Curious as to this list? Can you please post.
See below.
And no a beneficial mutation does not prove the genome is improving.
Over a hundred still approaching fixation certainly does. That's a large increase in fitness.
Selection works in a limited context. It will select out a very bad gene but a typical deleterious gene is to tiny in its effect.
Turns out, that's wrong. Like that tiny difference in breastbone size in sparrows. It makes a measurable difference, even if some people assume it's too small to matter. And, of course epistasis shows that some neutral mutations or slightly harmful ones can actually be useful in concert with some others. So a crude count of genes won't work in determining how the genome is doing. Even worse for Sanford's assumptions, changing environments will shift the favorability of mutations back and forth. In Galapgos finches, for example, the fitness of robust beaks (again, less than 1mm of differnce) changes depending on the weather that year.
The typical nucleotide in the genome will not be selected. At the mutation rate I posted before, even if selection gets rid of a few percent it will not stop the deterioration of the genome. This is pretty simple to understand .
As you see, it's different in the real world. Epistasis and changing environments are just two things that invalidate a simple count of mutations.
And yet, he didn't know about this:
2:31 Sanford claims that population geneticists know that the human genome is undergoing "entropy" and that we are degenerating over time. But I showed that numerous favorable mutations are still increasing in the population. I find it incredible that Sanford would not know this, or that he actually believes Geneticists are lying about the situation.
The researchers identified hundreds of areas of the human genome that appear to have been positively selected over the past 10,000 years but have not yet reached “fixationâ€â€”the point where they are shared in the same form by all members of a population. The study, published in the online journal PLoS Biology, confirms that evolutionary mechanisms have continued to operate on humans in the relatively recent past.
Some examples of the favored gene regions are areas known to affect skin pigmentation, help the body resist malarial infection and aid in metabolizing carbohydrates and digesting the lactose in milk. The scientists speculate that these genes were favored because they helped humans adapt to different regional challenges as they spread out of Africa, a migration that first began about 100,000 years ago.
“Each of these kinds of changes likely resulted in powerful selective pressures for new genotypes that were better suited to the novel environments,†the team wrote in their paper.
The researchers looked at genetic data from a sample of 209 people, drawn from three genetically distinct populations: East Asia, Africa and Europe. They found that in each group, different sets of genes had been selected for, with only 20% of the total number of favored genes overlapping across all three.
http://seedmagazine.com/content/arti...till_evolving/
Paper here:
http://pritch.bsd.uchicago.edu/publi...ightEtAl06.pdf
But somehow, all of that slipped by him. I have less than 25 hours in genetics, and I knew it. Makes you wonder.
If he did, it's odd that he pretended otherwise.
Can you fix them links I would like to read them. Thanks. But a beneficial mutation like I stated is still a copying error, it is rare and needs to be added into the population.
As you saw, geneticists have identified over a hundred that are still recent enough that they have not yet been fixed in the population. And one pretends to know how many there are that are not yet identified.
No, that's wrong, too. The Milano mutation, for example, modified one copy of a gene, so those with that mutation have one more gene than other people.
I believe it is just a mutated protein, not a new gene sorry.
The new gene has been identified, and they even know what gene copy it was mutated from.
This important protein, known as apoA-I, both manufactures HDL particles and is responsible for their structure. In the mutated form, dubbed apoA-I Milano because of its origin, one of the protein's amino acids is replaced with an amino acid cysteine that has a sulfhydryl group. Somehow, this tiny change enables a handful of Italians to possess low HDL levels and remain free of cardiovascular disease. But how?
About 70 percent of proteins with the Milano mutation come in pairs: one protein attaches to another to form a dimeric complex. The key to this pairing is a disulfide bridge in which the sulfhydryl group from one protein links with the sulfhydryl from another. This pairing restricts HDL size and growth and has been attributed to the HDL deficiency observed in people who have the mutation.
But 30 percent of proteins with the Milano mutation don't form dimeric complexes. They remain unattached as monomeric complexes. In this solo configuration, the sulfhydryl isn't occupied in a disulfide bond. It's free, which enables it to partake in other reactions, says Bielicki. And one of these reactions is quenching ions with unpaired electrons. In other words, the free sulfhydryl form of the Milano mutation is a powerful antioxidant, and Bielicki had a hunch it played a role in the mutation's ability to fight cardiovascular disease.
http://www.eurekalert.org/features/d...-tmm061302.php
So there it is. New gene, mutated from an old one.
Barbarian observes:
A hundred or so identified favorable mutations that have not yet reached fixation. And no one knows how many have reached fixation in that time. Not bad for a few thousand years. It's pointless to deny that fitness is increasing, if favorable mutation continue to rise. BTW, Tell me why you think "CpG context" matters.
(no response)
I know you want us to believe you. But there's all those recent favorable mutations spreading in the human population. I'm sure you can understand why the evidence means more than your assertion.
And a 1mm change in the length of a sparrow breastbone is significant to it's winter survival. So Sanford's claim is less believable, than the evidence.
Sanford, as others have pointed out, ignores negative epistasis.
