Living fossils support Genesis and 6 day creation

[lucaspa]

Aren't most mutations for the worse and not better? Does anybody have an actual example of a good mutation, proof not speculative?

Most mutations are neutral. They don't affect survival or reproductive success at all.

Beneficial mutations (a VERY partical list):
4. Cooper VS, Lenski RE. Punctuated evolution caused by selection of rare beneficial mutations. Science 1996 Jun 21;272(5269):1802-4
AB - For more than two decades there has been intense debate over the hypothesis that most morphological evolution occurs during relatively brief episodes of rapid change that punctuate much longer periods of stasis. A clear and unambiguous case of punctuated evolution is presented for cell size in a population of Escherichia coli evolving for 3000 generations in a constant environment. The punctuation is caused by natural selection as rare, beneficial mutations sweep successively through the population. This experiment shows that the most elementary processes in population genetics can give rise to punctuated evolution dynamics. Note: shows that on the molecular level even PE change is an accumulation of small changes.
31. Molecular evolution of FOXP2, a gene involved in speech and language. Wolfgang Enard, Molly Przeworski, Simon E. Fisher, Cecilia S. L. Lai, Victor Wiebe, Takashi Kitano, Anthony P. Monaco, Svante Pääbo Nature 418, 869 - 872 (22 Aug 2002)
1. http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~lindsay/creation/dup_favorable.html
Accelerated evolution
2. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/information/apolipoprotein.html New apo-lipoprotein mutation that adds antioxidant activity.
3. Sequence of favorable mutations in E. coli http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/96/7/3807

How is it possible for Natural Selection and Evolution (species to species) to be equated? Technically natural selection is a form of evolution, but it does not lead to the formation of a drastically different species.

It is natural selection that causes speciation. Now, there is never going to be the formation of a "drastically different species" because evolution does not take leaps. So the new species is going to be similar to the old. The drastically different comes from multiple speciations spread over time because the changes accumulate. That is, species A1 is not much different from species A. But species A2 is different from species A1 and even more different from species A. Continue that sequence and species A20 is going to be "drastically different" from species A because all those little differnces accumulate to a big difference.

Think of waking from NYC to San Fran. Each step is not a drastically different position from the step before it. But since the steps accumulate step 1 million is at a very different position than your starting point.

Examples of speciation being due to natural selection:

1. G Kilias, SN Alahiotis, and M Pelecanos A multifactorial genetic investigation of speciation theory using drosophila melanogaster Evolution 34:730-737, 1980. Got new species of fruit flies in the lab after 5 years on different diets and temperatures. Also confirmation of natural selection in the process. Lots of references to other studies that saw speciation.
9. Toxic Tailings and Tolerant Grass by RE Cook in Natural History, 90(3): 28-38, 1981
11. JM Thoday, Disruptive selection. Proc. Royal Soc. London B. 182: 109-143, 1972.
12. KF Koopman, Natural selection for reproductive isolation between Drosophila pseudobscura and Drosophila persimilis. Evolution 4: 135-148, 1950.
13. LE Hurd and RM Eisenberg, Divergent selection for geotactic response and evolution of reproductive isolation in sympatric and allopatric populations of houseflies. American Naturalist 109: 353-358, 1975.
4. M Nei and J Zhang, Evolution: molecular origin of species. Science 282: 1428-1429, Nov. 20, 1998. Primary article is: CT Ting, SC Tsaur, ML We, and CE Wu, A rapidly evolving homeobox at the site of a hybrid sterility gene. Science 282: 1501-1504, Nov. 20, 1998. As the title implies, has found the genes that actually change during reproductive isolation.
12. N Barton Ecology: the rapid origin of reproductive isolation Science 290:462-463, Oct. 20, 2000. www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/290/5491/462 Natural selection of reproductive isolation observed in two cases. Full papers are: AP Hendry, JK Wenburg, P Bentzen, EC Volk, TP Quinn, Rapid evolution of reproductive isolation in the wild: evidence from introduced salmon. Science 290: 516-519, Oct. 20, 2000. and M Higgie, S Chenoweth, MWBlows, Natural selection and the reinforcement of mate recognition. Science290: 519-521, Oct. 20, 2000

 

[lucaspa]

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Perhaps, but they only take precedence if they provide some reproductive advantage over the parent. Plenty of mutations could have occurred in the living fossils' history, but if the mutants were less adapted to the environment than the parents, the mutant genes are very unlikely to take priority.

