Does microevolution logically include macroevolution?

I don't think anyone posted a definition of what Macro-Evolution is so let me give it a shot. Macro-Evolution is when new information is added to the genome. Micro-Evolution is when already existing information is altered. There are some theories going around about how it might be possible for Macro-Evolution to occur, but they are still in there infant stages( transposons, polyploidy). Dispite what some might say there is no proof of Macro-Evolution, that is to say there is no physical evidence other then the characteristics of animals. Macro-Evolution has never been witnessed in a lab is what I am trying to say.I don't know in my opinion I just don't have enough faith to believe in evolution. Way to many "random","pointless","small","time consuming" mutations for me. Statistically it is not realistic.

My definition of Macro-Evolution might have been sort of vague so ill give some examples.Fish do not come complete with all the genes for legs and the structures needed to use them. In order for them to be born with working legs the proper genes must be in place. Some fish might have short fins, long fins, small fins and so on. But unless it has the Genes for a leg that fin is going to stay a fin.

Somewhat yes. Successful macro-evolution requires the addition of NEW information and NEW genes that produce NEW proteins that are found in NEW organs and systems. If I see someone who looks extremely hairy because a mutation altered his information. Im not going to say the mutation added something that wasn't already there. It just altered it....I mean you can say it is new because it is not the same as before....but its not really different.

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Right. And all that stuff comes by slight, successive changes to what was there before.

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You are implying that no information is added and that everything comes about by altering already existing information. That is like saying there is no difference when it comes to the amount of information in something as simple as a bug compared to a human.
Lets pretend the sentence I am about to type is information:Every Bird Has Wings- if the information is altered then it might come out like this: Evrey Dirb Ahs Ignws. Although there was some change nothing was added because it is still micro-evolution. If somehow a new word was added to the sentence then it would show macro-evolution.

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If it's not the same as it was before then indeed, it is different. What else would "different" mean?

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Do you want me to say new? then yes its new. As new as someone buying a car that had most of its parts replaced with old parts. The car will be new to you because it is not the same as before.....but it hasn't really given you anything different then what you already had. That is accept your probobly going to get a loss of quality when compared to a new, new car or some other wierd problems.

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What do you think you need to use legs? Muscles, bones, a nervous system to control them - fish have all that.

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What do you think fish would need to use legs that they don'thave, besides legs?

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It's not that they don't have muscles, bones, a nervous system to control them. Its that there are no genes to specify how the limb is to be attached to the nervous system, what muscles need to go where, what type of bones need to be present, and where they need to be placed in order for the limb to work properly are present. You are only left with a fin and the information to set it up. You could alter that fin all you want but your not going to get the new information needed for the leg. You might get a different variety of fins, but they will always be fins because thats what its information is the blueprint for."Postdoctoral fellow Malcolm Logan and Clifford Tabin, professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, took a gene that is normally only active in legs and transferred it to the forming wings of chick embryos. The resulting structures lost many of their wing characteristics and gained those of a leg: feathers were gone, claws appeared at the end on the digits, and leg-specific muscles were clearly identifiable."(http://www.hms.harvard.edu/news/releases/399limbgene.html)This message has been edited by tjsrex, 08-30-2005 11:01 PM

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Those genes are indeed present. They're present as the genes that connect fins to the nervous system, etc.

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Brilliant quote, by the way. It pretty much proves my case - it takes very, very little information - possibly even one single gene - to give rise to drastic phenotypical change.

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I mean, what did you think it said? Did you really think that one single gene could have encapsulated all the information to grow a leg?

