The Myth of evolution

Tomk80 · Dec 5, 2004

mark kennedy said:
It is the effect of these deletreous mutations that is being examined and modern science has no answer for how living systems transformed from single celled asexual reproduction to sexual. There was no selective advantage found because that is not how things actually work in reality.

No Mark. There was no selective advantage found provided by sexual reproduction over asexual reproduction in countering the effects of deleterious mutations. This does not mean that sexual selection does not have beneficial effects. We can deduce that it probably has beneficial effects because there are creatures which produce both sexually and asexually. If sexual selection does not give a benefit one way or other, there is no reason for these critters to exist, not even in creationist models.

mark kennedy · Dec 5, 2004

Tomk80 said:
No Mark. There was no selective advantage found provided by sexual reproduction over asexual reproduction in countering the effects of deleterious mutations. This does not mean that sexual selection does not have beneficial effects. We can deduce that it probably has beneficial effects because there are creatures which produce both sexually and asexually. If sexual selection does not give a benefit one way or other, there is no reason for these critters to exist, not even in creationist models.

Now we are into sexual selection and it is the rearrangements of genetic codes as a result of meiosis and errors are dangerous not evolutionary.

Consider this, the richest diversity of life is in lush tropical diversity. Evolution happens because living systems have an abundance not because they are on the brink of extinction as Malthusian philosophy insists.

Bushido216 · Dec 5, 2004

I'm sure you considered the fact that the warmer latitudes have more sun energy available to them and thusly could support more life before making that claim.

mark kennedy · Dec 5, 2004

Pete Harcoff said:
IOW, these environmental modifications are NOT heritable. Therefore they can't be a source of new alleles. Unless you're advocating Lamarkism?

At this point, I'm really curious as to where you are going in this thread. One minute you're talking about Mendelian genetics, the next you're talking about environmental influence on phenotype development.

My intention is to point out the differences between the myth of evolution and the science.

Jet Black · Dec 5, 2004

mark kennedy said:
Now we are into sexual selection and it is the rearrangements of genetic codes as a result of meiosis and errors are dangerous not evolutionary.

always?

Consider this, the richest diversity of life is in lush tropical diversity. Evolution happens because living systems have an abundance not because they are on the brink of extinction as Malthusian philosophy insists.

always?

Jet Black · Dec 5, 2004

Bushido216 said:
I'm sure you considered the fact that the warmer latitudes have more sun energy available to them and thusly could support more life before making that claim.

precisely. the dynamics of the environment are far more complex, and as you point out, there is much more available energy, and also less environmental threat of dessication and so on. This leads to an inevitable increase in the number of available niches. Not that I can really see where mark is trying to go with his point.

Bushido216 · Dec 5, 2004

Yes, very good Jet. I'm proud of you.

Ondoher · Dec 5, 2004

mark kennedy said:
From the PubMed abstracted linked above:

"This high rate is difficult to reconcile with multiplicative fitness effects of individual mutations and suggests that synergistic epistasis among harmful mutations may be common."

Now what you have to realize is that most often the synergistic epistasis is offset by antagonistic and this was demonstrated to be not only consistant but log-linear.

These words do not mean what you think they mean.

Synergistic epistasis amongst harmful mutations increases the harmful effects. Antagonisitic epistasis amongst harmful mutations decreases the harmful effects.

Here is a quote from this resource: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2148/3/3

If mutations interact so that their combined effect on fitness is greater than expected from their individual effects, then epistasis is said to be synergistic. For deleterious mutations, synergistic epistasis means that the decline in average fitness accelerates as more random mutations are added.... By contrast, if deleterious mutations interact so that their combined effect is smaller than expected under the multiplicative model, then epistasis is called antagonistic.... Antagonistic epistasis therefore implies unexpected robustness to the effects of multiple deleterious mutations.

mark kennedy said:
Just curious but what would you expect the effects of mutations to be in this scenerio:

"The most direct approach for determining the relationship between mutation number and fitness is to construct genotypes with different numbers of random mutations and measure their relative fitness. The bacterium E. coli provides an excellent system for this approach."

(Testofsynergistic interactions among deleterious mutations in bacteria,
Santiago F. Elena & Richard E. Lenski, Center for Microbial Ecology, Michigan State University, East Lansing,Michigan 48824, USA)

That paper does not address the effects of mutations, but interactions amongst deleterious mutations. They found that these interactions are just as likely to produce antagonistic epistasis as they were to produce synergistic epistasis. This therefore rules out the hypothesis that sexual selection, which provides genetic recombination, thus putting more mutations in contact with others, was useful for weeding out harmful mutations by decreasing fitness of combined, harmful mutations (synergistic epistasis).

