Can random mutations cause an increase in information in the genome?

Hey, Percy, ya typin' on a qwerty keyboard or a Dvorak? List of English words containing Q not followed by U (admittedly essentailly all borrowed from other languages).Carry on, nothing more to see here.

I'm sensitive to your concern about topic. I'm staying well away from the topic of random mutation.Randomness as it pertains to information theory is, I think, relevant, since it's a key concept of information theory, and is why Ifen has repeated it a couple times. Someone who doesn't understand that the message with the most information content is a random stream of bits doesn't understand information theory. It's a wonderful starting point for introducing information theory concepts.--Percy

Give me a minute to light that hoop on fire and I'll get going.

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A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, 'darkness' on the walls of his cell.
C. S. Lewis

Nitpicker! --Percy

OK i'm a highschool student so I may not be as knoladgeable or (have verry good spelling) but all you guys seam to be doing is fighting over the meaning of his question, here is a general answer that I hope someone who is more specialized in that field can run with,an information gain is often said to be an impossible or rare event in the occorance of random mutation, this is simply not true. Many complex organisms have more than one of a spacific gene, when one of these genes is mutated to serv a diferent functuon that turns out to be benificial the next generation ends up with both the normal extra copeys of the genes origonally mutated pluss the gene that serves a seperate perpose... this is an information gain it it not?

Yes with regards to information one might define randomness in a way better suited. The clarification you gave is great.The thing about randomness though is that some people start to pull out somewhat equivalent definitions that may distort thing. A valid definition of randomness is simply that for a given random choice all possible options are equally likely. There are situations where a given implementation of random has been considered erroneous where that condition has not been met. Certainly biological systems do not meet that standard for randomness yet do given my looser definition of simply not being able to provide a closed form. It is still random because it is undefinable yet all outcomes are not equally likely.I think with regards to rand and Garrett in this thread there are a number of things that they will have to learn in order to even be able to argue on the correct vein.1. Randomness in the true sense is the most effective producer of information. This point is lost in the invalid equating of information and meaning. To tie this into your clarification all you would need to get true randomness is to reduce your set to the elements that do not have a dependency. (i.e. collapse 'qu' into just 'q' or an equavalent symbol)2. Before you can declare that information cannot increase you must be able to measure information. That is why I really want Garrett to address my post #87 because it outlines an experiment he can do to show he is right. Quantify information and then take a measurement of the information content of his sentence. Then all he needs to do is duplicate a word and remeasure. If the quantity of information is the same then he is right. If it is not then either his metric may not be right or he is just simply wrong.

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

It is. The problem is that Garrett and randman and many others before them don't want this to be true because this is the last holdout of the true creationist.Therefore they will always say that this is not new information just a copy of old information. Thus their definition of information has just changed. This is why there is the persistant asking of what definition of information they are using, because they switch back and forth.According to standard information theory this is most certainly new information. If you define information to mean a new symbol or a 'word' that does not exist in the grammar then you have just changed the definition of information to be equivalent to "meaning" which has no purpose in genetics. Usually from here you get a bunch of useless and invalid analogies between genetics and english sentence structure that have no basis in reality.

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

Welcome to EvC Instagator.My sig, if the links are up to date may be of some help (if not ask around ).You might want to read the whole thread over. You are assuming a specific definition of "information" and your (correct, btw) statement has already been made.The problem is that Garret et al. are using some other meaning for the term (and I think have agreed to stick to SC (specified complexity) instead).The core of this thread is that in order for anyone to tell if your example is a "gain" or not we have to calculate a "metric" -- a number that gives a value to the amount of information before and after any change. Then we simply compare one number to the other. Case closed.However, to do the calculation we need a precise method to calculate the amount of CS before and after. Without that method then any sentence saying there is "less" or "more" of CS is meaningless. It is about like saying that a Delicious has more "appleness" than a Gala. Or that an orange has more specified appleness than a coconut.This is the sense that a "definition" is being argued over. It is indeed the very meaning of his question. Right now no one here, including, most definitely including Garret, has any idea what his question means.If I say you are taller than Billie Bob in your class most people would have not problem determining if I am right or not. There is a well-defined way of measureing tallness. You know, back 'em up to the wall, stick a knife level, mark wall, measure to floor. BB is 5 ' 6" , TI is 6' 2". You are taller.Then someone comes along and say No! BB is "taller". Huge number of people run around measureing more carefully. BB is 5' 5 and 7/8 you are 6' 1 and 3/4 etc. The new kid still doesn't agree.Finally the new kid tells us that you lay each on their back, measure distance from floor to top of stomach. BB, the somewhat chubby kid is 14" "thick". You are 7". We need to know how to measure this quantity precisely.By the way; you're new but we've been through this before. What Garret hasn't figured out yet is that his sources sound all fancy and mathematical but it is a snow job. There is no precise definition of CS. They use analogies and move the shells fast enough that their intended audience can't follow the pea and get confused.This will go on for another 50 or 100 posts and then the ID'ers will give up and go away.Complexity is, however, a valid concept to try and measure. There has been a bit of research in the area. It is very hard to get a good measure of it that is not counter-intuitive.As noted above something that is totally, and really random is very "complex" in some way but not the way we want the concept to work out as. Something the opposite of random -- totally uniform isn't very complex either though. Catching the 'inbetweenness' in a quantifiable way is the trick. I don't think it has been done yet.ABE (added by edit)
fixed a couple of my own spelling errors in much shorter words than yours.This message has been edited by AdminNosy, 02-14-2006 05:46 PM

