Define 'species'

[Jet Black]

They do not survive when they have to compete with unmutated strains. The selective advantage for asexually reproducing organisms is twice that of sexually producing ones. Natural selection would eliminate these supposed transitions at the first sign of trouble and this is a demonstrated fact.

what utterly rubbish, and I will demonstrate that by providing two counterexamples to your baseless allegation. There are a number of organisms that use both sexual and asexual reproduction throughout their own lifecycles, from aphids to volvox. Come on mark, if you are going to pretend to know what you are talking about, at least do a bit of reading ok?

 

[mark kennedy]

what utterly rubbish, and I will demonstrate that by providing two counterexamples to your baseless allegation. There are a number of organisms that use both sexual and asexual reproduction throughout their own lifecycles, from aphids to volvox. Come on mark, if you are going to pretend to know what you are talking about, at least do a bit of reading ok?

I have been reading, here is one of the articles I found particularly interesting:

"Identifying the forces responsible for the origin and maintenance of sexuality remains one of the greatest unsolved problems in biology. The mutational deterministic hypothesis postulates that sex is an adaptation that allows deleterious mutations to be purged from the genome; it requires synergistic interactions, which means that two mutations would be more harmful together than expected from their separate effects. We generated 225 genotypes of Escherichia coli carrying one, two or three successive mutations and measured their fitness relative to an unmutated competitor. The relationship between mutation number and average fitness is nearly log-linear. We also constructed 27 recombinant genotypes having pairs of mutations whose separate and combined effects on fitness were determined. Several pairs exhibit significant interactions for fitness, but they are antagonistic as often as they are synergistic. These results do not support the mutational deterministic hypothesis for the evolution of sex."

Entrez PubMed

You may have missed this paper being introduced to the thread while you were gone. Maybe you have something else I should be reading instead of scientific papers on the subject.

I noticed that someone else adopted you're old signiture I thought I would offer you a possible alternative. Just a suggestion in case you are interested.

"But with regard to the material world, we can at least go so far as this-- we can perceive that events are brought about not by insulated interpositions of Divine power, exerted in each particular case, but by the establishment of general laws."
--Whewell: "Bridgewater Treatise".

 

[h2whoa]

Mark are you suggesting that that abstract you posted refutes what Jet and myself have stated that there are organisms that breed sexually and asexually?

h2

 

[mark kennedy]

Mark are you suggesting that that abstract you posted refutes what Jet and myself have stated that there are organisms that breed sexually and asexually?

h2

No what I am saying is that the transition from asexual reproduction to sexual reproduction does not produce a selective advantage. The interesting thing about the paper is that they demonstrate that both synergistic and antagonistic mutations were the result. The trouble was not that there were no beneficial mutations but that harmfull ones were just as common. There is no selective advantage to this transition and the reason for this is pretty obvious, it never happened.

 

[Jet Black]

I have been reading, here is one of the articles I found particularly interesting:

"Identifying the forces responsible for the origin and maintenance of sexuality remains one of the greatest unsolved problems in biology. The mutational deterministic hypothesis postulates that sex is an adaptation that allows deleterious mutations to be purged from the genome; it requires synergistic interactions, which means that two mutations would be more harmful together than expected from their separate effects. We generated 225 genotypes of Escherichia coli carrying one, two or three successive mutations and measured their fitness relative to an unmutated competitor. The relationship between mutation number and average fitness is nearly log-linear. We also constructed 27 recombinant genotypes having pairs of mutations whose separate and combined effects on fitness were determined. Several pairs exhibit significant interactions for fitness, but they are antagonistic as often as they are synergistic. These results do not support the mutational deterministic hypothesis for the evolution of sex."

Entrez PubMed

You may have missed this paper being introduced to the thread while you were gone. Maybe you have something else I should be reading instead of scientific papers on the subject.

perhaps you might try posting something remotely relevant. you made a claim that sexually reproducing organisms in one species cannot coexist and that the sexual reproducers would be driven extinct by saying

"Natural selection would eliminate these supposed transitions at the first sign of trouble and this is a demonstrated fact."

well it isn't a demonstrated fact, and I provided two living examples of the fact that you are dead wrong in that matter, because natural selection does not eliminate the sexually reproducing members in these cases. There are lots of other organisms that reproduce both sexually and asexually.

 

[Jet Black]

No what I am saying is that the transition from asexual reproduction to sexual reproduction does not produce a selective advantage.

again nonsense. If you actually bothered to read up on organisms that reproduce both sexually and asexually you will find that there are selective advantages to each of the reproduction types, usually depending on the stresses on the organisms.

 

[mark kennedy]

perhaps you might try posting something remotely relevant. you made a claim that sexually reproducing organisms in one species cannot coexist and that the sexual reproducers would be driven extinct by saying

It is very relevant since this thread is a spinoff from the formal debate Aron-Ra and I had. Evolution as an explanation for our origins must begin with the transition of the single celled ancestor. For this to happen there has to be a transition from asexual to sexual reproduction that provides a selective advantage. Since mutations are given credit for driving evolution this is a prime example of how descent from a single common ancestor is presumption, not science. The signiture says it all.

well it isn't a demonstrated fact, and I provided two living examples of the fact that you are dead wrong in that matter, because natural selection does not eliminate the sexually reproducing members in these cases. There are lots of other organisms that reproduce both sexually and asexually.