Not only is it "not take priority", but will be eliminated. Alleles (and a mutation makes a new allele) that has a negative selective coefficient (is not as good as another allele) will be eliminated from the population by natural selection.

 

[serendipity79]

wow, this is a great argument. however where ever arc guy got his data is irrelivant to me, i have yet to see some solid evidence to refute it. i don't really care where he got it, it is clearly correct. Evolution is full of holes as are all theories. evolutionists back up the holes with additional theories. In the time that the origin of species was written, it was widely accepted that all change was for the better. and through evolution we always improved. That was darwin's take.

 

[Vance]

How can you not care where he got his information? Isn't the identity of the person presenting the information extremely relevant to how it is presented and the conclusions reached? I know I sure take such factors into account when reading information from any source.

 

[lucaspa]

wow, this is a great argument. however where ever arc guy got his data is irrelivant to me, i have yet to see some solid evidence to refute it. i don't really care where he got it, it is clearly correct. Evolution is full of holes as are all theories. evolutionists back up the holes with additional theories. In the time that the origin of species was written, it was widely accepted that all change was for the better. and through evolution we always improved. That was darwin's take.

LOL!! No solid evidence? I presented that. You didn't see that the horseshoe crab of the Cretaceos was a different genus than the present one? That refutes Ark Guy's "virtually no change" claim. That is data, not theory.

Sorry, running away from data with rhetoric or ignoring it isn't going to help. You really think Ark Guy is correct? Then address my posts in detail.

Darwin's take was that natural selection improved the population with respect to that particular environment. Note the qualifier. There is no absolute improvement. When the environment changes, what was once perfect is now garbage. That's what happened to the woolly mammoth. Size is an advantage when you are facing predators such as lions. You are too big for them to kill. It is a disadvantage when hominids show up because your size makes you, as Pudmuddle put it, a walking grocery store. And they don't kill you with teeth and claws. Oh no. They use fire to drive you over a cliff. So what was an advantage is now a disadvantage.

 

[Ark Guy]

Once again....65+ MY's with virtually no change is rather amazing.

In my original post i presented several reasons why there should have been change....and the evos have danced around the issue.

perhaps it's time for them to throw in the towel on this issue and move on.

Come on my evo friends...admitt you have been defeated and get over it. You'll feel much better for accepting the truth presented in the bible.

 

[Ark Guy]

lucaspa:
Most mutations are neutral. They don't affect survival or reproductive success at all.

..I bet you can't prove that statement with scientific facts.

Then again, lets say most are neutral...the law of averages tells us that in over 65+ MY's there would then have been a lot of mutations that were benificial and changed the organism...but guess what? it didn't happen. Now, are you going to claim that ALL of the mutations were neutral?

Of course a young earth with no evolution is the leading scientific answer.

 

[Vance]

lucaspa:
Most mutations are neutral. They don't affect survival or reproductive success at all.

..I bet you can't prove that statement with scientific facts.

Then again, lets say most are neutral...the law of averages tells us that in over 65+ MY's there would then have been a lot of mutations that were benificial and changed the organism...but guess what? it didn't happen. Now, are you going to claim that ALL of the mutations were neutral?

Of course a young earth with no evolution is the leading scientific answer.

I bet he *can* provide the scientific evidence that most mutations are nuetral.

As to the effect of beneficial mutations, you are absolutely right regarding the vast majority of species, which is why we see changes in the vast majority of species. The fact that we don't see such change in *a very, very few* species is just as you point out: the odds. With so many millions of species, it is just the odds that a handful (dramatically less than 1%) will be so well adaptable to their environments that there are almost no mutations that *are* beneficial to them.