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Are you serious here? What a load of BS, nosey, and from an admin participating on the thread as a user and using his mod status to slant, bias, and direct the conversation.You complain that CS is not quantified or defined, and yet insist on the threat of banning that no one point out evos have not really defined what the heck "random" means in respect to evo claims of random mutations.It's pretty clear what garret is talking about. You just don't want the discussion to go forward because you and evos don't have a viable answer for the question posed.

Nondetermined. Given a specific situation, a random outcome is one not absolutely determinable from the initial conditions. I.e. a coin toss, rolling dice, the roulette wheel, etc.Now, I know you've produced research before about how certain sites are more likely to mutate than others; that's not really significant. Random doesn't imply that all outcomes are equally probable. Roll two 6-sided dice and you're more likely to roll a 7 than a 12; that doesn't mean that two dice aren't a random test.Pseudorandomness would be the phenomenon where deterministic formulas create sequences or outcomes that are statistically indeterminable from random ones; this is how computers generate "random" numbers, for instance. If you knew the random function of your computer, and the initial state it used as input, you could easily predict its outcome. One major function of cryptography - which relies heavily on random numbers - is disguising this fact and concealing these formulas. They're very closely guarded trade secrets.

Define CS then we'll get to random if we need to.You can, since you're so freakin' smart, define random yourself when and if we need to.It is very clear that neither Garret or you actually know what you are talking about.The claim is that mutations in the genome can not supply "more" of some quantity called CS. However, no one has been able to make clear how one could tell when one has more or less of this stuff.Vague, inappropriate analogies have been used. Their weakness has been pointed out. No precise, clear, quantifiable definition has been supplied.If you wish to delay getting to that definition (and since randomness is indeed going to be OT) you may supply a definition of randomness if you wish.Alternatively we can leave randomness out and just discuss weather ANY change by ANY any cause at all can be a change that increases CS in the genome.I know what Garret is talking about. However, you and he don't.This message has been edited by NosyNed, 02-14-2006 07:08 PM

deletedThis message has been edited by crashfrog, 02-14-2006 07:14 PM

Randomness has been defined.Now let's see if someone will define specified complexity. SC -- I've been typing CS

Can I take a shot? I'm not convinced that the concept itself is entirely without merit. Or perhaps a better term is more appropriate for what I'm about to describe.If you could imagine an outcome space, where each different way to do something - in this case, each way to arrange DNA base pairs for polypeptide synthesis - were linked in such a way that you could travel from one to another by one "step", where a step was a change of one element, specified complexity might be considered to be the degree to which a sequence that actually did something was surrounded by sequences that did nothing. The farther apart each little "island" of function would be seperated on a sea of nonfuction, the more specificity each island represents.But it turns out that:

quote:

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One of the most surprising discoveries which has arisen from DNA sequencing has been the remarkable finding that the genomes of all organisms are clustered very close together in a tiny region of DNA sequence space forming a tree of related sequences that can all be interconverted via a series of tiny incremental natural steps.

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and

quote:

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at this density all functional sequences are connected by single amino acid changes.

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So, the specificity of DNA doesn't to me appear to be that high. Functional protein sequences are clustered very tightly together and it's very easy indeed to get from any one to any other through a series of small, functional steps.(cites from CB150: Functional genetic sequences changing

And how do I quantify this so I know if it is going up or down?ABE
And you've confused things by deleteing you definition of randomness.This message has been edited by NosyNed, 02-14-2006 07:30 PM