So what if there are organisms that do that? Does this mean that we must presume that single celled organisms are our ancestors? Now for evolution to be an explanation for our origins then we must test the theory through hypothesis.

Theories have to be tested and descent from a single common ancestor failed in this instance.

"Identifying the forces responsible for the origin and maintenance of sexuality remains one of the greatest unsolved problems in biology"

In support of this the authors cited 6 scientific papers supporting it and none to the contrary. This is exactly what the creation model predicts, stasis is what Genesis describes as 'begat after kinds'.

 

[Jet Black]

It is very relevant since this thread is a spinoff from the formal debate Aron-Ra and I had. Evolution as an explanation for our origins must begin with the transition of the single celled ancestor. For this to happen there has to be a transition from asexual to sexual reproduction that provides a selective advantage. Since mutations are given credit for driving evolution this is a prime example of how descent from a single common ancestor is presumption, not science. The signiture says it all.

It wasn't even remotely relevant to my clear examples which contradict what you said.

So what if there are organisms that do that? Does this mean that we must presume that single celled organisms are our ancestors? Now for evolution to be an explanation for our origins then we must test the theory through hypothesis.

oh those goalposts. how they move. so now you admit that your original thesis that asexual reproducers will outperform sexual reproducers is wrong, based on the existance of organisms that actually do both.

In support of this the authors cited 6 scientific papers supporting it and none to the contrary. This is exactly what the creation model predicts, stasis is what Genesis describes as 'begat after kinds'.

so the creationist "model" predicts that things shouldn't happen that do happen. that is called falsified. you can drop your "model" in the trash now, along with your meaningless definitions of "kind"

 

[mark kennedy]

It wasn't even remotely relevant to my clear examples which contradict what you said.

That is what I am talking about, even with the evidence right in front of you you continue to cling to the myth. From the paper:

"The relationship between mutation number and average fitness is nearly log-linear.We also constructed 27 recombinant genotypes having pairs of mutations whose separate and combined effects on fitness were determined.
Several pairs exhibit significant interactions for fitness, but they are antagonistic as often as they are synergistic"

This could not be made any clearer, there are as many harmfull effects as beneficial ones. That means that there is no selective advantage that can be demonstrated for this supposed transition. This transition never happened.

oh those goalposts. how they move. so now you admit that your original thesis that asexual reproducers will outperform sexual reproducers is wrong, based on the existance of organisms that actually do both.
so the creationist "model" predicts that things shouldn't happen that do happen. that is called falsified. you can drop your "model" in the trash now, along with your meaningless definitions of "kind"

Oh the clutch phrases, how they are so desperatly clung to. Asexual reproducers have twice the selective advantage and as the number of mutations are increased the selective advantage declines even more. I think you need to catch up on you're reading Jet, I suggest you start with this paper.

A little etymology for you while you are warming up the satire kiln. The term species was selected because it meant the same thing as kind and the definition has undergone very little change. The only thing that was falsified is immutability of species, creationism predates evolution is its many forms and will surely outlast it.

 

[yossarian]

Did you miss this or just simply chose to ignore it. In order for living systems to have emerged from single celled organisms they must make this transition. There is no demonstrated mechanism for this in natural science just a naturalistic presumption that it must have occured. This has produced a mythology as to our origins to this day. There is no selective advantage produced by any of the hypothesis generated by this theory of single common ancestory. No other theory in natural science would be given this kind of tolerance and it is, as Bacon described it, an idol of the mind.

ITS NOT ABOUT MECHANISM, ITS ABOUT SELECTIVE ADVANTAGE

maybe if I shout, you'll finally get it

That is the whole point of the experiments, to test a hypothesis as to the origin and maintance of sex. You say that I don't understand the paper and you make a statement like that...you are in denial and that is putting it mildly.

exactly, TO TEST ONE HYPOTHESIS ON THE ORIGIN AND MAINTENANCE OF SEX
ERGO, ALL ONE CAN SAY IS THAT THIS PARTICULAR HYPOTHESIS IS NOT SUPPORTED BY THE DATA

Such as?

the yeast genome duplication, the shared ERVs, the rRNA phylogeny, the hox expansions, the phylogeny of pseudogenes, the presence of ciliary photoreceptor cells in Platynereis dumerilii etc etc etc....

each new edition of nature/science et al contains numerous examples of the utility of evolution

On the contrary, to say that it has a demonstrated mechanism is unmitigated mythology.

mutation and natural selection mark - something you clearly don't understand

Go back and look at figure 1 and read the discussion. Then go back to Aron-Ra's step 3 and rethink you're theory.

it simply means a new hypothesis must be formulated and tested, something real scientists do (and creationists don't do)

They have both been around since the begining of life on earth, that is the point.

whats that got to do with anything? CLEARLY sex provides some advantage, or organisms wouldn't continue to reproduce that way when they are also able to reproduce asexually

Sure, but how did they evolve from asexual single celled organisms, that's the real question here.

irrelevant to the point i'm making, which is that organisms reproduce sexually, despite your claim that it is disadvantageous

Maybe to a 10 year old but a mature adult...

