Examples of new information

Why would it matter if it did something else before? What matters is if a mutation causes the protein to do something new and novel. In the case of the nylon bug, the insertion of a base created a new start codon in an alternate reading frame. The new enzyme was capable of digesting nylon which was lacking in the bacterium prior to the mutation.

quote:

---

When pOAD2 plasmids encountered nylon by-products, an insertion of T indicated by an arrow in the 3rd row of a proved advantageous, for this insertion silenced the PR.C. coding sequence by creating the T-G-A chain terminator; at the same time, the newly emerged A-T-G created a new coding sequence from an alternative open reading frame, which happened to specify a polypeptide chain with 6-AHA LOH activity for degradation of nylon byproducts.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/...345072/pdf/pnas00609-0153.pdf

---

If bacteria with identical genomes are exposed to the same stimuli then they will have almost the exact same reaction. The fact that these new phenotypes only occur once in every million+ cells strongly indicates a mutation and not gene switching.

One common theme that I run across in discussions with creationists is that they define "new information" in such a way that evolution does not need to produce it in order for evolution to occur. In fact, using the creationist definitions evolution actually needs to produce a loss in information in order for complex life to evolve. Why? Any mutation is considered to be a loss in information, or at most no net change. What we need to do, IMHO, is challenge the contention that evolution requires an increase in information as defined by creationists.For example, pick any stretch of homologous DNA for humans and chimps. Ask them which differences represent an increase in information. I have yet to find a single creationist that is capable of determining which differences represent an increase or decrease in information. It just shows how meaningless the creationist argument is.