Question on genetic information

Following up on what Paul said,A good way to tell when a creationist is pulling from thin air is when they talk about information increase in an organism, but don't define information, and switch between some sort of macroinformation and genetic information definition, as I have begun to call them. They will talk about genetic information in things like new genes and genes that switch traits on and off. But we can give actual mathematical descriptions of genetic information in the same way that we can describe the information in the digital bytes of your hard drive. Problem is that genetic information increased if the length of the DNA sequence increases. And there are several known mechanisms which cause the length of the DNA sequence to increase.This causes them to switch to a macroinformation concept, which seems to be looking for new "functions" in an organism, though function often isn't defined and really can't be measured in any effective way. Additionally, we have examples of opposite trends in macroinformation, for example where one group of organisms evolves to bigger sizes and one evolves to smaller sizes. Both of these changes can't be a decrease in information.A commonly cited example used by creationists is snakes. Creationist mostly accept that snakes have lost their legs, there is fossil evidence of such a transition occurring and some snakes still have vestigil legs. Snakes lost their legs, which is the loss of an appendage and function, obviously a loss of information. But if function is our concern, their are several forms of snake locomotion that have evolved after the limbs have been lost, lateral undulation, sidewinding, concertina, rectilinear, and slide pushing are all forms of ground locomotion, while some snakes have adapted the ability to climb trees and glide trough the air. Several of these forms of locomotion involve changes in the snakes body, which are neccessary for these locomotions to occur. In other words, a mutation in design which causes a new function, or an increase in information.I'd be happy to direct you to more information concerning these examples, just let me know. The basic point is that information is a useful metaphor for what is stored in DNA, but that evolutionary changed care not for information- the concept is foreign. Things change, that's it.Edited by platypus, : No reason given.

Thanks Percy, I was not aware of that research done on snake legs. I guess it goes to show that a loss of an physical feature or function does not always translate into a loss of genetic information.

A lot of the information all ready exists in links on other posts on this website. Confidence argues the genetic information position and is refuted by examples in Message 41. I would suggest reading through the entire thread starting with message 41 and following interesting links. Towards the end of this thread are a few examples showing a changed in organisms in two different directions, in particular towards small sizes and large sizes.Also, Can random mutations cause an increase in information in the genome? discusses the problems with defining information in a measurable way. This thread got off-topic pretty quickly, but the first couple pages are relevant and informative.As for gene switching, look at Message 18. This is what RAZD is refering to in the previous post, and is also refered to in your opening post. When new features do appear, creationists try to explain it away by saying that the gene was present from the begining, but was switched on by another regulatory gene. Still, the switch gene must still be activated, which presumably works by an increase in some sort of information.DNA increases in length can be caused by gene duplication , linked to a wikipedia entry.As for snakes, here you can read about the various forms of ground locomotion. The most interesting from an information standpoint is rectilinear motion. From the webpage This sort of motion is caused by large changes to body structure, which confer a benefit to the snake- the ability to move while being extremely large. The structure and arrangements of skeletal muscles has changed in these snakes, opening up a new form of locomotion.My favorite example of information increase is in flying snakes. Similar to rectilinear motion, there is a definite change to the snakes skeletal flexibility and muscular arrangement. These changes allow the snake's body to assume a more aerodynamically efficient shape, thus allowing these snakes to glide through the air.I like these examples because they are not just genetic changes, they are major changes to an organism's shape and structure which open up the possibility of new fuctions that confer a selective advantage to that organism. It's hard to see how these changes can be viewed as decreases in information, or losses of function.Hope that helps!

The argument has one more possibility, stemming from the origin of the information argument, which was in the second law of thermodynamics. Namely, Information (like entropy) can only stay teh same or decrease, it can never increase. Since point mutuations are reversible, creationists can argue that point mutations conserve information (like reversible thermodynamic transitions converse entropy). But major changes will only cause a decrease in information. The analogy to thermodynamics is uncanny.Not that I think this gives this argument any more validity, but I seem to gather that this is what they are arguing, or trying to argue. They still have the problems of not defining information, and dealing with gene duplication.

Right. The creationist argument was originally formed on entropy, as I understand it. They argued that things must be designed because the world is highly ordered, and entropy can only increase with time based on the second law of thermodynamics. Then they realized this was wrong because the earth is not a closed system, so they quickly exchanged "entropy" for "information" and made a similar argument, except with no information increase in time. This argument works remarkably better, mainly because no one is quite sure what information is, so it is unclear whether information should increase or decrease with time, and whether this decrease depends on the system being open or closed. Many arguments have learned from this mistake- creationists have learned not to use scientific terms anymore, because it makes the flaws in their arguments too obvious. Now they make up their own terms (like information or "kinds"- why talk about cat "kinds" when cat have already have a taxonomic grouping?), or they simple redefine scientific terms to mean what they want (like the terms "evolution" and "science").edit- Wiki has a pretty good section on this:
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Look at the section based on the second law of thermodynamics. The entropy argument is given initially, and then there are several arguments that attempt to relate information theory to entropy. All these areguments are refuted by talkorigens.Edited by platypus, : No reason given.