I know, it amazes me how befuddled you are too

There is no intermediate stage, that's a myth.

reproducing both sexually and asexually is clearly intermediate between either sexual or asexual reproduction alone

No, I know what the paper demonstrated and it's the opposite of what the descent from a single cell ancestor model predicts.

no IT ISN'T!
its the opposite of what the synergistic epistasis model of the evolution of sex would predict, and nothing more

The larger implications are both evident and obvious, in fact, they are explicitly stated in the paper.

there are no larger implications, other than a need to formulate a new hypothesis for the evolution of sex

You don't like having you're naturalistic assumptions challenged do you?

I don't like people who can't understand the papers they think challenge "naturalistic assumptions"

Then why is sexual and asexual reproduction part of the definition of kingdom in modern taxonomy?

is it?

Did you even read it because the conclusion was pretty clear.

"Even with this conservative approach, three synergistic and four antagonistic interactions are significant. Therefore, the mutational deterministic hypothesis seems to fail not because interactions between deleterious mutations are very rare, but rather because synergistic and antagonistic interactions are both common."

YES, AND?

thats exactly what i've been saying, and exactly what you've been contradicting for several posts now

The combined effect in multiple mutations decrease fitness more then single ones. What you have in the first figure is an decreasing exponential curve, check it out for yourself, you have the paper, the evidence is right there.

 

[yossarian]

No what I am saying is that the transition from asexual reproduction to sexual reproduction does not produce a selective advantage. The interesting thing about the paper is that they demonstrate that both synergistic and antagonistic mutations were the result. The trouble was not that there were no beneficial mutations but that harmfull ones were just as common. There is no selective advantage to this transition and the reason for this is pretty obvious, it never happened.

OH GOD HELP ME, YOU STILL DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE PAPER

-the paper DOES NOT ADRESS BENEFICIAL MUTATIONS AT ALL

-the paper DOES NOT SAY "HARMFUL MUTATIONS ARE JUST AS COMMON"

-MUTATIONS CANNOT BE SYNERGISTIC OR ANTAGONISTIC, THESE TERMS REFER TO THE INTERACTIONS BETWEEN MUTATIONS, NOT THE MUTATIONS THEMSELVES

-IT DOES NOT SAY THAT SEX DOES NOT PROVIDE A SELECTIVE ADVANTAGE, IT SAYS THAT SYNERGISTIC EPISTASIS IS NOT A SELECTIVE ADVANTAGE THAT EXPLAINS SEX, BECAUSE ANTAGONISTIC EPISTASIS IS JUST AS COMMON

-THIS PAPER DOES NOT FALSIFY THE EVOLUTION OF SEX, IT FALSIFIES A PARTICULAR HYPOTHESIS THAT ATTEMPTS TO EXPLAIN WHY THE EVOLUTION OF SEX OCCURED

Oh the clutch phrases, how they are so desperatly clung to. Asexual reproducers have twice the selective advantage and as the number of mutations are increased the selective advantage declines even more. I think you need to catch up on you're reading Jet, I suggest you start with this paper.

my irony meter just imploded - clearly reading the paper hasn't helped you at all, because you're still making trivial mistakes about what the paper is about

you are the one who needs to do some reading, of biology textbooks - maybe then you'll have the knowledge required to read and understand articles like this one

 

[mark kennedy]

ITS NOT ABOUT MECHANISM, ITS ABOUT SELECTIVE ADVANTAGE

Natural selection is supposed to be the mechanism and there is no selective advantage and writing in caps won't change that fact.

maybe if I shout, you'll finally get it

A fanatic is someone who doubles their efforts when they have lost sight of their goals. The goal here is to test hypothesis that are the product of a theory. When you get a negative result every time you test a hypothesis from a particular theory then maybe the theory is wrong.

exactly, TO TEST ONE HYPOTHESIS ON THE ORIGIN AND MAINTENANCE OF SEX
ERGO, ALL ONE CAN SAY IS THAT THIS PARTICULAR HYPOTHESIS IS NOT SUPPORTED BY THE DATA

This one hypothesis that asserts that mutations provide synergistic effects has been soundly disproven. Mutations do not drive evolution, they destroy it.

the yeast genome duplication, the shared ERVs, the rRNA phylogeny, the hox expansions, the phylogeny of pseudogenes, the presence of ciliary photoreceptor cells in Platynereis dumerilii etc etc etc....

Yeast is mentioned in the article:

"...yeast suggests that sex provides an advantage by the elimination of
deleterious mutations, but it cannot distinguish between the effects
of Muller’s ratchet and synergistic epistasis..."

