The Cambrian problem

[-57]

It varies from species to species. There is no set percentage of mutations that are beneficial, and the same mutation that is beneficial in one context may be harmful in another, such as the ability to breathe salt water. Useful if the creature lives near and spends a lot of time in salt water, but completely useless or even deadly to one that lives in a desert. Some mutations are a little bit of both, such as the one for sickle cell anemia. It significantly increases resistance to malaria in both homozygotes (people afflicted with the condition) and heterozygotes (rarely affected by the mutation so much as to suffer from it, but still have the benefits of the malaria resistance), but it also produces a potentially deadly condition in people with two copies of the mutated gene. It just so happens that malaria resistance is so beneficial, that the negatives were not a strong enough selection pressure to have it decrease in frequency in the population.

If you want a "ballpark figure" for this stuff, sorry to say, you won't find one. The variation in it is too extensive. What I can tell you is the number of mutations in your DNA that neither of your parents have: between 40-60. Using the estimated number of births per day in 2014, and using the average of 50 independent mutations per person, that's the potential for a whopping 17,650,000 new mutations in the human population PER DAY. Even if only .00001% of those were on genes, that would make a new non-neutral gene occur each day. And humans have a pretty long reproductive cycle, and nothing is special about our mutation rate. That number would be exponentially larger for bacteria, which reproduce far faster and have higher mutation rates than humans. And I am being the least generous I can be without being a parody of criticism. Neutral mutations may dominate, but not to that extent.

BTW, that 70% comes from the pool of mutations affecting actual genes, so it doesn't include mutations on noncoding regions. Yes, many mutations even on coding regions of DNA are neutral.
Just so you know, deletions are not inherently bad mutations. In fact, I know of at least 2 which were necessary for humans to become as intelligent as they are; one for developing a jaw muscle that would have restricted cranial capacity but made our jaws stronger, and another that regulates brain growth. Both were mixed bags; on the good side, we became that much smarter, and intelligence is highly beneficial to survival. On the bad side, our jaws are weaker than other primates, and we are more prone to brain cancer. Most mutations that affect phenotype are like that.

As for estimates given on an actual percentage, I couldn't find it for humans, but in fruit flies, the percentage of mutations that ended up having a measurably negative impact was 70%. That means 30% are beneficial or neutral. To be blunt, it is neither shocking, nor a problem for evolution, that the majority of mutations aren't beneficial. However, it should be noted that fruit flies don't have as many protective mechanisms against genetic damage as humans do, namely, the degree of redundancy in their genome is less than is seen in humans, and their genome is smaller, making a mutation more likely to occur on a coding portion. As I have mentioned before, how mutations affect species varies from species to species thanks to so many factors that it is impossible to say what percentage of mutations in humans are harmful by using the percentage seen in fruit flies.

The majority are, but even if the number of beneficial mutations was abysmally low, less than .000000001%, natural selection and evolution would still apply.

More nothing. You're kinda like saying, if you poor more blue into the yellow paint you get a different shade of green. Big deal.

...still the amazing thing is...if the fruit fly has such a high rate....why is the fruit fly still a fruit fly? Why are the differences a leg in the wrong place or an extra eye?

Come on my evo-friends....how do mutations add u?

 

[lesliedellow]

More nothing. You're kinda like saying, if you poor more blue into the yellow paint you get a different shade of green. Big deal.

...still the amazing thing is...if the fruit fly has such a high rate....why is the fruit fly still a fruit fly? Why are the differences a leg in the wrong place or an extra eye?

Come on my evo-friends....how do mutations add u?

Why do you think we could care less what you believe? If you want to keep telling yourself that something is true when it isn't, then just carry on, only spare the rest of us your arrant nonsense.

 

[sfs]

If a second beneficial mutation can occur in a different place and enhance the fitness of a species most certainly a second harmful mutation...which there are more of... can occur in the same place and harm what is evolving. You should have know that.

Your response completely ignores what I just wrote. Did you not understand it, or why a second, harmful mutation in exactly the same place is much, much less likely than a second, beneficial mutation? If you want to challenge evolutionary biology, you have to understand it, and it's clear that at present you simply don't understand the effect of natural selection.

 

[sfs]

It doesn't seem like -57 is - no surprise - but I am, if you could.

I'll dig some up and post them. Probably tomorrow.

 

[sfs]

Come on my evo-friends....how do mutations add u?

First one mutation happens and spreads in the population. Then another mutation happens and spreads. That gives you two mutations. Then a third one does the same thing. That gives you three. What part of this process do you find so difficult to understand.

We can literally sit around the lab and watch mutations accumulating, but you say it can't happen. Given a choice between reality and your claims, I'll stick with reality.