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Is all the information encapsulated in the single gene? No not all of it but the loss of feathers, the claws, and the muscle placement was. Without that gene the muscles would not appear in the correct places and the leg could not function. Mutations have never been know to add information that I know of. So how is it that new muscles would appear in a fin, that were positioned in new places which allowed them and the bones to change? without genes that alow the bones to grow differently and the nervous system to attach in a different order, that fin is not going to change. You can alter the fin genes all you want, its not going to make the fin as complex as a leg because it will only alter the atributes of the fin.The quote that I posted shows that a gene for a leg is not like a gene for a fin. It shows how important it is that a gene is added with more information rather then altered information.This message has been edited by tjsrex, 08-30-2005 11:42 PM

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In many species, there isn't. Humans have only 46 chromosomes, you know. Somewhere around 14,000 different genes. Do you think that's a record, of some kind? That there aren't other species with more genes, more chromosomes?

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Who said anything about it being a record? I didn't, so why did you say that? I was simply saying that if you believe in evolution you must believe in macro-evolution because there are differences in information amounts. I gave an example of how information is different so you would see that information needed to be added at some point. I wasn't having an information race or anything.

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But you know this can't be true, right? We know that mutations change genetic information, right? Change what's already there?

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And we've alrready agreed that when you change what's there you've added something new. So we know mutations are adding new information.

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The Mutations are not adding new information. It is altering already existent information. You are not adding anything new, you are only altering the information that is already present. I didn't say that when you change what is there you add something new. I said that if you change what is there it is different then it was before. Because it is different it SEEMS new, but nothing new was actually added to the information therefore it is not new.

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But it is. Your quote shows that a single gene can cause these kinds of changes.

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There's only 14,000 genes in the human genome, remember when I told you that? Since that's true, the way that you understand the genetic basis for phenotype must obviously be wrong. There's simply not enough genes for there to be one gene for the bones for a finger, one gene for the muscles in a finger, one gene for the skin on a finger, one gene for the nerve connection, one gene for the part of the brain to move the finger, one gene for the part of the brain to percieve the finger - you get the idea. There's no way there's enough genes for all that genetic detail, if all those things have to be their own genes.

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Genes don't work the way you think they work. A single gene can "turn on" a leg or turn a fin into something else, even if it doesn't contain the information to do so. It simply tells other genes to use the information they contain in a different way.

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If you would go back up to where I was talking about the gene and the chicken. You will see that I understand that a gene does more then one thing.Genes don't talk to each other. When the embryo is in the womb the genes don't have detailed conversations about how they want to build the thing in the embryo. All the gene's for muscles don't get together and say "we should puts some of us over here that way the bone will move better.....wait bro we should tell the bone about our plan...I don't think he would like us pulling on him for no reason." It just doesn't happen. The information doesn't change unless a mutation accures that alters the way the current setup is. It will do things like make the fin longer, have a muscle growth, have a smaller fin, and so on. Unless a new gene with the information shows up for a new organ, system, muscle placement, bone placement, and so on; the mutations are going to be pointless. Without added information, NOT altering the already existing information. It is IMPOSSIBLE to get new working appendages. You can argue that all you want but many evolutionist already understand it. Why else would they be trying to make a theory to explain how Macro-evolution is possible? If Micro-evolution was able to explain Macro-evolution then they would not need a theory. But it doesn't. Earlier, I think in my first post I put to words in (). Google those words seperately. They are theories that are in progress and will make it easier for you to accept the nessesity of Macro-evolution in the evolution of new organs, genes, information, and so on.In our 14,000 gene's we do not have any, fin, or gill gene's in my opinion. When we are in the womb at each stage we are human, there are no gills and embryologists will tell you that. Haekels chart is really decieving. It annoys me that they teach such false proofs even today in school.

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Perhaps you could tell us what you think would constitute new information?

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What about gene duplication? Would you have new information if your sentence became 'Every Bird Has Wings Wings-', what about 'Every Bird Has Wings Wongs-', do any of these contain 'new' information?