This is from the article cited:

"The rate at which fitness declines as an organism's genome accumulates random mutations is an important variable in several evolutionary theories. At an intuitive level, it might seem natural that random mutations should tend to interact synergistically, such that the rate of mean fitness decline accelerates as the number of random mutations is increased. However, in a number of recent studies, a prevalence of antagonistic epistasis (the tendency of multiple mutations to have a mitigating rather than reinforcing effect) has been observed...Recent experiments indicate that synergistic and antagonistic interactions are both common when pairs of mutations are considered, but that, overall, the two types of interactions either roughly cancel each other out or perhaps even produce an excess of antagonistic interactions "

each new edition of nature/science et al contains numerous examples of the utility of evolution

You seem to forget I read these articles and you have yet to cite one example.

mutation and natural selection mark - something you clearly don't understand

I just don't accept the myth of evolution, mutations do not write the genetic code.

it simply means a new hypothesis must be formulated and tested, something real scientists do (and creationists don't do)

You abandoned the scientific approach to the subject of our origins when you begged the question of proof, don't try to hide behind it now.

whats that got to do with anything? CLEARLY sex provides some advantage, or organisms wouldn't continue to reproduce that way when they are also able to reproduce asexually

Ok, I am going to assume you really don't understand. The single celled protorganism must make this transition and there is no way for it to happen. On the other hand, if the creatures are created fully formed then they will continue to begat according to kinds, just as single celled organisms will. Single celled organisms have no way of making the transitions the myth makers are telling you they did. Got it?

irrelevant to the point i'm making, which is that organisms reproduce sexually, despite your claim that it is disadvantageous

Actually it is irrelevant due to the assumptions you are making.

I know, it amazes me how befuddled you are too

Honestly, I have never been more clear or convinced and I have evolutionists to thank for it. You guys are great, I couldn't make a better strawman argument then the ones you guys come up with.

reproducing both sexually and asexually is clearly intermediate between either sexual or asexual reproduction alone

My what big presumptions you have.

no IT ISN'T!

Yes it is!

its the opposite of what the synergistic epistasis model of the evolution of sex would predict, and nothing more

Then why is this crucial transition the greatest mystery in biology?

there are no larger implications, other than a need to formulate a new hypothesis for the evolution of sex

No we need to reclaim the theory that produced evolution in the first place, creationism.

I don't like people who can't understand the papers they think challenge "naturalistic assumptions"

I don't like people who don't want to admit what science has proven beyond skepticism.

is it?

Please be serious. I am enjoying this but my sides are starting to hurt.

YES, AND?

thats exactly what i've been saying, and exactly what you've been contradicting for several posts now

No you have not. I said that the synergistic effects were offset by the antagonistic one and 1 + -1 = 0. You keep insisting that it equals evolution and the math just doesn't add up. That was fun, lets do it again...argue in circles some more.

 

[mark kennedy]

OH GOD HELP ME, YOU STILL DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE PAPER

Yes Lord, please help him.

-the paper DOES NOT ADRESS BENEFICIAL MUTATIONS AT ALL

That's because most mutations are deletreous or harmfull. The effects on the other hand may be beneficial and I doubt seriously that you are really thinking this through.

-the paper DOES NOT SAY "HARMFUL MUTATIONS ARE JUST AS COMMON"

No it says that antagonistic effects are produced in equal numbers.

-MUTATIONS CANNOT BE SYNERGISTIC OR ANTAGONISTIC, THESE TERMS REFER TO THE INTERACTIONS BETWEEN MUTATIONS, NOT THE MUTATIONS THEMSELVES

Yes I know, so what?

-IT DOES NOT SAY THAT SEX DOES NOT PROVIDE A SELECTIVE ADVANTAGE, IT SAYS THAT SYNERGISTIC EPISTASIS IS NOT A SELECTIVE ADVANTAGE THAT EXPLAINS SEX, BECAUSE ANTAGONISTIC EPISTASIS IS JUST AS COMMON

Yes and it says this crucial transition from asexual to sexual is a mystery since the selective advantage goes to maintaining asexual reproduction in single celled organisms.

-THIS PAPER DOES NOT FALSIFY THE EVOLUTION OF SEX, IT FALSIFIES A PARTICULAR HYPOTHESIS THAT ATTEMPTS TO EXPLAIN WHY THE EVOLUTION OF SEX OCCURED

It proves that the as mutations increase fitness declines and if you read the paper you allready know this.

my irony meter just imploded - clearly reading the paper hasn't helped you at all, because you're still making trivial mistakes about what the paper is about

You sure picked the right word here, trivial, you're hair spliting does not change the fact that mutations cannot account for this transition. It doesn't happen in nature, we are not the result of random naturalistic processes. Our ancestors were created by God, fully formed, and begat the generations that followed according to kinds.

you are the one who needs to do some reading, of biology textbooks - maybe then you'll have the knowledge required to read and understand articles like this one

I do read my biology textbook on a regular basis and I understand the article just fine. Another hypothesis based on the single celled common ancestor model bites the dust. Mendel was right and Darwin was wrong, live with it.

 

[Tomk80]

Mark, how many people have to point out the same flaws in your understanding of the article, before you will accept that you're understanding of the article is flawed?