 

[Astrophile]

First, reread what you wrote and tell me how much is
theory and how much is factual (proven), beginning with
the life cycle of stars.

The differences between the H-R diagrams of different star clusters are certainly real. One can see merely by looking at clusters through a telescope that in some (such as the Pleiades, NGC 2362 and NGC 2264) the brightest stars are blue early-type stars whereas in others (e.g. the Hyades, Praesepe, M67 and NGC 752) the brightest stars are red. I have constructed H-R diagrams of a number of clusters, using Google Sky and photometric and temperature data from the Vizier section of SIMBAD, and have confirmed the differences between their H-R diagrams.

Can you think of any reason for the observed differences between cluster H-R diagrams other than the evolution of the stars from the main-sequence to the red giant and supergiant regions, with the brightest stars being the first to evolve away from the main-sequence?

As for the life cycles of stars, during their main-sequence lifetimes stars generate energy by fusing hydrogen nuclei into helium nuclei. Only 0.67% of the mass of the hydrogen nuclei is turned into energy; the rest (99.33%) is turned into helium nuclei. From knowledge of the star's luminosity and from the formula E = mc², one can therefore calculate the amount of helium produced per second. Theoretical models show that when the mass of the helium core reaches about 1/10 of the mass of the star, the star will evolve away from the main-sequence into the red-giant or supergiant region. For the Sun, the time required to reach this stage is about 10 billion years; very luminous stars such as Spica (alpha Virginis) or S Monocerotis in NGC 2264 have main-sequence lifetimes of only about 10 million years or less.

These conclusions are based on theoretical (i.e. mathematical) models, but the models are based on well-established physical principles, particularly the laws of thermodynamics. If you can cope with the mathematics, you could try reading Chandrasekhar's book An Introduction to the Study of Stellar Structure and A.C. Phillips book The Physics of Stars. Alternatively, you could try Stars: Their Birth, Life, and Death by Iosif S. Shklovskii.

As I have said, our knowledge of the life-cycles of stars is based largely on theoretical models. However, these models yield temperatures and luminosities that agree with those observed for real stars. Also, evolutionary models for stars of different masses and the same age yield luminosity-temperature diagrams that agree with the observed H-R diagrams of star clusters. Finally, the ages of the oldest stars derived from theoretical models are in good agreement with the age of the universe obtained from the cosmic redshift-distance relationship. Thus the validity of the theoretical models is confirmed by observations of real stars.

Doing the math, and accepting the given value of about 4.24 light years to Alpha Centauri, that gives angles of
about .25 degrees. How accurate do you think those
equations would be? What would be the true margin
of error?

I don't know where you got this from. You started by saying that parallax measurements were similar to measuring the distance of an object 100 miles (160 km) away using a baseline of ¼" (6.35 mm). I said that for your comparison to apply to the nearest stars, your distance of the object to be measured would be about one mile. The parallax of an object at a distance of one mile measured with a baseline of ¼" would be 0.81 seconds of arc. An angle of 0.25° is 900"; it is about half the angular diameter of the Moon.

However, the point is that the stellar parallaxes listed in astronomical databases were obtained by the HIPPARCOS satellite between 1989 and 1993. HIPPARCOS was able to measure parallaxes to accuracies of 0.001 arc-seconds. Its successor, Gaia, will do even better, and is expected to make measurements with an accuracy of 25 micro-arcseconds and to determine the parallaxes of a billion stars with accuracies between 20 and 200 micro-arcseconds. Both satellites were specifically designed to make extremely accurate measurements of very small angles.

 

[lesliedellow]

Your response completely ignores what I just wrote. Did you not understand it, or why a second, harmful mutation in exactly the same place is much, much less likely than a second, beneficial mutation? If you want to challenge evolutionary biology, you have to understand it, and it's clear that at present you simply don't understand the effect of natural selection.

More to the point, he doesn't want to understand. He knows what he wants to believe, and that's the end of it, thank you very much.

 

[justlookinla]

First one mutation happens and spreads in the population. Then another mutation happens and spreads. That gives you two mutations. Then a third one does the same thing. That gives you three. What part of this process do you find so difficult to understand.

We can literally sit around the lab and watch mutations accumulating, but you say it can't happen. Given a choice between reality and your claims, I'll stick with reality.

How long do you have to sit around before the mutated life form becomes a different life form?

 

[pat34lee]

That's nice. There are still no physical constraints implied in his equations. Really, your responses seem to be quite random -- you haven't given even a hint of physical explanation for why gravitational collapse is impossible, and you don't seem to understand the physics involved. What exactly is the point of this discussion?

