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Author Topic:   Gene pool deeper?
Coragyps
Member (Idle past 735 days)
Posts: 5553
From: Snyder, Texas, USA
Joined: 11-12-2002


Message 7 of 47 (106658)
05-08-2004 6:00 PM
Reply to: Message 4 by Gup20
05-08-2004 5:19 PM


Gup20 writes:
However, creationists believe that this is assumptive because no-where in nature can you observe the directional information gaining change required to make Darwinistic evolution possible.
What's that "directional" doing in there? What does that have to do with "Darwinistic" evolution?

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 Message 4 by Gup20, posted 05-08-2004 5:19 PM Gup20 has replied

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Coragyps
Member (Idle past 735 days)
Posts: 5553
From: Snyder, Texas, USA
Joined: 11-12-2002


Message 18 of 47 (106695)
05-08-2004 9:33 PM
Reply to: Message 9 by Gup20
05-08-2004 6:20 PM


duplicate - edited away.
This message has been edited by Coragyps, 05-08-2004 08:36 PM

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Coragyps
Member (Idle past 735 days)
Posts: 5553
From: Snyder, Texas, USA
Joined: 11-12-2002


Message 19 of 47 (106697)
05-08-2004 9:35 PM
Reply to: Message 9 by Gup20
05-08-2004 6:20 PM


Creationism and Evolution go in opposite directions.
Creationism and The AiG Cartoon Version of Evolution may, but evolution as studied by biologists doesn't have a direction. We humans, and whales, and giant squid, and platypi are all incidental to the process.

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Coragyps
Member (Idle past 735 days)
Posts: 5553
From: Snyder, Texas, USA
Joined: 11-12-2002


Message 27 of 47 (106814)
05-09-2004 3:47 PM
Reply to: Message 24 by Gup20
05-09-2004 3:23 PM


Old-timers, I apologize for dragging this out again, but just maybe Gup20 will give me a reply. I don't think I've ever gotten one before.
This is a copy of a post of mine from an old thread, so there might be a couple of odd references in it:
Ref: Nature, vol 414, pp 305-308 (2001) - "Haemoglobin C protects against clinical Plasmodium falciparum malaria" , by D Modiano et al. It's not online, to my knowledge, except by paid subscription.
Normal human hemoglobin ("HbA") is coded for by DNA which reads, as the 16th through 18th positions of a certain gene, GAA. This codon tells a cell's protein factory to put the amino acid glutamate at the sixth spot along the peptide that will become the beta chain of your or my hemoglobin. However, in a large number of West Africans, particularly the Mossi of Burkina Faso, this speck of DNA reads AAA. The distribution of folks with this variant looks like a bull's-eye: lots of the gene in one area of Burkina Faso, and fewer and fewer people with it as you move away from that center. The distribution is consistent with the idea that one person had the mutation about a thousand years ago, and that it spread through his or her descendants since. (Most people weren't terribly mobile in that area until nearly modern times - at least until the slave trade started.)
Now this DNA change alters that sixth amino acid on the beta chain of hemoglobin to lysine, making HbC. Most people with hemoglobin C never know it - some have mild anemia, gallstones, or spleen problems. But Modiano's paper documents that Mossi children that have both genes for HbC are 7% as likely to develop malaria as their classmates who have boring old HbA. 7% as likely to get the disease that kills a couple of million kids in West Africa every year. And that's because their genome has the information to make a protein that has one amino acid that's different from the one in their neighbors, and in their ancestors, too, if you go back a ways. New information. Useful new information. (You will agree that being able to make two different proteins is "more information" than being able to make only one, won't you? Kids in the study that had the AC genotype - that had both HbA and HbC in their blood - had a 29% reduction in their chance of getting malaria.) New, useful, "information" from a mutation.
Now a footnote: if your DNA reads GUA instead of GAA in this position, you get a valine in position 6 and have sickle-cell trait - the result of a different mutated hemoglobin called HbS. This protects against malaria, too, but the side effects can be severe, including fatal, especially if you have both genes for HbS. This, too, is "new information" - a different protein is being made.

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Coragyps
Member (Idle past 735 days)
Posts: 5553
From: Snyder, Texas, USA
Joined: 11-12-2002


Message 42 of 47 (106932)
05-09-2004 10:36 PM
Reply to: Message 34 by Gup20
05-09-2004 7:39 PM


This is still a loss of information (specified complexity). Despite the fact that sickle cell anemia sufferers are more resistant to malaria,
So being able to make hemoglobin that not only carries oxygen but also thwarts the nefarious plans of Plasmodium is a "loss of information?" I fail to see how, and I fail to see why you address my footnote on sickle-cell and not Hemoglobin C.

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