Identifying the forces responsible for the origin and maintenance of sexuality remains one of the greatest unsolved problems in biology. The mutational deterministic hypothesis postulates that sex is an adaptation that allows deleterious mutations to be purged from the genome; it requires synergistic interactions, which means that two mutations would be more harmful together than expected from their separate effects. We generated 225 genotypes of Escherichia coli carrying one, two or three successive mutations and measured their fitness relative to an unmutated competitor. The relationship between mutation number and average fitness is nearly log-linear. We also constructed 27 recombinant genotypes having pairs of mutations whose separate and combined effects on fitness were determined. Several pairs exhibit significant interactions for fitness, but they are antagonistic as often as they are synergistic. These results do not support the mutational deterministic hypothesis for the evolution of sex.

My conclusions based on the summary alone.

• They are testing which forces are responsible for the origin and maintenance of sexuality. So the evolution of sexuality is not under discussion, it is the forces responsible for sexuality.
• One of the proposed forces is the ability to purge mutations from the genome, this is the hypothesis which Elena & Lenski are going to test.
• From their tests they conclude that the hypothesis that “the ability to purge deleterious mutations from the genome is an important force in the evolution of sex” is incorrect.

Now, is the evolution of sex falsified? No. As they mention in the first paragraph of their article:

Among some 20 hypotheses, two postulate that sex is an adaptation for purging deleterious mutations from the genome.

So there are actually twenty different hypotheses about which forces are important for the evolution of sex. Two of these postulate what they are testing, and of these two they are testing one (the other one is primarily beneficial in small populations). So, there are actually 19 other explanations on why the evolution of sex occurred. Of the 20 explanations we do not know which to chose. Now, one is falsified by Elena & Lenski. Which still leaves us with 19 other possible explanations for the evolution of sex.

Furthermore, although in this article the hypothesis was disproved, in scanning the article it was raised that the sample size might be to low really disprove the hypothesis (although it’s late, and I would have to study the article a bit harder than I’ve done now to see whether the authors agree with this). So, even better might be is to say (as the authors do in the summary) that this study does not support the hypothesis, instead of that the study falsifies it.



So Mark, we still have to have more data to be able to have a solid refutation off this hypothesis. Furthermore, if this hypothesis is definitively falsified, we still cannot say that in small populations purging of deleterious mutations might not be a relevant selection force. And even if that one is falsified as well, we still have 18 other hypotheses to test.



And then, even if all those 18 others are falsified as well, the evolution of sex itself isn’t even questioned in this article, so you’ll have to come with something else to falsify that. We might come up with a 21st hypothesis that does explain the force behind the evolution of sex. Or even if we don’t, if we definitely prove all 20 current hypothesis false and haven’t got a 21st hypothesis, we can easily say that we don’t know what the driving force is behind the evolution of sex, since these hypothesis do not test whether the evolution of sex occurs, but why the evolution of sex occurs.

 

[mark kennedy]

And then, even if all those 18 others are falsified as well, the evolution of sex itself isn’t even questioned in this article, so you’ll have to come with something else to falsify that. We might come up with a 21st hypothesis that does explain the force behind the evolution of sex. Or even if we don’t, if we definitely prove all 20 current hypothesis false and haven’t got a 21st hypothesis, we can easily say that we don’t know what the driving force is behind the evolution of sex, since these hypothesis do not test whether the evolution of sex occurs, but why the evolution of sex occurs.

That my friend is the power of presumption. Why this statement has received so little attention is as much a mystery to me as the evolution of single celled organisms from asexual reproduction to sexual reproduction is to the scientists who wrote this article.

"Identifying the forces responsible for the origin and maintenance of sexuality remains one of the greatest unsolved problems in biology."

To be honest the original posting of exerpts from this article was meant to illustrate how Aron-Ra's steps did not demonstrate that the theory evolutionists are working from could support the universal common ancestor model. I have seen nothing to contradict this affirmation, in fact, the main point I was making would seem to be irrefutable. Mutations are not driving organisms to evolve, they are making them extinct.

Newton had an experimentum crucis (crucial experiment) that made his series of hypothesis a theory. What we are seeing now is that the theory of single common ancestory dictates the hypothesis no matter what the actual evidence says.

I understand that the positive effects of these particular mutations are offset by the harmfull ones. You will find that this holds true no matter how many false demonstrations of science this bogus theory produces. If there is a way of demonstrating that we did indeed evolve from single cell organisms then natural science has yet to produce it. The empirical proof does not support this theory and it should be removed when it fails the burden of proof on such a macro scale. No other theory in natural science would be given this much toleration and unless evolution wants to be discarded along with the pagan myths of Babylon, the theory of descent from a single common ancestor should discarded.

Bottomline, produce a demonstrated mechanism or continue to gaze at this idol of the mind.

 

[yossarian]

Natural selection is supposed to be the mechanism and there is no selective advantage and writing in caps won't change that fact.

there is no selective advantage provided by epistasis

your summaries are lazy and misleading

A fanatic is someone who doubles their efforts when they have lost sight of their goals. The goal here is to test hypothesis that are the product of a theory. When you get a negative result every time you test a hypothesis from a particular theory then maybe the theory is wrong.

we don't get a negative result everytime
the vast majority are positive results

This one hypothesis that asserts that mutations provide synergistic effects has been soundly disproven. Mutations do not drive evolution, they destroy it.

