The Dawkins question, new "information" in the genome?

Woah, step back a little there Sparky!What exactly do you mean by this statement? How exactly does the formation of polymers using common all-garden chemical bonds which then interact with each other and the surrounding environment in a common all-garden way require a magical input of 'information'? Why is it miraculous, for example that amino acids which don't interact with water in an energetically favourable way will position themselves away from the aqueous environment of the cell and into a more favourable one (like a the inside of a protein structure, or a lipid membrane)?Oh, and although its' probably a bit late to welcome you to the forum....welcome to the forum.

Who says it has to? That is why it is a strawman. All of the steps are often proposed to be 'close by' functionality wise or close by in the sequence space of the protein.TTFN,WK

Woah, ease off on the guns there, chief.What exactly are the odds of what we are talking about here? be sure to show your work. But don't accuse me of disingenuity when you're the one making improbability arguments without actually having calculated any probabilities. You find intelligence to be the fundamental difference between humans and other organisms? Then it's clear you're no student of primatology. Any human behavior you can name, I can find an analogous, if less advanced, behavior among the other primates.But that's neither here nor there. There are no physical differences between humans and anything else that can't be accounted for by genetics. And we have two mechanisms proven to cause significant change in the genetics of populations. There are experiments that prove that these interdependant systems can arise via natural selection and random mutation. In the classic experiment, Lac operons were removed from E. coli; they took out the entire genetic mechanism for the metabolization of lactose. Totally gone. Then they put a colony of these organisms on a lactose substrate and started starving them.Within a certain number of generations, that functionality returned, as "irreducable complex" (which I suppose was the phrase you were looking for) as the last system had been. It arose through duplication and modification of other systems. What odds? Show me your work. Are you taking into account cooption of other functionality?

If you are talking about Hall's experiments, I've already addressed it. The reason they modified a gene to metabolize lactose again is because they *already* had a gene that was near identical to the one removed. When *that* was removed, they did *not* get the function again, over tens of thousands of generations.If there are different experiments than the ones Hall did, where can I read up on those?-Justin

The topic here is new information.What does your post 49 have to do with that?What do you define "new" and "information" to be?Isn't your statment simply saying that large changes require longer times?

Thanks for the welcome, and hello. I'm trying to get an understanding of biology here. As far as 3d structure that I'm talking about, let me elaborate I guess. My focus, as can be seen by my statements, is on the "accidental/chance/odds" bit. Protein sequences: You can randomly generate sequences and get workable functions out of it...simple ones. The longer the required sequence for a function (complex functions), the greater the odds against it randomly happening. Of course, given much time, improbable things happen. But when you are talking about the complexity of high-level functions, it would take, as Sidman says, "trillions and trillions of years" to hit on correct combinations of sequences. You have to take into account that it is not a one way path. There are so many useless sequences to the organism that most times you hit dead-ends before you get anywhere.For a 10 amino acid sequence there are 10,240,000,000,000 possible proteins. How many actually serve a purpose or function? How many would actually be detrimental?The 3D bit I threw in is just more to account for in the process. If proteins are folded a certain way or not, they won't operate properly, etc.-Justin

Short answer, yes. Extremely long times. (see latest post before this) It has everything to do with "new" information. The E.coli could not generate "new" information. The only reason it worked before he removed the modified gene was because the modified gene was so "informationaly" close the one lacZ gene already! I have gone over that like 3 times. :bMaybe I'm missing something.-Justin

That is exactly the question that I have not, myself, seen in literature of those who want a supernatural solution.The "odds" of a specific sequence do get rather low pretty quickly. But no one knows how many of your possible sequences would do. Untill we understand that the "odds" are simply unknown.It is very clear that many, many slightly different sequences can be used in various biochemical processes. But untill you say how many you can't calculate the odds of a "working one" arising by whatever means.

You missed my main point and question.How do you define "information" and what is "new"?Untill we have that nailed down then we can't continue a rational discussion.

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If you are talking about Hall's experiments, I've already addressed it. The reason they modified a gene to metabolize lactose again is because they *already* had a gene that was near identical to the one removed.

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Actually, this is incorrect. They may share a common active site, but the lacZ and ebgA genes only share 33% identity per the Align program using the deduced amino acid sequences. If you want to do the alignment yourself go to http://www.pubmed.com and search for the genes. Don't forget to change the search window from "PubMed" to "Nucleotide".Also, this is exactly what evolution predicts, the modification of an existing protein to a new function. How can this be anyting but a mutation adding information to the genome? It also shows the development of an IC system, which Behe says is improbable. [quote]When *that* was removed, they did *not* get the function again, over tens of thousands of generations.[quote] Does this mean that E. coli will NEVER develop a new system?

So you want the fossil record of a soft tissue's evolution and evidence of a completely de novo origin for a novel gene?What you seem to be missing is any understanding of evolutionary theory, except through the lens of the strawman caricatures propagated by anti-evolutionary speakers.TTFN,WK

Exactly. That's where new biological functions come from - cooption of old ones. There's very little biological novelty. That fact is how we're able, in part, to reconstruct phylogeny.But you're moving the goalposts. In fact, your rebuttal - that what changed was an already useful system - disproves your original point; that the precursors to an IC biological system would have no function. In this case, clearly they did.This message has been edited by crashfrog, 09-30-2004 06:23 PM

You tell us. You're the one arguing from probability.Has it occured to you that you don't get an advanced degree in biology without considerable training in statistical analysis? Not to make an argument from authority or anything, but why is it that you think biologists, trained as they are in statistical mathematics, almost universally support the theory, if indeed it is contradicted by probability as you say? I'm just wondering how it is, in your view, that the biological community comes to support a theory you claim is mathematically unbelieveable.

Because everyone uses the same facts, but looks at them differently sometimes. If you go researching something with an expected outcome, even a small bias, it's very easy to "believe what you see", so to speak.-Justin

Let me put it another way. I'm saying that to get, to use big words, morphological innovation (), using the system you guys talk about here, would require GADS of time, even under *ideal* environments forcing natural selection to work change faster or else have everything die out. I don't see how you get from early forms to more advanced forms so quickly.Look at the Cambrion period. In somewhere between 5 and 10 million years you get all kinds of new animal bodies laying around. How does this happen? Mutation and selection do not, according to everything I've been led to believe, work in this manner. When I say, how do you get from A to B, not only do I question whether this process can produce "innovation", simply, originate new form, but also how it is possible given the time-scale of the fossil record as we know it today.-Justin