However, I've seen other people tell you this before.

Ondoher · Dec 5, 2004

mark kennedy said:
We are discussing the differences between mutations and modifications. Now while it is presumed that mutations create the genetic load the effects of mutations are negative.

"Mutations are contrasted by modifications. The term describes changes in the phenotype that are caused by environmental influences...Modifications are very common, especially in plants...Today, it is common knowledge that the environment shapes the phenotype, but exerts no directed influence on the genotype...These mutagens have nearly without exception a negative outcome on the organism, their effect is time- and dose-dependent and often lethal."

Botany Online- Mendelian laws and mutations

O.M.G.

"Modifications" are differences in phenotypic expression due to changing environmental conditions. Like that effect of temperature of the sex of crocodile. These differences in phenotype would still be caused by the underlying genotype. This has nothing to do with Medelian genetics.

mark kennedy said:
Mutagens (the actual cause of mutations) are most often negative in their effects. Now what should I believe because we have two seemingly contradictory principle being taught. On the one hand in real world biology that only the phenotype is effected by mutations. One the other hand the imliacations of the universal common ancestor model is that genotypes are tranformed into alltogether new genotypes.

Well, no. Genotypes are modifed until they are different enough that populations no longer interbreed. Do this enough times, over long enough periods of time, and you get quite a diverse set of species.

Pete Harcoff · Dec 5, 2004

mark kennedy said:
My intention is to point out the differences between the myth of evolution and the science.

Well, you're doing a bloody poor job of it, given that you appear to be utterly confusing several different concepts.

Once again I'll ask: How are new alleles produced, if not by mutation? You seem to think there's some other process for this, but you've yet to identify it.

gluadys · Dec 5, 2004

mark kennedy said:
From the PubMed abstracted linked above:

"This high rate is difficult to reconcile with multiplicative fitness effects of individual mutations and suggests that synergistic epistasis among harmful mutations may be common."

Now what you have to realize is that most often the synergistic epistasis is offset by antagonistic and this was demonstrated to be not only consistant but log-linear. Just curious but what would you expect the effects of mutations to be in this scenerio

What I would expect is that when harmful mutations exhibit synergistic epistatis the negative effect on fitness would be greater than what one would expect from adding the 2 harmful effects together. The whole effect is greater (i.e. more harmful) than the sum of the parts.

The reverse would be true when harmful mutations exhibit antagonistic epistasis. The whole effect would be less harmful than would be expected.

And since the antagonistic epistasis offsets the synergistic epistasis, on the whole, harmful mutations have a less harmful effect than one would first suppose.

Now I am not a scientist, not a geneticist, not a biologist. I have had no more formal training in science than you. I may be offtrack, and if so, I hope the scientists will correct me.

But I do know what "synergistic" and "antagonistic" mean. So I base my logic on that.

Novaknight1 · Dec 5, 2004

There is a web site you should check out about Evolution being a myth.

www.drdino.com

Pete Harcoff · Dec 5, 2004

Novaknight1 said:
There is a web site you should check out about Evolution being a myth.

www.drdino.com

We all know about Hovind. He's a crackpot. 'nuff said.

Electric Sceptic · Dec 5, 2004

Novaknight1 said:
There is a web site you should check out about Evolution being a myth.

www.drdino.com

Hovind is a charlatan and a known liar. Whatever arguments you might have against evolution, I strongly suggest you don't use him or anything you find on his website. It's likely to be wildly innaccurate and dealt with very swiftly by the heavyweights around these forums.

gluadys · Dec 5, 2004

mark kennedy said:
We are discussing the differences between mutations and modifications. Now while it is presumed that mutations create the genetic load the effects of mutations are negative.

"Mutations are contrasted by modifications. The term describes changes in the phenotype that are caused by environmental influences...Modifications are very common, especially in plants...Today, it is common knowledge that the environment shapes the phenotype, but exerts no directed influence on the genotype...These mutagens have nearly without exception a negative outcome on the organism, their effect is time- and dose-dependent and often lethal."

Botany Online- Mendelian laws and mutations

Mark, please don't be a quote-miner. It is interesting to note what you left out of your abbreviated citation above. Here it the early part again, with what you quoted underlined:

Mutations are contrasted by modifications. The term describes changes in the phenotype that are caused by environmental influences. An example: E. S. ROBERTSON and I. C. ANDERSON characterized a mutant in corn in 1961 that, in a homozygously recessive condition, stood out at low temperature (<20°C) (v/v) due to a pale colouring of the leaves (virescent).

