Increases in Genetic Information

care to back that up? It depends on which definition of speciation you go by, whether you go by the arbitrary blurry one that doesn't even mean anything, or the true definition of species which has been defined but not stuck to by those that classify many species.Edited by jbozz21, : No reason given.

The "true" definition? This would be different to the one used by the creationists I've cited?Here's another one. According to the CreationWiki: When you've figured out what you want the "true" definition to be, maybe you could set your fellow-creationists straight. Sure.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Dr A was just calling to your attention that you had made a very obvious error when you accused Darwin of just assuming the finches of the Galapagos were different species. He wasn't a bird expert. Upon his return he called upon bird specialists to perform species identification.Looking up Darwin's finches at Wikipedia to get more detail, something you could have done yourself, I see that Darwin was mistaken in his initial attempts at identifying the birds. He apparently thought them black birds, grosbeaks and finches, but he gave them to an ornithologist named John Gould in order to obtain a professional opinion, and Gould identified them as 12 different finch species. Today we still believe these finches comprise a number of different species. Do you have reason to believe they are not different species? If so, then would you, in your own words, "Care to back that up?"And it wasn't that they were different species that he considered evidence for common descent. It was their similarity to mainland species, and the way they had apparently adapted to niches not normally occupied by finches, and which was the reason that Darwin didn't even realize that some of them were finches. If you've been reading all the messages in this thread then you know that the definition of species is problematic. No one definition will serve all of life, the division into sexual and non-sexual species being one area of great difference requiring different definitions, and the division into single-celled versus multi-cellular being another great difference requiring different definitions.Even if you just consider mammals there are problems. If there are two populations and only 5% of individuals are mutually interfertile, then are they the same species? What if it's only 1% or 0.1%. What if females of species A mating with males of species B results in fertile individuals, but not the other way around - would they be the same species? What if we had the same situation but the offspring are infertile - would they be the same species?The answers to these questions are unimportant. Any large scale classification system like the one used by biology must gloss over a great many details. If you want to know whether squirrels and chipmunks are different species then it has the answer. But when you consider closely related species then our classification system cannot provide easy answers and you have to begin looking at the details. This is because speciation happens gradually, not suddenly. Two populations of the same species that gradually become more and more different will have differing levels of interfertility over time. At one point nearly 100% of individuals would be interfertile, but over time as the two populations become more and more different the interfertility percentage becomes less and less. At some point in time 75% of individuals will be mutually interfertile, then later it will become 50%, then 25%, then 10%, then 5%, then 1%, and less and less as even more time passes and finally it becomes 0%. At what point along this progression are they different species?What you need to understand is that the answer to this question isn't particularly important to the issue of whether genetic information can increase. There are plenty of genetic events that increase information, but no single genetic event can create a new species. New species come about over a long period of time and after a great number of genetic events.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Fix grammar.

So, any mutation that makes a change in the phenotype of an organism would satisfy your demands. If you can observe variation within species, and if you can establish that species can change over time, then you have a reason to believe that common descent is "possible". Here's another fact. Intelligent designers exist, and they do so by "use of high amounts of incredibly specified information". So, it would be irrational to conclude that "high amounts of incredibly specified information" require intelligent design, wouldn't it? Specified information, therefore, does not require intelligent design, but intelligent designers do require specified information according to the observations we can make. Why haven't you observed that all known intelligent beings form from DNA? Are you incapable of observing this? So, since we have observed novel specified information forming by unintelligent processes like reproduction with variation, and since we have observed that specified information is a prerequisite for all known intelligent designers, the "scale of logic" makes "the I.D. theory" look like a non-starter. You mean one mutation that causes a specific change in the phenotype of one organism? We have observed many, which might help explain to you why biologists are evolutionists, and hillbillies are intelligent designists. Presumably, then, we would have to observe a non-living intelligent designer adding "never before existed information" to the chromosomal DNA of a multi-celled organism, or creating one from scratch, in order to advocate I.D. as an explanation of the origin of species and of life. If those are your standards, stick to them. Are you talking about the genetic code or similarities in the genomes of different species? If the latter, why give the penguins and ratites so much bird genetic material, and why give fully aquatic mammals lung genes instead of gill genes, and why make fossils that have both reptile and mammal features as well as fossils with both fish and amphibian features? To make it look as though evolution happens big time?Anyway, on "information" increase. Functional duplications of genetic material can be observed on eukaryote genomes, so the evidence that they can increase in information content is excellent.

