Announcement

Collapse

Natural Science 301 Guidelines

This is an open forum area for all members for discussions on all issues of science and origins. This area will and does get volatile at times, but we ask that it be kept to a dull roar, and moderators will intervene to keep the peace if necessary. This means obvious trolling and flaming that becomes a problem will be dealt with, and you might find yourself in the doghouse.

As usual, Tweb rules apply. If you haven't read them now would be a good time.

Forum Rules: Here
See more
See less

The book Darwin Devolves

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Originally posted by lee_merrill View Post
    But if selective pressure is reversed, should we expect to see evolution travel in that direction? The surprising answer is, no.
    It's not surprising to anyone who understands evolution, which doesn't include you.
    Jorge: Functional Complex Information is INFORMATION that is complex and functional.

    MM: First of all, the Bible is a fixed document.
    MM on covid-19: We're talking about an illness with a better than 99.9% rate of survival.

    seer: I believe that so called 'compassion' [for starving Palestinian kids] maybe a cover for anti Semitism, ...

    Comment


    • Short break from my vacation because I've done a little light reading that's relevant to the discussions here.

      Per Lee, Bene is arguing that duplications just aren't that important for evolution (haven't seen Behe's actual argument, but that's what's been presented here). So a measure of the frequency of changes of this sort would be useful. One for humans was apparently published recently:

      https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-08148-z

      Which looked at 3 families of 2 parents, 1 child to get an estimate of the total number of duplications and deletions in the human genome. In just those 3 families, relative to the standard reference human genome, there were over 800,000 variants smaller than 50 bases long, and another 25,000+ that were over 50 bp. So these sorts of variations are incredibly common, and if Behe wants to argue that they're unimportant, he can't do so on the basis of their frequency.

      A second paper looks at the genome of a fish that lives at the bottom of the Marianas Trench, and compares it to a close relative that lives near the surface.

      https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-019-0864-8

      Behe would undoubtedly focus on the fact that it produces a cartilaginous skeleton due to the "breaking" of a gene that's involved in bone formation. The loss of vision in the lightless environment was also associated with the loss of genes needed for it. But the rest of the news for him is... not so great. Despite a low rate of overall mutation (probably due to slow generation times), the rate of mutations in protein coding sequences are similar to that of other animals (and most of these are neutral or adaptive, rather than disabling). Duplications of genes are also extensive, with 310 different gene families showing expansion through duplications. In one case, an enzyme that promotes protein stability isn't duplicated, but the sequence that is used to start messenger RNA production has been duplicated 4 times, allowing much more of the protein to be made from a single copy of the gene.

      Once again, evidence that the majority of evolutionary changes in a free living population don't involve null mutations, and evolution is readily able to leverage the extremely frequent gene duplications that occur naturally.

      Overall, further evidence that Behe's wrong, and starting an argument with "Behe says" is no better than starting it with "a random internet weirdo says".
      "Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from trolling."

      Comment


      • Originally posted by lee_merrill View Post
        Sorry, I should have said mutations which degrade or disable a gene, but which provide a selective advantage.

        Blessings,
        Lee
        Again, The Lurch shoot down this foolish back peddling, and bizzaro Behe science.
        Last edited by shunyadragon; 04-24-2019, 09:12 AM.
        Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
        Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
        But will they come when you do call for them? Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, Act III:

        go with the flow the river knows . . .

        Frank

        I do not know, therefore everything is in pencil.

        Comment


        • Originally posted by Roy View Post
          Again, SO WHAT? Evolution doesn't require a return to a previous state.
          No, but reversing selective pressure would select for the previous state, but evolution has difficulty getting back there. And this is surprising.

          Blessings,
          Lee
          "What I pray of you is, to keep your eye upon Him, for that is everything. Do you say, 'How am I to keep my eye on Him?' I reply, keep your eye off everything else, and you will soon see Him. All depends on the eye of faith being kept on Him. How simple it is!" (J.B. Stoney)

          Comment


          • Originally posted by TheLurch View Post
            In just those 3 families, relative to the standard reference human genome, there were over 800,000 variants smaller than 50 bases long, and another 25,000+ that were over 50 bp. So these sorts of variations are incredibly common, and if Behe wants to argue that they're unimportant, he can't do so on the basis of their frequency.
            But these are structural variants, aren't they? Which would include duplications, but also deletions, copy-number variants, insertions, inversions and translocations.