At increased temperatures (37°C), the same plants resembled the wild type. The F1-hybrids (+/v) were dark green like the wild type and in the F2, a 3:1 ratio was observed in plants that were grown at 20°C. If, however, the culturing was done at 37°C, then it resulted in uniformly dark-green plants. This example illustrates that the expression of a phenotype can be influenced by environmental factors like temperature.

Modifications are very common, especially in plants. Among the better known textbook examples is the flower colour of a certain variety of Primula sinensis that is red at room temperature and white at increased temperatures. Mutants that can be distinguished only at increased temperatures are also called temperature-sensitive.

Note the last bolded sentence. The example is of a mutation whose expression is modified by an environmental factor (in this case, temperature).

Sorry, Mark, you cannot stack up modifications against mutations and say one contradicts the other.

Mutagens (the actual cause of mutations) are most often negative in their effects.

Mutagens are not the only cause of mutations. Most mutations are errors in transcription. These do not depend on mutagens.

Now what should I believe because we have two seemingly contradictory principle being taught.

It is only contradictory in your imagination, Mark----because you have not learned your material yet and you are misinterpreting it.

On the one hand in real world biology that only the phenotype is effected by mutations. One the other hand the imliacations of the universal common ancestor model is that genotypes are tranformed into alltogether new genotypes.

You're getting it mixed up again. What your example showed was that only the phenotype is affected by modifications which are not inherited. Mutations affect the genotype (and sometimes the phenotype as well) and are inherited. The effect of a mutation on the phenotype may be modified by environmental factors.

gluadys · Dec 5, 2004

mark kennedy said:
Now we are into sexual selection and it is the rearrangements of genetic codes as a result of meiosis and errors are dangerous not evolutionary.

Consider this, the richest diversity of life is in lush tropical diversity. Evolution happens because living systems have an abundance not because they are on the brink of extinction as Malthusian philosophy insists.

Malthusian philosophy does not insist that living systems be on the brink of extinction. Nor is evolution restricted to species on the brink of extinction. Evolution can and does happen in lush environments. In fact, one of the reasons lush environments exhibit so much diversity is because they offer a wide variety of ecological niches to fill.

In fact, the other interesting thing about lush tropical environments is that the actual number of individuals in a population can be quite small and scattered, in contrast to the large herds of the African savannahs for example. Or the huge herds of bison that used to roam the American plains. Same with plant life. Large boreal forests consist mostly of relatively similar coniferous trees vs. the many different types of trees found in the tropics.

All evolution requires of populations is that they produce more offspring than can survive to reproduce. This happens in large as well as small populations, in lush areas as well as harsh environments.

gluadys · Dec 5, 2004

Pete Harcoff said:
Once again I'll ask: How are new alleles produced, if not by mutation? You seem to think there's some other process for this, but you've yet to identify it.

I second this request, Mark. It has been asked a number of times. Please explain where the alleles come from. Mendel's studies only showed (in part) how they are distributed, not how they originate.

twenty1blakjack · Dec 5, 2004

Novaknight1 said:
There is a web site you should check out about Evolution being a myth.

drdino.com

I left as soon as I read "Dinosaurs have always lived with man."
What a nutcase!

mark kennedy · Dec 6, 2004

Pete Harcoff said:
Well, you're doing a bloody poor job of it, given that you appear to be utterly confusing several different concepts.

Once again I'll ask: How are new alleles produced, if not by mutation? You seem to think there's some other process for this, but you've yet to identify it.

New alleles are produced as a result of meiosis and represent changes of the existing gene pool. Now if a mutation could produce a new gene then it might be considered an allele but most often a mutation is nothing more then a rare transcription error. An allele is not a transcription error and a mutation is not an improvement of the existing gene pool. I don't know what is so confusing about this since it's all readily disernable.

Ondoher · Dec 6, 2004

mark kennedy said:
New alleles are produced as a result of meiosis and represent changes of the existing gene pool.

I.e. a mutation.

mark kennedy said:
Now if a mutation could produce a new gene then it might be considered an allele but most often a mutation is nothing more then a rare transcription error.

Which creates a heritable variation of a gene, i.e. an allele.

mark kennedy said:
An allele is not a transcription error

But it can be.

mark kennedy said:
and a mutation is not an improvement of the existing gene pool.

But it can be.

mark kennedy said:
I don't know what is so confusing about this since it's all readily disernable.

Yes, your confusion is rather puzzling.

The Myth of evolution

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