Hi jbozz,It seems to me that the discussion has somewhat shifted from the original topic of your original post. There are some comments I have with regards to your original post. Not that this is particularly relevant, but do note that I am an ID proponent; however, I have some problems with your arguments (and definitions).Let me tackle this: Mutations can occur that modify just one base pair, with the result that a new amino acid sequence is translated. Changing only one amino acid can be beneficial. Step by incremental step a new enzyme might thereby evolve. Furthermore, domain swapping is well-documented in the scientific literature, wherein protein domains are "mixed and matched," producing larger, functional protein sequences.There is very good molecular evidence that genomic changes can produce functional (useful) gains in genetic information (the aforementioned domain swapping is a good example of this). Gene duplication can produce a beneficial function with a rise in genomic information. For instance, the Saccharomyces cerevisiae genome encodes two duplicated proteins (paralogs): SNC1 and SNC2, which function as vesicle proteins. This genome also encodes the membrane docking proteins SSO1 and SSO2, which are also duplicates. Each of these proteins bind to the other (e.g., SNC1 binds to SSO1) to produce a multi-protein complex involved in vesicle trafficking. These duplicated proteins confer redundancy to the system; if one of the proteins is lost through a deletion mutation, the cell can still survive. So we see that an increase in genomic information through gene duplication gives rise to a beneficial function: redundancy. There are other examples that could be cited, but I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on this.Edited by Genomicus, : No reason given.

If I asked one engineer to design 1,000 completely different forms of transportation, and I would find that many of them possessed similar features, I would be mightily peeved about this, because I specifically ordered completely different forms of transportation, not forms of transportation that have similar features.And another thing: to be certain DNA code formed by a designer rather than an evolutionary processes we have to observe the designer at work at least once...Edited by Parasomnium, : Spelling

You must be one of the few I.D. advocates who has never heard of bacterial flagella. Also, apparently, one of the few who doesn't seem to know that the many highly imobile plants you see all around you are multi-cellular. You could just give them all motility by designing a flagellum for the non-motile ones. That's true of the non-motile ones, certainly. Why does the advantageous characteristic of being able to react to environmental conditions indicate intelligent design to you rather than natural selection (design by unintelligent environments). I don't mean just the specific adaption being selected for, but also the capacity to adapt, which is advantageous.Your own cells show plasticity in relation to the environment when you tan in the sun, a process that protects their DNA from damage.What is your point, here? Are you suggesting that the nylon-eating bacteria can gain a novel function without novel "specified information"? And are you sure that you want to keep bringing up plasmids, which could be regarded as a very good example of a source of unintelligent non-living specified information?As you expressed an interest in novel specified information in multi-cellular eukaryotes in your other reply to me, here's an example for you. It explains the formation of a new coding gene in fruit flies. New gene, new protein

AIG provides similar advice on the Microevolution vs Macroevolution debate as well. Saying that macroevolution does not occur is also on the list of Arguments that should never be used. I also see some remarks about "species" vs. "kinds" that are germane.

Thank you Genomicus for your comment, I can agree that this redundancy in the yeast genome benefits the yeast and that without it, it doesn't function as well. Although I would be careful not to assume that this redundancy in genes is actually a genetic mutation. Is there any solid research to support this?

Duplications of sections of the genome are a common form of mutation. They can contain one or more coding genes, and biologists can identify the resulting paralogs on genomes.Here's a ten year old review which explains the process quite well, and includes sections on subfunctionalization and neofunctionalization, both important ways of adding new functional genes, which is what you're asking about in the O.P. Evolution by gene duplication: an updateIn your O.P., you quote this from a source:

quote:

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The average human has about "3164.7 million chemical nucleotide bases"

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The reason it says "average human" is because we vary in genome size. Different individuals have different duplications and deletions. So, genome size can vary within species. Therefore genomes can grow or diminish in size over time by both natural selection and drift (neutral evolution), which partially explains one of the things you're asking about in the O.P. (getting from a small relatively simple genome to some of the large complicated modern ones). The review I linked to explains an example in the Douc langur monkey, and beneficial duplications have been observed directly in labs.

