selection alone! It is both mutation (and genetic recombination, etc) and selection working together!Evolution is really that simple! It boggles the mind how much creationists can screw it up so much!

I trust that in a biology class that you've had in secondary school (what in my day was junior and senior high school grades 7 through 12) or in college, you had covered Mendellian genetics. Did that instruction also cover multiple alleles? If not, then here goes (and if so, then this will be for the lurkers).Basically (for our discussion, at least), "allele" is synonomous with "gene". In Mendellian genetics, you have a pair of genes for a trait, one from either parent. These genes are either dominant or recessive, such that (in most cases) if either gene is dominant then the dominant trait will be expressed (eg, brown eyes) and only if both genes are recessive will the recessive trait be expressed (eg, blue eyes). The same holds for hair color and for skin color. Since there are four possible combinations, three of which will express the dominant trait and only one of which will express the recessive, you can start with the parents' genotypes and calculate the probability of their children's genotypes.OK, we learned all that, but wouldn't that mean that there should only be one shade of blond and one shade of brown hair, only one shade of blue eyes and one of brown, only one shade of light skin and one shade of dark? Why do we see such a wide variety of colors if there are only two possible phenotypes?The answer is multiple alleles. We don't have only one pair of genes for hair color, but rather several pairs, multiple alleles for that trait. Similarly, we have multiple alleles for skin color and for eye color. Since hair, skin, and eye color result from the production of melanin and it is the dominant alleles that produce melanin and the recessive ones that don't, the more dominant alleles that you have, the darker you will be and the fewer that you have the lighter you will be. Thus by having multiple alleles for color, there is a broad range of shades of color that we can end up with, not just one simple off/on, black/white choice.So where did these multiple alleles come from? Reading the Wikipedia article on Mutation (highly recommended), you find that one type of mutation is the duplication of genes, which obviously will result in multiple alleles. As the Description section starts out:

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Mutations can involve large sections of DNA becoming duplicated, usually through genetic recombination. These duplications are a major source of raw material for evolving new genes, with tens to hundreds of genes duplicated in animal genomes every million years. Most genes belong to larger families of genes of shared ancestry. Novel genes are produced by several methods, commonly through the duplication and mutation of an ancestral gene, or by recombining parts of different genes to form new combinations with new functions.

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And therein lies the answer to your question: the production of new genes from old involves the old genes having been duplicated and then some of those duplicated genes mutating to perform a new function while a number of the old genes remain to continue to perform the old function.Or to put it in terms of your example, which was collagen production evolving from keratin production:
First the keratin genes were duplicated, resulting in multiple alleles for keratin. Then some of those keratin genes mutated to produce collagen. At no time in the development of collagen production did the production of keratin ever cease.Similarly, one "unsolvable problem for evolution" that arises in creationist rhetorics is how sex could have possibly evolved since both male and female had to have "evolved by blind chance" (which is a misrepresentation of how evolution works) at exactly the same time and place or else they would have died out immediately. But in your biology class(es) you should have covered the love-life of plants and of nematodes (worms). And if you had been paying attention, you should have noticed how incredibly complex their love-lives are, what with so many different ways they have to reproduce. Eg, many plants, such as ferns, can reproduce asexually through the production of spores or sexually to produce seeds. Many other plants (I'm just not sure about ferns) employ cloning wherein if a twig breaks off and gets planted in the ground it will grow another plant ("clone" comes from the Greek word for "twig") and some plants, such as strawberries, will actually extend a "runner" out to plant itself in the ground to grow another plant. Many "simple" animals can employ similar multiple reproductive methods. Multiple methods of reproduction, like multiple alleles, that allow the development of other forms of reproduction while retaining the old ways, thus ensuring reproduction until the newer way can be firmly established; by the time we got to tetrapods, sexual reproduction had been firmly established and the old ways lost.

Actually, "intellen", I was responding to your Message 47, wherein you stated:

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PLEASE, remember that: random mutation will not kick in IF there is no new ecological challenges. That is the post of RAZD and caffeine

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You were dead wrong. Not only in your inability to understand RAZD's and caffeine's posts, but, obviously, in your gross mistatement. As I explained in my Message 86.IOW, you were indeed talking about mutations, others had tried to explain it to you, and you still did not understand.