            Duplications of genes are also extensive, with 310 different gene families showing expansion through duplications. In one case, an enzyme that promotes protein stability isn't duplicated, but the sequence that is used to start messenger RNA production has been duplicated 4 times, allowing much more of the protein to be made from a single copy of the gene.
            Yet the rate of duplication fixation per gene is estimated at 1 per 100 million years! Not so very common.

            Blessings,
            Lee
            "What I pray of you is, to keep your eye upon Him, for that is everything. Do you say, 'How am I to keep my eye on Him?' I reply, keep your eye off everything else, and you will soon see Him. All depends on the eye of faith being kept on Him. How simple it is!" (J.B. Stoney)

            Comment


            • Originally posted by lee_merrill View Post
              But these are structural variants, aren't they? Which would include duplications, but also deletions, copy-number variants, insertions, inversions and translocations.
              This was indels, so insertions and deletions. Inversions were measured separately, and translocations, from an evolutionary perspective, are not really any different from a duplication.

              Also, FYI, copy number variations ARE duplications and deletions. Again: learn some biology before you try to lecture others about it.

              Originally posted by lee_merrill View Post
              Yet the rate of duplication fixation per gene is estimated at 1 per 100 million years! Not so very common.
              Roy already showed above that, when you consider things like frequency of occurrence (not fixation), and genome and population size, duplications are extraordinarily common. And the fish example shows that hundreds of them can be fixed in a much shorter time if selective pressures are sufficient.

              So why do you bring that number up like it's significant?
              "Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from trolling."

              Comment


              • [QUOTE=lee_merrill;629124]But these are structural variants, aren't they? Which would include duplications, but also deletions, copy-number variants, insertions, inversions and translocations.

                Yet the rate of duplication fixation per gene is estimated at 1 per 100 million years! Not so very common.

                Blessings,
                Lee
                You were already slammed for taking this out of context citation, in a meaningless context of a religious agenda. You got a cracked record stuck on repeat of nonsense.
                Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
                Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
                But will they come when you do call for them? Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, Act III:

                go with the flow the river knows . . .

                Frank

                I do not know, therefore everything is in pencil.

                Comment


                • Originally posted by lee_merrill View Post
                  No, but reversing selective pressure would select for the previous state, but evolution has difficulty getting back there. And this is surprising.
                  Again, it's not surprising to anyone who understands evolution, which doesn't include you.

                  For one thing, there are invariably multiple selection pressures applying at any given time, each affecting a different trait (colouring, speed, ability to digest, size, tooth structure, etc), and they are extremely unlikely to all reverse to the same degree at the same time - and there are also interactions and trade-offs across traits that mean reversing evolution in one might not be advantageous because of effects on the others.

                  For another, the vast number of different ways to achieve similar results mean that evolution doesn't need to follow the same reverse path and it wouldn't be enough to find the right reverse mutation, it'd also require finding that mutation before finding any other mutation with similar effect.
                  Jorge: Functional Complex Information is INFORMATION that is complex and functional.

                  MM: First of all, the Bible is a fixed document.
                  MM on covid-19: We're talking about an illness with a better than 99.9% rate of survival.

                  seer: I believe that so called 'compassion' [for starving Palestinian kids] maybe a cover for anti Semitism, ...

                  Comment


                  • Originally posted by lee_merrill View Post
                    Yet the rate of duplication fixation per gene is estimated at 1 per 100 million years! Not so very common.
                    Deja vu all over again.

                    How common is it, Dory? How many gene duplication events occur in humans every year? What's the expected time needed for any given gene to be duplicated?

                    You don't know, do you?
                    Jorge: Functional Complex Information is INFORMATION that is complex and functional.

                    MM: First of all, the Bible is a fixed document.
                    MM on covid-19: We're talking about an illness with a better than 99.9% rate of survival.

                    seer: I believe that so called 'compassion' [for starving Palestinian kids] maybe a cover for anti Semitism, ...

                    Comment


                    • Originally posted by TheLurch View Post
                      So why do you bring that number up like it's significant?
                      Because he's further out of his depth than those fish.
                      Jorge: Functional Complex Information is INFORMATION that is complex and functional.

                      MM: First of all, the Bible is a fixed document.
                      MM on covid-19: We're talking about an illness with a better than 99.9% rate of survival.

                      seer: I believe that so called 'compassion' [for starving Palestinian kids] maybe a cover for anti Semitism, ...

                      Comment


                      • Originally posted by TheLurch View Post
                        Roy already showed above that, when you consider things like frequency of occurrence (not fixation), and genome and population size, duplications are extraordinarily common.
                        Well, I'm focusing on the fixation rate, since other duplications do not persist.