Here are some interesting facts about human fossils. Did you know that the hominid fossils are so guarded that they are virtually beyond all access by the very scientists who study human evolution and bring us most of the literature about it? There is some notion out there that these fossils are all just readily available and thoroughly studied by scientists but it’s not true. Did you know that Paleoanthropology is a science that is quite literally always one step removed from the evidence it is supposed to be based on? Oh sure they have casts of the bones with which to study, but did you know that the notion that these casts are a true representation of the original fossils is also false? A fact that was proven in 1984 when the American Museum of Natural History in NY decided to have an exhibit of the original fossils. Display cases where made to fit the true casts of the fossils so that when the originals were brought in they would have special cases to go in. The funny thing was that when the originals where finally brought out for display, none of them fit in their cases. Not a single one. My point here of course is to ask the question, How can we know what to believe about human evolution when the scientists studying it don’t even have access to the actual evidence?Here is another interesting fact. Did you know that almost 4,000 hominid fossils had been discovered by 1976 but yet only 40 were put on display at the exhibit mentioned above in 1984? But oddly the organizer of the event, Ian Tattersalt, was quoted as saying that they had more than half of the entire human fossil record under one roof. That was clearly untrue. A good portion of the very important fossils were never even brought out to be put on display. Why? Today there are over 6,000 hominid fossils, and yet we hear from paleoanthropologists all the time that there are sparse few. It seems to me that what they more likely mean is there are sparse few that fit within their evolutionary view.Many operate under the misguided notion that we can trust what the scientific community is telling us about human evolution. But how quickly they forget things like more than 500 doctoral dissertations that were written between 1908 to 1953, about the famous Eoanthropus fossil. Which as you know turned out to be a hoax that went undiscovered for 45 years. Or about Pithecanthropus, discovered by Eugene Dubois in 1891 who claimed until his death that he had found "the real missing link." But it was discovered that he had kept a big secret for 30 years. In that same dig, in the same area and level he had also found two very fully human skulls which obviously could not have descended from a specimen that existed at the same time. Or about Sinanthropus, who was also claimed to be a missing link by the scientific community, but also kept secret that it better fit within the range of being fully human than a missing link. However they finally released this information after ten other fully human remains were found at the same site. Or what about Homo Habilis announced in 1964 (and widely published in National Geographic) to be the oldest link in human evolution. But actually was assembled from disassociated bone fragments. And then there’s the famous Australopithecus aka Lucy found in 1974, and publicized to be the oldest missing human link. However many mainstream scientists today are confident that Lucy is no more than an extinct type of ape. And what about Ramapithecu, also promoted as an ancestor to humans but later found to be only an extinct type of orangutan.Are we getting the picture yet? My intent here is not to slander mainstream science, but rather to demonstrate that my extreme skepticism of paleoanthropology is very much warranted. I know what you are going to reply to all of this, so allow me to beat you to the punch-line. Your about to say that that is the beauty of scienceits ability to correct itselfright? So here’s my question to that common response, Exactly how many uncorrected errors exist in science today? The answer of course would be that we haven’t a clue. I mean if we knew something was an error then we would correct it and it would no longer be an uncorrected errorright? So here’s my point. If we have no way to know how many uncorrected errors exist then logically we can’t know if sciences self-correcting system is really all that efficient.Perhaps you are pretty confident when you look at the parade of skulls presented by the scientific community as evidence for human evolution. But I am sorry I have no confidence in them at all. There are three main problems that I can point out, with the fossils and have already demonstrated these problems above. The first is that fossils are often selectively excluded if they do not fit the evolutionary scheme. The second is that some fossils are downgraded and made to appear less human than they actually are. And the third is that some fossils are upgraded to appear more human like. One final thought here on the self-corrective nature of science.In 1911 the world was presented with Neanderthalensis (aka Neanderthal) as another species of sub-humans. It was published as a brutish beast and became the classic icon for the notion of the cave-man concept that indwells much of the thinking of society today. It was later discovered that these people were every bit as human as you and I are. They were just a little more sturdily built and also several suffered from a disfiguring disease caused by diet. But the thing here is, that the correction of this error did not come until 1957, some 44 years after the damage had been done. And people had become so accustom to thinking of them as merely cave-men that that view has persistently stuck. The brutish display of the Neanderthals wasn’t even removed from the human evolution display in the Field Museums of Natural History in Chicago until the mid-70’s, almost 20 years after it was known to be wrong. And even then they didn’t totally remove it. They merely moved it to the 2nd floor, along side a huge Brontosaurus, and relabeled it, An alternate view of Neanderthal. So much for self-correction.

Really? 500 doctoral dissertations about Piltdown Man? Do you have a list of those 500 doctoral dissertations? References to them, please.Edited by Pressie, : No reason given.

No clue... why?

What a lot of stuff you've made up. Well, whoops, then.

Oh contraire silly rabbit. Most variations within species can be shown to be merely natural selection "selecting" already existing phenotypes within the species. The environmental conditions merely made those phenotypes become the predominant norm rather than the rare few. Besides your attempt to insult intelligent design proponents, this comment just shows you have no real desire to have an intelligent discussion. Of course we observe pre-programmed "reproduction" all the time. But what we never observe is the creation of a completely new never before existed DNA "CODE!"