When you add to this that we are only able to detect changes to the morphology, not the internal workings, a handful of species which survive with almost no morphological changes is *exactly* what evolution would predict.

You are right, it is just the odds.

 

[Ark Guy]

65+ MY is a lot of time for a lot of babies...an awfull lot of time to claim no benificial mutations would occur.

 

[serendipity79]

forgive me for not arguing, i am not really a science guy, i see things generallymore through the philosophical point of veiw. i do not know enough about the horse shoe crab, nor do i care about the horse shoe crab. i generally see things more from the philosophical point of view.

 

[lucaspa]

Once again....65+ MY's with virtually no change is rather amazing.

But it's not "virtually no change". I already posted the data that turtles diversified into a whole new family in the last 65 million years and horseshoe crabs are a new genus. You haven't addressed that.

In my original post i presented several reasons why there should have been change....and the evos have danced around the issue.

Didn't dance. Addressed it directly. You haven't responded in detail. I asked you for data. Haven't gotten it yet.

 

[lucaspa]

lucaspa:
Most mutations are neutral. They don't affect survival or reproductive success at all.

..I bet you can't prove that statement with scientific facts.

What's the bet? PLEASE make it a huge bet! PLEASE! Ark Guy, now that we have the ability to 1) look at different forms of proteins in a population and 2) sequence genes cheaply and quickly it has been found that there is huge genetic variation at every gene in a population. Population genetic studies show that those variations obey Hardy-Weinberg Law -- the frequency of those variations in the population remains the same from generation to generation, thus showing that they are neutral.

I'll look up more references in Futuyma tonight, but here are two review articles to consider:

1: Gene. 1997 Dec 31;205(1-2):261-7.

The meaning of near-neutrality at coding and non-coding regions.

Ohta T.

Department of Population Genetics, National Institute of Genetics, Mishima,
Shizuoka-ken, Japan. tohta@lab.nig.ac.jp

"The nature of weak selection differs between coding and non-coding regions.
Coding regions contain genetic information, whereas most non-coding regions do not have any information. Genetic information may be regarded as interaction systems, and the NK model of Kauffman was analysed. This model assumes that each amino acid makes a fitness contribution that depends on the amino acid and on K other amino acids among the N that make the protein. Through simulations, it was found that there are numerous nearly-neutral mutations under this model. Therefore, evolution is rapid in small populations, and slow in large populations. The variance of the evolutionary rate is not quite as large as data indicate under the model, and additional factors, such as environmental change or population-size fluctuation, need to be considered. Weak selection at non-coding regions may come from chromosome organization, and may be regional in character, which differs from that at coding regions. The problem of genetic load is thought to disappear in these circumstances."

2: Curr Opin Genet Dev. 1994 Dec;4(6):832-7. Simple sequences. Tautz D, Schlotterer.

"Simple sequences (or microsatellites) are stretches of monotonous repetitions of short (1-5bp) nucleotide motifs that are distributed across the whole genome in eukaryotes. They are probably generated by slippage during replication and their primary mutation rate seems to be controlled predominantly by the efficiency of the mismatch repair system. Although most mutations in simple sequence loci appear to be neutral, some mutations in particular stretches have been implicated as having a role in human genetic diseases."

And a primary paper: PD Keightley and A Caballero, Genomic mutation rates for lifetime reproductive output and lifespan in Caenorhabditis elegans. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 94: 3823-3827, 1997

This study documents the rate of deleterious mutations in the worm C. elegans. Because they are hermaphroditic, the authors were able to separate the worms and run parallel populations descended from a single individual. By maintaining independent sublines, the effect of selection could be minimized, and thus the deleterious mutations could be kept in the population. Lethal mutations are still lethal, but the experimental design allows accumulation of deleterious mutations (as well as neutral mutations) and then the effect on lifespan and production of viable offspring, both of which are measurements of fitness. The estimated deleterious mutation rate per haploid genome (the whole organism) was 0.0026, or 2.6 per thousand. Now, since all creationists say that beneficial mutations are rare, this means the majority of mutations must be neutral. Right? Unless beneficial mutations are 499 per thousand.

