Please explain mutations

Since the TOE relies on the use of multiple mutations to account for the gradual progressive changes made in an organism, please explain how this process works. I hear it referred to constantly and its process is never questioned or explained. How are the traits inherited? Is the DNA changed at birth or after? Are they always passed on? Can they ever breed out nullifing the change? etc. Since this occurs so easily in nature then it must have been studied at length in the lab. What were the results? Where can I find out more about them?

OK. That explains the functions of the mutation process. Now can someone provide a hypothetical mathamatical model for the mutations to occur in. For example. How many mutations and how much time will it take for a singe celled organism to mutate into a house fly? If it takes 1 year for a single mutation to occur in a species and 1 in every 500 mutations are beneficial then it would take 500 years for one beneficial mutation and so on. (These are purely hypothetical numbers that have absolutely no scientific basis.) Roughly how many mutations will be needed for the transformation? I realize that there is no definate answer to this question, I just want a rough idea.Thanks.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Karl:
Jonathan - a single celled organism will never mutate into a housefly, because individual organisms do not evolve - populations do.

​

---

Maybe I should have been more clear. For a population that would have been present early on in the stages of life what would a typical evolutionary process be? At what rate would a "population" of flys ,or anything else, evolve? How often did the mutations occur? (over time and per species)What Im getting at is how do we know what occured and how it worked if no one was there to see it. Just because it "fits" isant good enough. Where is the evidence for it? How can we base a theory on the function of mutations when we dont even know how often the mutations occured? Or for that matter how often a positive mutation occured?