Sexual reproduction selects for robustness and negative epistasis in artificial gene networks
Nature 440, 87-90 (2 March 2006)
Ricardo B. R. Azevedo1, Rolf Lohaus1, Suraj Srinivasan1, Kristen K. Dang2 and Christina L. Burch3
The mutational deterministic hypothesis for the origin and maintenance of sexual reproduction posits that sex enhances the ability of natural selection to purge deleterious mutations after recombination brings them together into single genomes1. This explanation requires negative epistasis, a type of genetic interaction where mutations are more harmful in combination than expected from their separate effects. The conceptual appeal of the mutational deterministic hypothesis has been offset by our inability to identify the mechanistic and evolutionary bases of negative epistasis. Here we show that negative epistasis can evolve as a consequence of sexual reproduction itself. Using an artificial gene network model2, 3, we find that recombination between gene networks imposes selection for genetic robustness, and that negative epistasis evolves as a by-product of this selection. Our results suggest that sexual reproduction selects for conditions that favour its own maintenance, a case of evolution forging its own path.[/b]
How is it that Sanford doesn't know this?
Barbarian observes:
Sanford cites a paper "Why have we not died 100 times over?" He didn't identify the author, but he is Alexi Kondrashov, in the Journal of Theoretical Biology about 20 years ago, I think. What he doesn't say is that although Kondrashov mentions the existence of animal populations seems to be threatened by very slightly negative mutations, the author also predicts that synergistic epistasis will account for the fact that we are still here.
A few years later, another researcher came up with the same findings.
http://www.genetics.org/content/156/1/297.long
And it turns out there is evidence for Kondrashov's prediction:
An Experimental Test for Synergistic Epistasis and Its Application in Chlamydomonas
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1207865/
Which admittedly, Sanford may not know. It is troubling that he thinks one approach to solving the problem would be to stop taking care of the unfit. This would do it, but it would be, as Darwin said, an "overwhelming evil." About 5:10, Sanford repeats the old slander that evolutionary theory is about eugenics. The fact is, Darwinists like Morgan and Punnett not only assailed the morality of eugenics, they pointed out that the eugenic program was scientifically unreallistic. Sanford almost surely knows this; it was a major issue in the 1930s, when eugenics was increasingly looked to by dictators as a useful tool. This says a lot of bad things about Sanford's character.
Let's go on...
Sanford cites the idea that essentially neutral, but very slightly harmful mutations might reduce fitness, and uses the work of Motoo Kimura (althought he doesn't give him credit in the video). But Kimura writes:
Under the present model, effectively neutral, but, in fact, very slightly deleterious mutants accumulate continuously in every species. The selective disadvantage of such mutants (in terms of an individual’s survival and reproduction – i.e. in Darwinian fitness) is likely to be of the order of 10-5 or less, but with 104 loci per genome coding for various proteins and each accumulating the mutants at the rate of 10-6 per generation, the rate of loss of fitness per generation may amount of 10-7 per generation. Whether such a small rate of deterioration in fitness constitutes a threat to the survival and welfare of the species (not to the individual) is a moot point, but this can easily be taken care of by adaptive gene substitutions that must occur from time to time, say once every few hundred generations.
Kimura, as you might know, was a pioneer in neutralist theory of evolution.
Why do you keep repeating yourself? That will not help.
The same evidence works on false claims, no matter how often they are repeated.
The fact is it is deteriorating
I know you want us to believe it, but there's all this evidence that says it isn't.
This rapid evolution of the Y chromosome has led to a dramatic loss of genes on the Y chromosome at a rate that, if maintained, eventually could lead to the Y chromosome's complete disappearance.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0716201127.htm
Might. Some organisms do without them. They seem to be doing fine.
The human race is deteriorating genetically as a result of scientific medical advancements, says Rolf Hoekstra, Professor of Genetics at Wageningen University.
Mr Hoekstra believes that medical treatments interfere with the natural selection process and illustrates his point using the example of genetic infertility.
http://www.rnw.nl/english/article/hu...enetics-expert
Maybe so. If humans are interfering with natural selection to remove it's effects there might be a degeneration of genome. Until recently, that hasn't been possible. Darwin discussed the issue, and concluded that it was evil to let natural selection kill off the weak among us. This has nothing whatever to do with the fact of evolution.
Genetic code of human race is deteriorating due to environmental factors
Small damages to sequences in the human genome are causing evolutionary changes in our DNA. Recent findings from a Japanese group prove that a common form of DNA damage caused by oxidation is a primary cause of mutagenesis -- damage to DNA during the genome replication process.
http://www.naturalnews.com/021220.html
Always has been. But as you see, epistasis, changing environments,and numerous favorable mutations still working toward fixation have all countered that .
They claim its environmental factors.
Maybe so. Major environmental changes have, in the past, caused large die-offs followed by rapid speciation of organisms adapted to the changes.
(website offered as proof)
I notice the people running the site also claim they can cure high blood pressure in three weeks, and that the big chemical companies are conspiring to poison us all.
So you claim their article is false?
A quack medical website isn't exactly a good source, especially when what they claim, is contrary to the evidence.
If you have to try and discredit someones character because you have no real answer just don't answer.
It's nuts to claim that an herbal remedy is going to cure high blood pressure in a few weeks.
Just saying..
Only took one scientist to prove many wrong when they all believed scum on top of pond was proof of abiogenesis.
Spontaneous generation. Big difference.
Highlight the article for which the link is dead. I'll try to get it fixed.
