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Author Topic:   Beneficial Mutations Made Simple
Coragyps
Member (Idle past 761 days)
Posts: 5553
From: Snyder, Texas, USA
Joined: 11-12-2002


Message 12 of 52 (313192)
05-18-2006 12:35 PM
Reply to: Message 11 by Hyroglyphx
05-18-2006 12:07 PM


and showed an extra pair of wings on a fly and silently praised it.
How did they do that, nem?

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Coragyps
Member (Idle past 761 days)
Posts: 5553
From: Snyder, Texas, USA
Joined: 11-12-2002


Message 19 of 52 (313641)
05-19-2006 7:32 PM
Reply to: Message 17 by mr_matrix
05-19-2006 7:11 PM


Re: More uninformed rubbish
Try this, from an old thread. The emphasis is slightly off for this thread, but hey, I'm lazy.
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.
---------------
Comments?
(Sorry, old-timers. It just keeps floating to the surface.)

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Coragyps
Member (Idle past 761 days)
Posts: 5553
From: Snyder, Texas, USA
Joined: 11-12-2002


Message 32 of 52 (313739)
05-19-2006 10:20 PM
Reply to: Message 29 by mr_matrix
05-19-2006 8:59 PM


Re: Rarity of beneficial mutations
Even though non{e?} have obsereved benifitial mutations...
How is the mutation leading to hemoglobin C not beneficial in the malaria-ridden environment where it arose? Is 93% lower chance of getting malaria of no consequence in a part of the world where a million kids a year die from malaria?

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Coragyps
Member (Idle past 761 days)
Posts: 5553
From: Snyder, Texas, USA
Joined: 11-12-2002


Message 38 of 52 (313922)
05-20-2006 3:24 PM
Reply to: Message 36 by mr_matrix
05-20-2006 3:01 PM


Re: Afraid of what?
There is probably a building in your town called a library. It would be the one that has books to loan out, typically for free.
If you have one, see if they have Gaining Ground by Jennifer Clack or At the Water's Edge by Carl Zimmer. Reading either of those will give you a good start on how that happened. Heck, this thread right here at EvC is a start. Or over here.

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Coragyps
Member (Idle past 761 days)
Posts: 5553
From: Snyder, Texas, USA
Joined: 11-12-2002


Message 39 of 52 (313930)
05-20-2006 3:34 PM
Reply to: Message 37 by mr_matrix
05-20-2006 3:03 PM


Re: Afraid of what?
I mean as a species like a fish turning into a reptile.
No, that's X-Men, not biology. Speciation doesn't happen all in one flash. A mama fish lays a clutch of eggs, and there are some slight variations among the fish that result - like there are variations among any sisters and brothers you have. Some of these variants have a little bit of an edge in growing up and laying their own eggs, in the context of the environment they inhabit. The process repeats, maybe a couple of thousand generations' worth. The fish at this 2000th generation look slightly but noticeably different from the original mama fish - perhaps because the lake they've all lived in is slowly getting saltier. The process goes on....this line of fish eventually either dies out, or some of its members show up with new traits that help them survive in a saltier world. A new species, in other words.

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Coragyps
Member (Idle past 761 days)
Posts: 5553
From: Snyder, Texas, USA
Joined: 11-12-2002


Message 41 of 52 (313946)
05-20-2006 4:19 PM
Reply to: Message 40 by mr_matrix
05-20-2006 4:02 PM


Re: Afraid of what?
Mutations are not concious mechanisms that can create new perfectly functioning organs or body systems.
Exactly correct. That's one reason that so many fish lay, say, 100,000 eggs at a pop. Most get eaten. Most, if they have any mutations, have minor ones that don't effect their chances for survival. Some have lethal mutations, or ones that handicap their ability to grow and reproduce. Occasionally, one might have a mutation that leads to its swim bladder being better than average at extracting oxygen from air. That last one is better equipped to survive a long dry spell at the pond.
In order for a fish to be able to live on land...
...it might just need to have some minor adaptations, like a walking catfish, a mudskipper, or a northern snakehead. No, none of those live on land full time - but then neither do frogs or salamanders.
http://www.newyorktails.com/mudskippers.htm
http://www.dnr.state.md.us/fisheries/snakeheadinfosheet.html
ScotCat Factsheets: May 2000: Clarias batrachus (Linnaeus, 1758)

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Coragyps
Member (Idle past 761 days)
Posts: 5553
From: Snyder, Texas, USA
Joined: 11-12-2002


Message 42 of 52 (313949)
05-20-2006 4:23 PM
Reply to: Message 40 by mr_matrix
05-20-2006 4:02 PM


Re: An example of Evolution Myth
Mr M - {qs}what you want to quote{/qs}, but with square brackets, will give you quote boxes and make your posts easier to read. Or use the "peek" button to see how other posts were formatted. Like this:
what you want to quote

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