I can't decide whether your misunderstanding is willful or simply misguided

soundly disproven is a gross misstatement based on a single study of a small number of mutations in a single organism

mutations do drive evolution, the evidence is abundant in every article you ignored to dwell on this one particular article you keep misrepresenting

You seem to forget I read these articles and you have yet to cite one example.

I just cited numerous examples
whether you've read the articles seems immaterial, whether you've understood any of them is the major issue

I just don't accept the myth of evolution, mutations do not write the genetic code.

they change the genetic code and along with natural selection, shape genomes

Ok, I am going to assume you really don't understand. The single celled protorganism must make this transition and there is no way for it to happen. On the other hand, if the creatures are created fully formed then they will continue to begat according to kinds, just as single celled organisms will. Single celled organisms have no way of making the transitions the myth makers are telling you they did. Got it?

there is a way for it to happen - mutation and natural selection

none of the rest of this adresses the fact that organisms that have both sexual and asexual reproduction actually do both in different circumstances - blowing your argument out of the water

Actually it is irrelevant due to the assumptions you are making.

i'm making no assumptions
organisms that reproduce both sexually and asexually exist - clearly a transition to sexual reproduction IS NOT impossible, else these organisms would never sexually reproduce

Honestly, I have never been more clear or convinced and I have evolutionists to thank for it. You guys are great, I couldn't make a better strawman argument then the ones you guys come up with.

my new irony meter isn't in yet, but i'll just point out that all your summaries of the paper and of the evolution of sex are strawmen

My what big presumptions you have.

its not a presumption - its simple logic

Then why is this crucial transition the greatest mystery in biology?

because it remains unexplained

No we need to reclaim the theory that produced evolution in the first place, creationism.

a theory that neither produces hypotheses or tests them - no thanks, there wouldn't even be an article to argue about

I don't like people who don't want to admit what science has proven beyond skepticism.

this ***-for-tat is ridiculous
you plainly haven't understood the paper, despite numerous attempts to explain it to you - so any claims about what science has proven are undermined by your inability to understand what science is actually saying

Please be serious. I am enjoying this but my sides are starting to hurt.

please demonstrate it then

No you have not. I said that the synergistic effects were offset by the antagonistic one and 1 + -1 = 0. You keep insisting that it equals evolution and the math just doesn't add up. That was fun, lets do it again...argue in circles some more.

you've said a whole variety of things, about beneficial mutations (not even adressed in the article), synergistic and antagonistic mutations (inherently nonsensical), and things like

The combined effect in multiple mutations decrease fitness more then single ones. What you have in the first figure is an decreasing exponential curve, check it out for yourself, you have the paper, the evidence is right there.

and

Another interesting point of interest was that the more mutations the more the selective advantage is reduced, mutations are not driving evolution they drive organisms closer to extinction.

which both contradict the conclusions of the article

That's because most mutations are deletreous or harmfull. The effects on the other hand may be beneficial and I doubt seriously that you are really thinking this through.

NO, ITS BECAUSE THE PAPER IS SPECIFICALLY ADRESSING SYNERGISTIC INTERACTIONS BETWEEN KNOWN DELETERIOUS MUTATIONS

I have Bachelors of science majoring in genetics - being lectured on mutations is amusing and infuriating

No it says that antagonistic effects are produced in equal numbers

then why did you say "harmfull ones were just as common"

Yes I know, so what?

he interesting thing about the paper is that they demonstrate that both synergistic and antagonistic mutations were the result.

Yes and it says this crucial transition from asexual to sexual is a mystery since the selective advantage goes to maintaining asexual reproduction in single celled organisms.

close enough mark

t proves that the as mutations increase fitness declines and if you read the paper you allready know this.

seeing as the paper only adresses deleterious mutations this statement is almost tautologous, and at the same time - completely irrelevant to the role of mutation in evolution, because it specifically and only deals with deleterious mutations

its also a misleading way of summarizing the paper, because one of its conclusions is that the combined effect of some deleterious mutations is LESS DELETERIOUS than would be expected by a simple addition of their fitness costs

You sure picked the right word here, trivial, you're hair spliting does not change the fact that mutations cannot account for this transition. It doesn't happen in nature, we are not the result of random naturalistic processes. Our ancestors were created by God, fully formed, and begat the generations that followed according to kinds.

you're drawing ridiculous conclusions from a paper that does not even adress the kind of mutations required for the transition, but only adresses a particular model for the selective effects of sex

I do read my biology textbook on a regular basis and I understand the article just fine. Another hypothesis based on the single celled common ancestor model bites the dust. Mendel was right and Darwin was wrong, live with it.

I doubt that mark
there are numerous violations of mendel's laws, something you'd know if you'd actually read any relevant textbooks

 

[Tomk80]

That my friend is the power of presumption. Why this statement has received so little attention is as much a mystery to me as the evolution of single celled organisms from asexual reproduction to sexual reproduction is to the scientists who wrote this article.