                        And the fish example shows that hundreds of them can be fixed in a much shorter time if selective pressures are sufficient.
                        But we need to look at the average rate.

                        So why do you bring that number up like it's significant?
                        Because it's the average rate of duplications being fixed, which is slow.

                        Blessings,
                        Lee
                        "What I pray of you is, to keep your eye upon Him, for that is everything. Do you say, 'How am I to keep my eye on Him?' I reply, keep your eye off everything else, and you will soon see Him. All depends on the eye of faith being kept on Him. How simple it is!" (J.B. Stoney)

                        Comment


                        • Originally posted by Roy View Post
                          For one thing, there are invariably multiple selection pressures applying at any given time, each affecting a different trait (colouring, speed, ability to digest, size, tooth structure, etc), and they are extremely unlikely to all reverse to the same degree at the same time - and there are also interactions and trade-offs across traits that mean reversing evolution in one might not be advantageous because of effects on the others.
                          But in the paper, just the selection for the previous state was considered. And evolution was not expected to get back there.

                          For another, the vast number of different ways to achieve similar results mean that evolution doesn't need to follow the same reverse path and it wouldn't be enough to find the right reverse mutation, it'd also require finding that mutation before finding any other mutation with similar effect.
                          And in the paper, what was considered was getting back to the previous state, not to any similar state.

                          Source: Darwin Devolves

                          After all, the starting point was a protein that bound steroids and the ending point was a very similarly shaped protein that bound steroids more weakly. How hard could it be to switch one to the other?

                          © Copyright Original Source



                          Blessings,
                          Lee
                          "What I pray of you is, to keep your eye upon Him, for that is everything. Do you say, 'How am I to keep my eye on Him?' I reply, keep your eye off everything else, and you will soon see Him. All depends on the eye of faith being kept on Him. How simple it is!" (J.B. Stoney)

                          Comment


                          • As The Lurch and Roy repeated demonstrated . . .

                            Originally posted by lee_merrill View Post
                            Well, I'm focusing on the fixation rate, since other duplications do not persist.
                            No!


                            But we need to look at the average rate.
                            No!

                            Because it's the average rate of duplications being fixed, which is slow.

                            Blessings,
                            Lee
                            No!
                            Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
                            Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
                            But will they come when you do call for them? Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, Act III:

                            go with the flow the river knows . . .

                            Frank

                            I do not know, therefore everything is in pencil.

                            Comment


                            • Originally posted by lee_merrill View Post
                              But we need to look at the average rate.
                              No we don't.
                              Because it's the average rate of duplications being fixed, which is slow.
                              No it isn't.

                              You keep citing that number, but you have no idea what it actually represents.
                              Jorge: Functional Complex Information is INFORMATION that is complex and functional.

                              MM: First of all, the Bible is a fixed document.
                              MM on covid-19: We're talking about an illness with a better than 99.9% rate of survival.

                              seer: I believe that so called 'compassion' [for starving Palestinian kids] maybe a cover for anti Semitism, ...

                              Comment


                              • Originally posted by lee_merrill View Post
                                Because it's the average rate of duplications being fixed, which is slow.
                                No, it's not. It's the average per gene, which has now been pointed out to you multiple times. On average, a duplication of a gene is fixed every 5,000 years for organism with 20,000 genes (assuming this rate applies to them).

                                Incidentally, did you bother to look at the first table in that paper? The number in parentheses is the percentage of genes derived from duplications in each genome examined. It's about 40% for humans (!) and they're on the low end for metazoans (!). How can you possibly claim that gene duplications aren't a dominant factor in evolution when your own reference has numbers like that?*


                                *We all know it's because Lee didn't actually pay any attention to the paper he was using as evidence. Always look at the papers that creationists are citing as evidence.
                                "Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from trolling."

                                Comment

                                Related Threads

                                Collapse

                                Topics Statistics Last Post
                                Started by Hypatia_Alexandria, 03-18-2024, 12:15 PM
                                48 responses
                                135 views
                                0 likes
                                Last Post Sparko
                                by Sparko
                                 
                                Started by Sparko, 03-07-2024, 08:52 AM
                                16 responses
                                74 views
                                0 likes
                                Last Post shunyadragon  
                                Started by rogue06, 02-28-2024, 11:06 AM
                                6 responses
                                47 views
                                0 likes
                                Last Post shunyadragon  
                                Working...
                                X