N.Wells
Posts: 1836 Joined: Oct. 2005
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Quote (Woodbine @ Nov. 29 2014,03:52) | Gary, nothing in that article has any bearing on whether 'Darwinism' is true.
'Random mutation' in the context of natural selection means random in respect to fitness. It doesn't mean mutations are random in the sense of being un-caused or having no explanation.
But you knew that, right? |
Yes, that is a very cool article of considerable significance.
However (with respect to Gary's statements), 1) In sharp contrast to the responses by Gary and denizens of UD, it is not as if heterozygosity and partial (or incomplete) dominance were concepts previously unknown to science. This basically shines a very bright spotlight on heterozygosity and how we can't just gloss over its related complications. 2) This is a scientific conclusion, based on scientific procedures, so it is evidence-based knowledge, notably unlike Gary's wishful thinking based on the way he thinks things ought to be.
3) Some aspects of Hoehe's findings appear likely to change the way we "do business" and think about genes (particularly for assessing genetic bases for disease, we won't be able to use a single genetic analysis without distinguishing the two separate haplotypes and their interactions). Let's assume for the sake of argument that this overthrows our applecart as much as the UD folks think. My prediction is that science will embrace the new information (assuming that it gets corroborated) and incorporate it because it is validly derived information, while Gary's stuff will continue to be rejected in its entirety because it is invalid and unevidenced.
4) If you want to see whose worldview is blown out the water, go back to all the creationist/IDist posts over the decades about how mutations are basically bad and there can only be one target in any mutational search. We already knew that this position was just so much BS, but note that "On average, 250 different forms of each gene exist and some four million different [versions of] genes were found in just the 400 or so genomes that were sequenced. Considering 85 percent of all genes have no predominant form which occurs in more than half of all individuals, we can safely say that around 9,000 of all the 17,500 gene occur uniquely in that one person." "96 percent of all genes have at least 5 to 20 different protein forms." This is not an environment where evolutionary searches have to find precisely one exact version of a string of nucleotide bases. We already knew that from the breadth of variation in working solutions seen between taxa, but equivalent variability within one species (i.e., us) just adds to the arguments against ID.
This seems to be more about managing (and possibly repairing or countering) the mutations that you get than getting mutations in the first place. It adds to the significance of the field of research investigating partial (or incomplete) dominance and related problems. I'm very curious about the origin and significance of the 60-40 ratio. This all should be very interesting, and I'm looking forward to hearing what experts have to say.
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