"Identifying the forces responsible for the origin and maintenance of sexuality remains one of the greatest unsolved problems in biology."

To be honest the original posting of exerpts from this article was meant to illustrate how Aron-Ra's steps did not demonstrate that the theory evolutionists are working from could support the universal common ancestor model. I have seen nothing to contradict this affirmation, in fact, the main point I was making would seem to be irrefutable. Mutations are not driving organisms to evolve, they are making them extinct.

Newton had an experimentum crucis (crucial experiment) that made his series of hypothesis a theory. What we are seeing now is that the theory of single common ancestory dictates the hypothesis no matter what the actual evidence says.

I understand that the positive effects of these particular mutations are offset by the harmfull ones. You will find that this holds true no matter how many false demonstrations of science this bogus theory produces. If there is a way of demonstrating that we did indeed evolve from single cell organisms then natural science has yet to produce it. The empirical proof does not support this theory and it should be removed when it fails the burden of proof on such a macro scale. No other theory in natural science would be given this much toleration and unless evolution wants to be discarded along with the pagan myths of Babylon, the theory of descent from a single common ancestor should discarded.

Bottomline, produce a demonstrated mechanism or continue to gaze at this idol of the mind.

No Mark, you can conclude that sexual behaviour probably has evolved without knowing which forces are involved. One of the arguments for this is the existence of creatures which are both sexual and asexual. You still have not answered that argument brought forward by Jet Black. The only thing you have done till know is give us an article which looks at one hypothesis of the forces involved in this process, assert that this hypothesis is falsified and then shout 'murder!'. This has nothing to do with presumption of the researchers, it has everything to do with your presumptions.

Even better, the hypothesis can be seen totally independent of the evolution of sexuality. It can be simply seen as answering the question 'sexual organisms should logically have less survival chances than asexual organisms, why are they so succesfull anyway?'. The hypothesis in fact answers this question. We just want to know why sexuality offers a benefit, since it is would be a logical conclusion that it doesn't. Whether evolution, creationism or 'last thursdayism' is the model used, the question remains the same.

 

[mark kennedy]

No Mark, you can conclude that sexual behaviour probably has evolved without knowing which forces are involved. One of the arguments for this is the existence of creatures which are both sexual and asexual. You still have not answered that argument brought forward by Jet Black. The only thing you have done till know is give us an article which looks at one hypothesis of the forces involved in this process, assert that this hypothesis is falsified and then shout 'murder!'. This has nothing to do with presumption of the researchers, it has everything to do with your presumptions.

The existance of organisms that demonstrate sexual and asexual behavior was never an issue. The question is about asexual single celled organisms evolving into sexually reproducing precursors to the vast number of species that do that throughout natural history. My contention is simply this, the descent from a single celled organism is a myth, pure and simple. I have read a number of the papers cited in the article and these results have been duplicated in every empirical test that I am aware of. This is not an isolated instance where a hypothesis demonstrates that the single celled common ancestor model is flawed, this is to be expected when you base you're science on mythology.

Even better, the hypothesis can be seen totally independent of the evolution of sexuality. It can be simply seen as answering the question 'sexual organisms should logically have less survival chances than asexual organisms, why are they so succesfull anyway?'. The hypothesis in fact answers this question. We just want to know why sexuality offers a benefit, since it is would be a logical conclusion that it doesn't. Whether evolution, creationism or 'last thursdayism' is the model used, the question remains the same.

The only question that is answered is the one that asks if deletreous mutations produce synergetic effects that offer selective advantage for mutated strains. The answer is that there are synergestic effects but they are offset by the anagonistic ones. This is empirical that the hypothesis is null and it is consistant with the related studies that have found this to be true on a macro scale.

The question has been answered and as we continue to unlock the mysteries of the genome this myth will eventually unravel itself.

 

[mark kennedy]

there is no selective advantage provided by epistasis

your summaries are lazy and misleading

There is no selective advantage demonstrated for large populations given the parameters in the study. More mutations translate into less of a selective advantage, that is why they are deletreous.

we don't get a negative result everytime
the vast majority are positive results

Baloney

I can't decide whether your misunderstanding is willful or simply misguided

I can't decide if you are really reading this article or just writing the first thing that comes to mind.

soundly disproven is a gross misstatement based on a single study of a small number of mutations in a single organism

With all the documentation that goes into a paper like this I would suggest you follow the bibliography. I did and found that this is perfectly consistant with related studies, no selective advantage so it is still an unsolved mystery why such a transition would occure. The obvious conclusion, except to the most adamant apologist for Darwinian evolution, is that it never happened.

mutations do drive evolution, the evidence is abundant in every article you ignored to dwell on this one particular article you keep misrepresenting

The evidence is abundant and yet you have yet to offer a shred of proof. This is exactly what you guys accuse creationists of and you are worse.

