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Author Topic:   Disadvantageous Mutations: Figures
AnswersInGenitals
Member (Idle past 151 days)
Posts: 673
Joined: 07-20-2006


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Message 20 of 93 (794604)
11-17-2016 7:01 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Gregory Rogers
11-16-2016 5:33 AM


There are no disadvantageous mutations.
From the OP:
1. The vast majority of mutations in evolutionary history are said to be disadvantageous.
A pine tree in the forest has 100 branches; each branch has 100 cones; each cone has 100 seeds. Every few years the tree releases one million seeds. If all these seeds germinated and produced trees that produced and released one million seeds. the universe would by now be chuck full of pine trees. But the pine tree population is quite stable because on average only one of the seeds progresses to a productive mature tree. One seed out of one million! So, even if 99.99% of the seeds had disadvantageous mutations that prevented germination or maturation or seed production, the pine forest would still thrive.
Disadvantageous mutations might be bad for an individual seed, but individuals do not evolve - populations evolve and those disadvantageous mutations are irrelevant to the success and evolution of populations because of fecundity. Fecundity renders genetic mishaps a nonissue for species survival and evolution. Another example: human females are born with about 200,000 eggs in their ovaries. During their approximately 40 years of fertility they can release about 500 eggs that may be fertilized. They only need a small fraction of these (two to three in modern times, five to eight in previous times when mortality rates were much higher) to reach reproductive age for the human race to maintain viability.
A third and final example: you. In the few minutes it take you to read this post you body will produce many million new cells to replace the many million that have died. Each of these cells will have a newly replicated set of chromosomes made of six billion base pairs. That replication is amazingly accurate, but not perfect. Each cell will have one to two dozen random replication errors. No two of the ~40trillion cells in your body have exactly identical chromosomes. They are all mutants. You are a mutant. Many thousands of those mutant cells will be nonviable or dysfunctional. But so what? There are thousands to take their place. And many of those dysfunctions will be inconsequential, such as a faulty insulin gene in a skin or muscle cell where they wouldn’t be expressed anyway.
would we not expect to find a high degree of examples of these {mutational} failures in the fossil and skeletal records?
No need to go digging in the muck and mire to discover the prevalence or effects of mutational failures. There are currently 130million humans born every year (goggle on ‘human birth rate’). According to The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, there are ~150,000 babies born each year with serious birth defects (google on ‘birth defect rate). Most of these are due to gestational, not genetic mutational problems, (but does not include naturally aborted or still born fetuses). So we see that the rate of mutational defects that might show up in a fossil (or extant species) record is very small, less than 0.1%!
Also, consider this: dinosaurs roamed this planet from about 245million years ago to about 65MYA, a total of 180 million years. Assuming a reasonable estimate of an 18 year life span that gives 10million generations of dinosaurs. Since they were quite prevalent on all continents as well as the oceans we can conservatively estimate that there were about 100million of the buggers running/swimming about at any one time. That gives a grand total of 1,000trillion dinosaurs, give or take. Even if I’m off by one or two orders of magnitude, that’s a buttload of dinosaurs. (It’s estimated that a total of about 100million humans have been born since modern humans emerged 200,000 years age). The total number of dinosaur fossils that have been discover in sufficiently good shape to characterize their morphology is a few 10’s of thousands, a very minuscule fraction. So the likelihood of finding a dinosaur with a recognizable mutational defect is somewhere between zilch and nada.
_______________________________
If your interest is in the foibles and foolishness of man, then study theology.
But if you wish to view the greatness and glory of God, then study Science.
Antoneo Strombonius of Loire; c. 742CE.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by Gregory Rogers, posted 11-16-2016 5:33 AM Gregory Rogers has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 21 by Dr Adequate, posted 11-17-2016 9:49 PM AnswersInGenitals has not replied
 Message 25 by Taq, posted 11-18-2016 11:03 AM AnswersInGenitals has not replied

  
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