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Im not familiar with gene duplication, but it seems almost like adding new information. Only thing about it is that it doesn't seem to bring anything new to the table. Like I said im not expert at gene duplication. So all I can do is quote what others have to say on the subject." If this process had been an important factor in the ‘evolution’ of life, then we should find that the number of chromosomes and/or the mass of DNA per cell would increase as you move up the Tree of Life. The organisms with the most DNA should have had the greatest exposure to mutation and thus the greatest opportunity for evolutionary advancement. Bacteria and other single-celled organisms should have the least amount of DNA, and complex organisms like man should have the most.Is that what we find? Not at all. Some microbes have more chromosomes and more DNA than man. Man has only a modest 46 chromosomes, falling somewhere in the middle of the range that goes from 1 chromosome in an ant (quite an advanced organism compared to a microbe) to over six hundred in some plants. "An example of information: A one-celled organism does not have the instructions for how to manufacture eyes, ears, blood, skin, hooves, brains, etc. which ponies need. So for protozoa to have given rise to ponies, there would have to be some mechanism that gives rise to new information.Without some way for the information to be added then Macro-evolution can't happen. I am not dismissing the whole theory of Macro-evolution, although I don't believe it, I am only pointing out that without a logical way to gain massive amount of information it won't happen. the problem is that if mutations were capable of adding the information required, we should see hundreds of examples all around us, considering that there are many thousands of mutations happening continually. But whenever we study mutations, they invariably turn out to have lost or degraded the information.

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Im not going to say the mutation added something that wasn't already there. It just altered it....I mean you can say it is new because it is not the same as before....but its not really different.

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crash, please stop pretending that I gave altered information the merit for being brand new. I gave you an example of a car that had its parts altered. It was the same car but could be classified as new because it was not the same as before. Because it is different does not mean that it has added anything new to it like a body kit, or a leg.In simpler terms New can mean- different or new can mean brand new. If you kept altering something with very little complexity, without giving it a wider canvas to work on, you are not going to get something complex. You need to first find a way for the canvas to be extended. Or add information.Another example of Macro-evolution:Remember, evolutionary belief teaches that once upon a time, there were living things, but no lungslungs had not evolved yet, so there was no DNA information coding for lung manufacture. Somehow this program had to be written. New information had to arise that did not previously exist, anywhere.

Macro-Evolution theories."Scientists believe that vertebrate genomes originally evolved molecular defense mechanisms against the detrimental mutations caused by transposable elements. Over time, however, these defense mechanisms, which involve modifying DNA, may have been co-opted by the host genome for its own regulatory functions. The relationship between transposable elements and their host genomes may be something of an evolutionary arms race, with each trying to overcome the opponent's defenses. Although the evolutionary history of transposable elements is far from determined, the evidence suggests that transposons may play a significant role in the evolution of host genomes.For an overview of the different kinds of transposable elements and mechanisms of transposition, see:Alberts, B., et al. Molecular Biology of the Cell. 3rd ed. New York: Garland Publishing, 1994."(shortend link. Use peek to learn how to insert links please)Did you not google the 2 words that I told you to google?"The evolution of the metazoa has been characterized by gene redundancy, generated by polyploidy, tandem duplication and retrotransposition. Polyploidy can be detected by looking for duplicated chromosomes or segments of orthologous chromosomes in post-polyploid animals. It has been proposed that the evolutionary role of polyploidy is to provide extra-copies of genes, whose subsequent alteration leads to new functions, increased biological complexity, and, ultimately, speciation. We review the theory of evolution by genome duplication, basing our arguments on findings from autopolyploid anurans and fish, undergoing post-polyploidy diploidization. We conclude that: 1) the high genetic variability of autotetraploid anurans is a result of tetrasomic expression, based on studies of isozymes and other proteins. 2) Epigenetic mechanisms mediate the reduced expression or silencing of redundant copies of genes in the regulation of gene expression of these tetraploids. This conclusion is based on data concerning ribosomal and hemoglobin gene activity. 3) Duplication of the genome may have occurred more than once in the phylogeny of the anurans, as exemplified by 4n and 8n Leptodactylidae species."(Evolution by polyploidy and gene regulation in anura)Thats all I didThis message has been edited by AdminJar, 08-31-2005 12:27 PM