I just cited numerous examples
whether you've read the articles seems immaterial, whether you've understood any of them is the major issue

You cited nothing, ever, not even once.

they change the genetic code and along with natural selection, shape genomes

Mutations are eliminated by natural selection, they are not accumulated. You are continueing to talk in circles which makes my part in this discussion so easy it's embarassing.

there is a way for it to happen - mutation and natural selection

Get this through you're head, no selective advantage = extinction. Read Darwins Origin of Species or anything on the modern synthesis...anything at all.

none of the rest of this adresses the fact that organisms that have both sexual and asexual reproduction actually do both in different circumstances - blowing your argument out of the water

I did address that point and the antagonistic effects equal the synergestic one blowing you're argument to pieces.

i'm making no assumptions

Yes you are.

organisms that reproduce both sexually and asexually exist - clearly a transition to sexual reproduction IS NOT impossible, else these organisms would never sexually reproduce

What part of natural selection is too hard for you to understand. Try to concentrate...no selective advantage = extinction.

my new irony meter isn't in yet, but i'll just point out that all your summaries of the paper and of the evolution of sex are strawmen

Resorting to clutch phrases again...typical.

its not a presumption - its simple logic

Logic requires a yes or no response and the selective advantage question for the transition from asexual to sexual evolution of living organisms is no.

because it remains unexplained

Thus no demonstrated mechanism which is what I would expect for conceptual theory that is based in presumption.

a theory that neither produces hypotheses or tests them - no thanks, there wouldn't even be an article to argue about

Oh right, you prefer the ones that keep producing one null hypothesis after another.

this ***-for-tat is ridiculous

If you can't win then you might as well quit but don't blame me that you're philosophical ideals are bogus.

you plainly haven't understood the paper, despite numerous attempts to explain it to you - so any claims about what science has proven are undermined by your inability to understand what science is actually saying

I understand the science, the paper and I know why you are not interested in the actual evidence. There has not been one shred of evidence offered to counter me and I had a ton of stuff to support what I am saying. What happened is no one could counter the argument so I just let you guys argue in circles.

you've said a whole variety of things, about beneficial mutations (not even adressed in the article), synergistic and antagonistic mutations (inherently nonsensical), and things like

That's right most mutations are either deletreous or harmfull. The rare beneficial mutation is not capable of making evolutionary changes on a macro scale.

NO, ITS BECAUSE THE PAPER IS SPECIFICALLY ADRESSING SYNERGISTIC INTERACTIONS BETWEEN KNOWN DELETERIOUS MUTATIONS

And again the hypothesis is found to be null so we have no demonstrated mechanism for evolutionary change.

I have Bachelors of science majoring in genetics - being lectured on mutations is amusing and infuriating

I am glad you are enjoying the discussion, for me its fish in a barrel.

then why did you say "harmfull ones were just as common"

Because there are just as many antagonisitic ones as synergestic ones.

seeing as the paper only adresses deleterious mutations this statement is almost tautologous, and at the same time - completely irrelevant to the role of mutation in evolution, because it specifically and only deals with deleterious mutations

Right, and so we can discard deleterious mutations as having what it takes to evolve single celled organisms from asexual to sexual organisms.

its also a misleading way of summarizing the paper, because one of its conclusions is that the combined effect of some deleterious mutations is LESS DELETERIOUS than would be expected by a simple addition of their fitness costs

I was wondering if anyone would catch that...I agree.

you're drawing ridiculous conclusions from a paper that does not even adress the kind of mutations required for the transition, but only adresses a particular model for the selective effects of sex

It's a mystery my dear Watson, and the game is afoot!

I doubt that mark
there are numerous violations of mendel's laws, something you'd know if you'd actually read any relevant textbooks

Mendel's laws are the exact opposite of the Darwinian concept of a single common ancestory. The key difference is in demonstrated proof, stasis is the rule and evolution as it is drawn up in evolutionary trees is a myth. It should be embarassing that the only substantive proof for evolution is found in the work of a creationist and the largest bundle of null hypothesis is being produced by an agnostic secularist. Darwin was wrong and this is being proven in so many ways it boggles the mind that his model is so popular amoung secular apologists for evolution.

Talk about irony.

 

[curious_george]

I'm not an expert on the article, especially since I've only read the abstract. It doesn't state that the advent of sexual reproduction is detrimental to a species. From my understanding of genetics, sexual reproduction offers more opportunity for variety in the population than asexual reproduction. The mixing of various genes produces offspring that can have more possible combinations, it's a matter of permutations. It is hypothesized that greater variety is an advantage to the population, because the greater combination of genes may be more resistant to new diseases, environmental changes, etc. Now, the advantage here is that this greater amount of variety can be produced without mutations... where in asexual reproduction mutation is major driving factor of change. The article seems to state that sexual reproduction doesn't necessarily help when multiple mutations are introduced, but it does not refute that sexual reproduction as a whole does not produce a selective advantage. I don't think the authors of this paper are making claims to refute sexual reproduction, so we shouldn't blow it out of proportion. They are stating that too many mutations at once can be detrimental to survival, with all other things being equal. However, sexual reproduction immediately increases genetic variety by a huge margin, and this has not been in question.