Yes! Precisely! Exactly what we have been telling you over and over again! Individuals do not evolve, but rather populations do!Here is a very important resource for you to actually learn something: Introduction to Evolutionary Biology: Version 2. And here's a very important quote from that very important resource:

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The process of evolution can be summarized in three sentences: Genes mutate. [gene: a hereditary unit] Individuals are selected. Populations evolve.

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Please read it and learn it. Then maybe you will be able to say something meaningful about evolution. Because so far all you've been able to mutter is complete nonsense that demonstrates beyond a doubt that you have absolutely no clue what evolution is. Oh dear! You say that English is your third language -- Spanish is my fourth, even though eso es el idioma de la familia. You say that you are from a tropical region. And that you are now in a more northern clime wherein your complexion is becoming paler through diminished exposure to sunlight, which is normal, since the body's actual complexion is part genetic and part in response to the environment (eg, to exposure to sunlight).Why ever do you imagine that handsomeness depends on how light your complexion is? Dark is bad, light is good? Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot, Oscar? (US military acronym for "what the fuck, over?", wherein the "over" signifies end of radio transmission). Dark is dark, light is light. Good is good, bad is bad. The two do not in any way intersect. What kind of messed-up racism have you bought into?Please read that "Introduction to Evolutionary Biology". At least try to gain some modicum of understanding of what you are so adamant about opposing.

I forget which class it was where we were given these terms -- I think it was linguistics (I was a German major at the time) and the terms were used to distinguish between two different ways to compare languages. Here are the terms:
1. synchronic -- at the same time. This form of comparison would compare differences and similarities between related languages at a fixed point in time.2. diachronic -- through time. This form of comparison would compare features of the same language at two different points in time and thus would study how that language had changed over time.I think that keeping those terms and concepts in mind will help here. That is correct. But you need to also keep in mind what we're discussing.Consider one definition of evolution which also gives us a way to measure it: change in a population's genome over time. Or, to avoid the appearance of arbitrarily defining evolution in terms of a population, we could reword that to be change in the genomes of the individuals within a population over time.OK, you and I are individuals within our human population. Our genetic make-ups (AKA our genotypes, AKA our DNA), are slight variations of the overall human genome. Where did you get your DNA from? From your parents, as they had gotten theirs from their parents and so on back through time. When we were conceived, two random packets of half of each parent's DNA combined to give us our own DNA. And that's what we're stuck with for our entire lives.So then, if we observe an individual diachronically from conception to death, do we ever observe that individual evolving? Do we ever observe his DNA, his genotype, changing over time? No, we do not. Therefore, individuals do not evolve.Now observe a population of individuals. First, we observe the population synchronically, comparing its constituent individuals with each other. We find that they have mostly the same traits, though with some variation (eg, some are larger, some have slightly different pigmentation) and we note the kinds of variation and how extensive and prevalent those variations are. We might even observe that some individuals have one or a few traits that the others don't have and we note what percentage of the population has that trait.After we have made a number of synchronic surveys over time (over enough time for the individuals of the previous survey to have died out, so the population now consists of new individuals), we can now observe the same population diachronically. We compare our synchronic observations from different times to see how they may have changed. We may observe that the extent and prevalence of some of the variations have changed; eg, subdued camoflaging coloration may have become more prevalent. We may also observe that some of those new traits have become much more prevalent and are now the norm, or that they have all but disappeared. What we do observe is that the overall genome of the population will have changed over time. Therefore, populations evolve.So then, individuals do not evolve, but populations do. QEDBut let's take it one step further. Individuals themselves consist of individual cells, each of which contains and uses a copy of the individual's DNA and each of which copies that DNA when it reproduces; even though we as individuals reproduce sexually, our cells are constantly reproducing asexually through mitosis. These cells can experience mutation, for example light-skinned individuals exposed to bright sunlight (ie, UV irradiation) over time can suffer mutations in the skin cells that create lesions (actinic keratosis, AK for short) that can develop into skin cancer. However, these mutations are all localized and do not change the individual's overall DNA. Also, these mutations that occur in body cells will die with the individual and not be passed on to any offspring; it is only the mutations arising in germ cells (ie, the cells that produce gametes) that will have any chance of being passed on to the next generation.I hope that all made sense.

In my reply, Message 89, for example. Quite conclusively, I felt.Why do you feel that my reply did not show your claim to be incorrect?