And you don't seem to understand simple equations. Don't get snippy.

The equation is balanced. Raise the amount on one side, and you have
to raise the other equally. Constrained.

 

[sfs]

The equation is balanced. Raise the amount on one side, and you have
to raise the other equally. Constrained.

Yeah, that's what the equals sign means, and that's why it's called an equation. That's true, but it has nothing to do with what you said about constraint: "For his equation to work, the gas must be constrained, as in a balloon."

 

[pat34lee]

Your response completely ignores what I just wrote. Did you not understand it, or why a second, harmful mutation in exactly the same place is much, much less likely than a second, beneficial mutation? If you want to challenge evolutionary biology, you have to understand it, and it's clear that at present you simply don't understand the effect of natural selection.

Placement of mutations does not matter. Just knowing that 99.9999% of all mutations
are harmful should tell you something about depending on them for evolution.

 

[pat34lee]

Yeah, that's what the equals sign means, and that's why it's called an equation. That's true, but it has nothing to do with what you said about constraint: "For his equation to work, the gas must be constrained, as in a balloon."

Since gravity is too weak to cause gases to clump together, as proven on earth,
how do you get enough gases to cause higher pressure in space than on a planet?

 

[sfs]

Placement of mutations does not matter. Just knowing that 99.9999% of all mutations
are harmful should tell you something about depending on them for evolution.

99.9999% of all mutations aren't harmful. If the only thing you know about evolution is wildly inaccurate, all you're going to do is convince people that you don't know what you're talking about.

 

[sfs]

Since gravity is too weak to cause gases to clump together, as proven on earth,
how do you get enough gases to cause higher pressure in space than on a planet?

This was already explained to you, repeatedly, with math and citations to the physics literature. Why are you telling scientists how to do their jobs when you don't understand the science?

 

[-57]

Your response completely ignores what I just wrote. Did you not understand it, or why a second, harmful mutation in exactly the same place is much, much less likely than a second, beneficial mutation? If you want to challenge evolutionary biology, you have to understand it, and it's clear that at present you simply don't understand the effect of natural selection.

Oh, I understand it exactly. it seems to me you who is trying to make so-called beneficial mutations do to much and the numerous others...not.
Your evolutionism continues to fail...nothing but claims...unsupported claims.

 

[-57]

First one mutation happens and spreads in the population. Then another mutation happens and spreads. That gives you two mutations. Then a third one does the same thing. That gives you three. What part of this process do you find so difficult to understand.

We can literally sit around the lab and watch mutations accumulating, but you say it can't happen. Given a choice between reality and your claims, I'll stick with reality.

What part don't I understand???? How about the part where your magic mutation add to a previous. I've been waiting for you to get to that....but all I get from you is the coloring book version.

 

[Dr GS Hurd]

We can literally sit around the lab and watch mutations accumulating, but you say it can't happen. Given a choice between reality and your claims, I'll stick with reality.

"Acceleration of Emergence of Bacterial Antibiotic Resistance in Connected Microenvironments" Qiucen Zhang, Guillaume Lambert, David Liao, Hyunsung Kim, Kristelle Robin, Chih-kuan Tung, Nader Pourmand, Robert H. Austin, Science 23 September 2011: Vol. 333 no. 6050 pp. 1764-1767

“It is surprising that four apparently functional SNPs should fix in a population within 10 hours of exposure to antibiotic in our experiment. A detailed understanding of the order in which the SNPs occur is essential, but it is unlikely that the four SNPs emerged simultaneously; in all likelihood they are sequential (21–23). The device and data we have described here offer a template for exploring the rates at which antibiotic resistance arises in the complex fitness landscapes that prevail in the mammalian body. Furthermore, our study provides a framework for exploring rapid evolution in other contexts such as cancer (24).

Review: Multi-site mutations, functional mutations, TEN HOURS, why sequential mutations are functional, and more likely, and with medical applications.

 

[Dr GS Hurd]

Yeah, that's what the equals sign means, and that's why it's called an equation. That's true, but it has nothing to do with what you said about constraint: "For his equation to work, the gas must be constrained, as in a balloon."

They really are that clueless.

 

[Dr GS Hurd]

Placement of mutations does not matter. Just knowing that 99.9999% of all mutations are harmful should tell you something about depending on them for evolution.

You have been lied to, or you are lying.

Can you see the obvious? The majority of mutations do nothing. And that is just the SNPs.

 

[sfs]

Oh, I understand it exactly.

If you understood it, you wouldn't respond the way you have.

Serious question: do you tell your plumber that he doesn't know anything about pipes? Do you tell professional athletes that they don't know anything about their sport? Or is it only scientists that you tell how to do their job.