They represent an increase in amount of DNA, but not an increase in the amount of functional genetic informationthese mechanisms create nothing new. Macroevolution needs new genes (for making feathers on reptiles, for example)

"The evolutionist’s ‘gene duplication idea’ is that an existing gene may be doubled, and one copy does its normal work while the other copy is redundant and non-expressed. Therefore, it is free to mutate free of selection pressure (to get rid of it). However, such ‘neutral’ mutations are powerless to produce new genuine information. Dawkins and others point out that natural selection is the only possible naturalistic explanation for the immense design in nature (not a good one, as Spetner and others have shown). Dawkins and others propose that random changes produce a new function, then this redundant gene becomes expressed somehow and is fine-tuned under the natural selective process.This ‘idea’ is just a lot of hand-waving. It relies on a chance copying event, genes somehow being switched off, randomly mutating to something approximating a new function, then being switched on again so natural selection can tune it.Furthermore, mutations do not occur in just the duplicated gene; they occur throughout the genome. Consequently, all the deleterious mutations in the rest of the genome have to be eliminated by the death of the unfit. Selective mutations in the target duplicate gene are extremely rareit might represent only 1 part in 30,000 of the genome of an animal. The larger the genome, the bigger the problem, because the larger the genome, the lower the mutation rate that the creature can sustain without error catastrophe; as a result, it takes even longer for any mutation to occur, let alone a desirable one, in the duplicated gene. There just has not been enough time for such a naturalistic process to account for the amount of genetic information that we see in living things.Dawkins and others have recognized that the ‘information space’ possible within just one gene is so huge that random changes without some guiding force could never come up with a new function. There could never be enough ‘experiments’ (mutating generations of organisms) to find anything useful by such a process. Note that an average gene of 1,000 base pairs represents 4^1000 possibilitiesthat is 10^602 (compare this with the number of atoms in the universe estimated at ‘only’ 10^80). If every atom in the universe represented an ‘experiment’ every millisecond for the supposed 15 billion years of the universe, this could only try a maximum 10^100 of the possibilities for the gene. So such a ‘neutral’ process cannot possibly find any sequence with specificity (usefulness), even allowing for the fact that more than just one sequence may be functional to some extent."(by Jonathan Sarfati, with Michael Matthews, Mutations | Answers in Genesis )

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Well why not give us a useful example then. Your birdy wing sentence appears to be amenable to no possible transformation which you would admit to giving rise to 'new' information, so it seems rather redundant to have ever brought it up. If there is a transformation which would be sufficient then please tell us what it is.

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Why talk about the need for new genes when the matter at hand is your own example. You said "If somehow a new word was added to the sentence then it would show macro-evolution." so why would the introduction of the word 'wongs' not be sufficient to meet this criterion?

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Let me make explicit the analogy to gene duplication and neo-functionalisation, the acquiring of a new function for a gene. We have duplication of the 'wings' gene and the neo-functionalisation of one copy to the 'wongs' gene, in what way does this not demonstrate the production of a new gene? Allowing of course, for the sake of argument, that the 'wongs' gene produces a related functional protein with a discrete function, or domain of expression, from that of 'wings'.

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You may wish to argue that gene duplication is not on the scale of a micro-evolutionary event, but in that case you are going to have to make the actual working definitions for micro and macro much more explicit.

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When you change the word wing into wong you are required to drop the i and replace it with an o. The O was not in the original word so it must be added. That would suggest macro-evolution. If the word wing is altered to say something like wnig then no information is needed. either way in order for the gene to become new, new information must be added. The old cannot be altered and called new, unless speaking about new as in different. In order for a new gene to be produced information that was not there in the first place must be produced. If from a mutation then why have no mutations been known to add information?

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A 'neutral' mutation has as much power to produce new information as any other mutation, if the gene is not expressed however the mutation is much more likely to be lost again.

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A 'neutral' mutation is known only to alter already existing information instead of adding information. That is why he worded it as Genuine information. So in other words he is saying,'neutral' mutations don't produce new information and that makes them powerless.