Evolving New Information

Not all mutations are point mutations. You must also factor in indels. If a 100 base indel becomes fixed you are fixing 100 bases all at the same time. As others have shown, the mutation rate needed to produce the differences seen between humans and chimps is pretty close to the mutation rate observed in humans as others have pointed out.

Until I read an article in this month's Scientific American (How Trivial DNA Changes Can Hurt Health) I would have replied in the same way, but now I'm not so sure. Maybe there really is no such thing as a neutral mutation.The example in the SciAm article was of a neutral mutation that still produces the identical protein. Let's say that in the gene for a certain protein that one codon mutates from GGA to GGG, which still produces glycine. The RNA machinery will still produce the same protein, but it turns out that because the particular chemical that RNA uses to interpret GGA properly is much more common than for interpreting GGG, the mutation to GGG causes the protein to be produced less efficiently or with greater error. As expressed at one point in the article: Given the possibility of such subtle effects as the concentration levels of very specific chemicals within the cell upon the protein factory, completely neutral mutations now seem much less likely to me.A news brief in the same issue (Genetic Copy Variations and Disease) described how high level mutations called copy number mutations are far more common than originally suspected: So not only are neutral mutations less neutral than we thought, the amount of genetic variation in members of the same species may be systematically underestimated. In other words, there's more new information evolving all the time than we may have previously thought.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Add missing close parenthesis.

I'll take issue with it Percy.There are 6 lots of 4 possibilities according to your model. That's 4⁶ different possibilities. You can't add information to that but it's interesting to hear you talk about messages.Edited by LucyTheApe, : gammar

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There no doubt exist natural laws, but once this fine reason of ours was corrupted, it corrupted everything. blz paskal

Why not?

Because according to Percy's view there are 4096 different kinds of eyes (color). Now add information to this!

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There no doubt exist natural laws, but once this fine reason of ours was corrupted, it corrupted everything. blz paskal

No, according to *you* there are 4096 different kinds of eye color. 4096 is the maximum possible number of unique messages that can created with a six character sequence of four characters. I said there were three messages in the message set:

• GGAACG
• GGAACA
• GGCACG

What this means is that each organism in our population has only one of these three sequences for this gene. Some organisms have the CGAACG sequence for this gene, some have GGAACA, and some have GGCACG. No other sequence exists for this gene anywhere in this population, which means that when communicating information about this gene to offspring during reproduction, only one of those three messages can be communicated, unless...Unless there's an error while the sequence is being communicated. In other words, if there's an error during reproduction (a mutation), then the message for this gene may be communicated incorrectly. In my example I said that the GGCACG sequence experienced an error during reproduction and became GGCACA. Now, in addition to the three sequences that the population originally had, there is one organism that has the new sequence GGCACA, and so the number of possible sequences for this gene in our population is now four:

• GGAACG
• GGAACA
• GGCACG
• GGCACA

When there were only three messages in the message set for this gene, the amount of information it could communicate was log₂3 = 1.585 bits. There are now four messages in the message set for this gene, and the amount of information it can communicate is log₂4 = 2 bits, an increase of .415 bits.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.Edited by Percy, : Grammar.

No there aren't. There are only 3 in the beginning, and four after the mutation. Seriously, what is so hard to understand here?Edited by Huntard, : Spellings

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I hunt for the truth

Now I'll try to make things clearer on here.Find Kimura's mutation distribution graphic, you will see that 0 (neutrality) is an asymptote.Also on Muller ratchet, notice that it was never observed to cause the extinction of bacteria species. It was, in fact, very, very, very seldom observed. Remember that at the time Muller thought of this, technology wasn't good enough for him to test it. It is still much more hypothetical than experimental, exactly because of what I was saying earlier.The only experimental documentation of muller's ratchet I found is this:
- Chao, 1990, Fitness of an RNA virus decreased by Muller's ratchet, Nature 348: 454 - 455Muller ratchet has not yet been falsified. The vast majority of geneticist agree that it exists. You question why we do not see it causing the extinction of bacterias ? It is because of what I have explained (noise, etc.). Ask a geneticist and he will give you aproximately the same answer. Its existence in bacteria populations is not questioned by evolutionist or creationist.The interpretation creationist do of it is debatable, but for that you'll have to read the book instead of just reading the critics on amazone.com

I agree some mutations account to multiple variations in nucleotides. But the ''representing at least 40 million mutations fixed'' include all types of mutations.

Ok, I'll try to follow you here.According to your calculations, how many mutations would be fixed in a single generation ? Your equation is gMs if I'm not mistaken.Now 1 generation means g=1. M=1.7 ~ 10^-8 and s=3 000 000 000So, according to you, there is 510 mutations fixed per generation, am I correct on this ?If so, why the part on ‘ ?

I'm not sure what you think that means, but I'm fairly sure that you're wrong. What do you mean by "Kimura's mutation distribution graphic"? Is it one of the figures in The Neutral Theory Of Molecular Evolution (yes, that's The Neutral Theory Of Molecular Evolution) and if so, which one? If you will tell me which figure, I shall tell you what it means.And I am absolutely certain that Kimura, the founder of neutralism, did not deny the existence of neutral mutations. Again, I don't see what you're driving at. I said that the concept of Muller's ratchet only applies to asexually reproducing organisms, such as bacteria, in which I am, of course, right.Your reply that its existence in bacteria is not questioned does not constitute a rebuttal. I am not questioning its existence in bacteria. I am asserting its existence in bacteria. Your excuse about there being no "noise" in bacteria, besides being palpable rubbish, was intended as an excuse to allow you to pretend that bacteria are immune from accumulating deleterious mutations, remember? If you are now admitting that bacteria are subject to Muller's ratchet, then you admit that they do in fact do so, and that moreover they do so by a mechanism that does not apply to sexually reproducing organisms. No. As he can't explain what he's talking about, and you are at least willing to try, I believe I'll stick to debating with you.

I make it 51. I don't know how the characters in red display on your browser, but on mine they're the fortissimo symbol followed by a capital E with a circumflex. This makes your question someone opaque.

I recalculated and got 51 alsothat last character didn't come out well, it was supposed to be the u

I thought you were asking why muller's ratchet didn't provoke the extinction of bacterias ?I think it is gonna be very difficult to discuss this with your aggressive behavior coupled with the fact that you haven't read the book.Dr. Sanford doesn't simply apply Muller's ratchet on sexual species, he ellaborates the concept of mutation accumulations to sexual species. This is very different. It is like an extension of Muller's ratchet, if you like.

I'm fairly sure I didn't say "fu" anywhere ... which shows great restraint on my part (joke).If you now get 51 fixations per generation, does that mean that you now understand what's going on? If not, where does "fu" come into it? Can you quote?