Then again, lets say most are neutral...the law of averages tells us that in over 65+ MY's there would then have been a lot of mutations that were benificial and changed the organism...but guess what? it didn't happen. Now, are you going to claim that ALL of the mutations were neutral?

Ever hear of fitness peaks, Ark Guy? This happens when an organism is well-adapted to the environment. At that point there are no "beneficial" mutations. Think of yourself on top of a mountain. Is there any way you can take a step to go up? NO! Any movement off the peak is going down. So it is when a species is on a fitness peak. Any change is going to be for the worse. Since the organism with the mutation can't compete as well as the organism without the mutation, the mutation gets eliminated by natural selection (in the purifying flavor) and the population remains the same.

Mutations alone don't change organisms. You need mutations plus selection. In a constant environment, selection will keep the population the same.

Of course,

Of course a young earth with no evolution is the leading scientific answer.

ROFL!! Wishful thinking. Ark Guy, you are aware that a young earth with no evolution was the leading scientific theory 1700-1831, don't you? It was given up because it wasn't the scientific answer. There is just way too much data that can't be there if YEC is true. Since a true idea can't have false consequences, YEC is a wrong idea.

Evolution explains data that YEC simply can't. For instance, YEC can't explain why there is a fossil record in the first place. Nor can YEC explain why living organisms can be classed as a nester hierarchy. Nor can YEC explain why units in biology -- from genes to genomes -- are not independent observations but are related by their historical connections.

Nor can YEC explain why the Jurassic horseshoe crab is different enough from the present one to be in a different genus.

 

[lucaspa]

Ark Guy, go back to page 2 of this thread. Address my posts in detail. Tell me that a different genus is the same as "virtually unchanged". Tell me a new family is "virtually unchanged" (turtles).

Explain why you would get beneficial mutations when the species is on a fitness peak.

Stop dancing. Answer the questions.

 

[lucaspa]

Ark Guy, I promised you more data on the number of neutral mutations.

Look, I can see why you think I was bluffing. It's what you do. Your OP was a bluff. Your other major theme -- that science says the resurrection is impossible -- is a bluff. So you simply think everyone else does what you do.

But I don't. I never bluff about data. There's no point. Because science is public knowledge, anyone can go check on any claims I make to see if they are accurate or not. If I bluff, someone is going to call. You should learn that.

OK, before I give you the numbers you need some background. Remember that amino acids are coded by 3 base pairs in the DNA, right? With 4 bases there are 64 combinations of 3. But you only have 20 amino acids coded plus a start and stop signal. So many amino acids are coded by more than one 3-base code. The first two bases are necessary but the 3rd base is flexible. For instance, ATT, ATC, and ATA all code for the amino acid isoleucine.

So, most mutations are point mutations where one base is changed. Most of those are substitutions where one base is changed to another. A synonymous substitution results in the same amino acid. That would be a neutral mutation because the protein would be the same amino acid sequence. IOW, the mutation has no effect on the protein at all. A replacement substitution changes the amino acid to another one. That can be neutral if the amino acids are similar or if the replacement does not change the activity of the protein.

Anyway, one study looked at the replacement and synonymous substitutions within and among 3 species of Drosophila. They found 42 synonymous substitutions (neutral) and 2 replacement among polymorphic (many different alleles of the gene) and 17 substitution and 7 replacements among genes that were fixed (only 1 allele in the population). That's a 2:1 or 21:1 ratio of neutral mutations to beneficial and deleterious mutations combined.

Another study looked at the rates of synonymous (neutral) and replacement substitution rate among 36 proteins in humans and rats. They found that the synonymous rate (neutral) was 4.61 and the replacement was 0.85. That is a ratio of 5:1 neutral to beneficial + deleterious. That is, 80% of mutations were neutral.

The first data comes from Nature 351: 652-654, 1991 Any public library has a copy of Nature.

The second is from the book Fundamentals of Molecular Evolution 1991. You can order that one from Amazon.com