If avian somehow made great use of wings, and nature has even produced crude wings for gliding in some mammals, reptiles, and fish, then why didn't other species of the same Kingdom keep these traits as well?
What? What other species? Keep what traits?
RAZD writes:
Furthermore there are flying quadra and bipedal animals, or does your universe of delusion exclude bats and birds (to say nothing of flying fish, snakes, frogs, etc)?
NJ writes:
No kidding, which is why my question was asking why all of the proceeding species didn't retain these traits.
Bats still have wings. "Flying" fish still have "wings". "Flying" squirrels still have "wings".
What do you mean "retain"?
Eventually they will reach a maximum capacity...
What? Mutations will reach a "maximum capacity"? Where on earth did you get this idea? Link please.
If a typical gene has approximately 1000 base pairs, how many substitutions of a single base pair for another are there that will cause a change in an amino acid? Even the staunchest of evolutionists concede that generally less than one mutation in a thousand is beneficial, so that about two of these substitutions will be beneficial. That couldn't possibly be enough to account for the diversity.
Where, praytell, did you get the idea that one SNP (single nucleotide polymorphism) = one change in protein function?
Most mutations are neutral. You know that. I know you know that.
talkorigins writes:
Most mutations are neutral. Nachman and Crowell estimate around 3 deleterious mutations out of 175 per generation in humans (2000). Of those that have significant effect, most are harmful, but a significant fraction are beneficial. The harmful mutations do not survive long, and the beneficial mutations survive much longer, so when you consider only surviving mutations, most are beneficial.
talkorigins writes:
When beneficial mutations occur in a changed environment, they generally sweep through the population rapidly (Elena et al. 1996).
If you are truly interested in SNPs and protein function,
here is SIFT, "a program that predicts whether an amino acid substitution affects protein function so that users can prioritize substitutions for further study".
One more thing. SNPs are not the only way to affect protein function.
Science 21 November 2003: Vol. 302. no. 5649, pp. 1401 - 1404 writes:
After all, there are many ways to generate multiple functions from individual genes, such as tissue-specific gene regulation, alternative splicing, and RNA editing.
Edited by molbiogirl, : added a couple of quotes
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