Can random mutations increase fitness?

[Idle Mind]

786, the articles you quoted from Doctor Weaver are so far out of date as to be irrelevant. You should really look at articles from 2000 or newer, since the largest advancements in genetics have occurred in the last 5-10 years.

 

[786]

786: Why do you keep obsessing over the fact that mutations occur by chance? I really don’t understand your point. Yes, it is unlikely that any given organism will experience a beneficial mutation – but in a large population that’s constantly reproducing, it’s practically inevitable that eventually an organism will undergo a beneficial mutation that makes it more likely to survive. What’s the problem?

"It is probably fair to estimate the frequency of a majority of mutations in higher organisms between one in ten thousand and one in a million per gene per generation."—*F.J. Ayala, "Teleological Explanations in Evolutionary Biology," in Philosophy of Science, March 1970, p. 3.

Mutations are simply too rare to have produced all the necessary traits of even one life-form, much less all the creatures that swarm on the earth.

Evolution requires millions upon millions of direct, solid changes, yet mutations occur only with great rarity.

CHANCE with RARITY does not make a good theory.
Anyways in order for a specie to become a COMPLETELY different specie you need millions of Mutation, in this case "beneficial mutations". You just admitted that it would be hard, but it would be inevitable for a beneficial mutation eventually. Do you think that eventually happening beneficial mutation is going to in the millions. NO!

1 benefical mutation cannot change a specie in another specie. You would need millions of benefical mutations at once. This even reduces the probability of this happening. As you admitted that it is hard for beneficial mutations to happen. Then tell me how hard is it going to be for millions of "beneficial mutations" happening at the same time? But not only this but What is the probablity of millions of beneficial mutations happening at the same time, not once, but MILLIONS of time?

USE SOME SERIOUS COMMON SENSE, AND FACTS. When answering these questions.

 

[MacM]

Funny. You believe in the Theory of Evolution which is science, then you deny Paleontalogy which is also Science. Interesting!

No, we believe in science and not distorted out of context and meaningless add on assumptions of what such variations mean to evolution. There are many cases where evolution has not resulted in a species change. That is Sharks, cockroaches, etc., are much as they were millions of years ago but there are even more cases where we see punctuated epocs of rapid change in some forms.

When earth is struck by a comet or astroid, etc., or undergoes an ice age, many large preditors are killed off or go extinct in relatively short periods of time due to a decrease in ample food, etc. The remaining creatures are now free to increase habitat, have more food and reproduce more rapidly due to less preditors, etc.

The enviornmental changes affect evolution in many ways. The mere increased reproduction increases the rate of change mutations and the rate of overall evolution.

Hang it up you are clueless about science and are taking biased religious nonsense to be fact. Perhaps you should rely on science to teach you science and not Bible Thumpers that lie and distort or talk about things for which they have no understanding and make erroneous assumptions as to what it all means.

Your whole arguement is nonsense.

 

[786]

No, we believe in science and not distorted out of context and meaningless add on assumptions of what such variations mean to evolution. There are many cases where evolution has not resulted in a species change. That is Sharks, cockroaches, etc., are much as they were millions of years ago but there are even more cases where we see punctuated epocs of rapid change in some forms.

When earth is struck by a comet or astroid, etc., or undergoes an ice age, many large preditors are killed off or go extinct in relatively short periods of time due to a decrease in ample food, etc. The remaining creatures are now free to increase habitat, have more food and reproduce more rapidly due to less preditors, etc.

The enviornmental changes affect evolution in many ways. The mere increased reproduction increases the rate of change mutations and the rate of overall evolution.

Hang it up you are clueless about science and are taking biased religious nonsense to be fact. Perhaps you should rely on science to teach you science and not Bible Thumpers that lie and distort or talk about things for which they have no understanding and make erroneous assumptions as to what it all means.

Your whole arguement is nonsense.

First of all I am not trying to prove God. Second of all you call my argument nonsense. LOL hahahahahaha. My argument only shows the improbability of your so-called "theory". It is only a hypothesis. because it is depended on CHANCE. And you call my argument nonsense.LOL. You crack me up. I can't take it, that is, I can't take so much lauging

Your WHOLE Theory DEPENDS ON CHANCE, AN IMPROBABLE CHANCE. NOW THAT, my friend, is NONSENSE.

 

[spuriousmonkey]

"It is probably fair to estimate the frequency of a majority of mutations in higher organisms between one in ten thousand and one in a million per gene per generation."—*F.J. Ayala, "Teleological Explanations in Evolutionary Biology," in Philosophy of Science, March 1970, p. 3.

Originally Posted by Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2002 Jan 22;99(2):803-8. Epub 2002 Jan 15.
Mutation rates in mammalian genomes.

Kumar S, Subramanian S.



Knowledge of the rate of point mutation is of fundamental importance, because mutations are a vital source of genetic novelty and a significant cause of human diseases. Currently, mutation rate is thought to vary many fold among genes within a genome and among lineages in mammals. We have conducted a computational analysis of 5,669 genes (17,208 sequences) from species representing major groups of placental mammals to characterize the extent of mutation rate differences among genes in a genome and among diverse mammalian lineages. We find that mutation rate is approximately constant per year and largely similar among genes. Similarity of mutation rates among lineages with vastly different generation lengths and physiological attributes points to a much greater contribution of replication-independent mutational processes to the overall mutation rate. Our results suggest that the average mammalian genome mutation rate is 2.2 x 10(-9) per base pair per year, which provides further opportunities for estimating species and population divergence times by using molecular clocks.

Mutations are simply too rare to have produced all the necessary traits of even one life-form, much less all the creatures that swarm on the earth.

Obviously they are not. Your opinion is not really an argument.

Evolution requires millions upon millions of direct, solid changes, yet mutations occur only with great rarity.

They should be rare otherwise there couldn't be evolution. And btw, we are talking now about mutation rates in mammals. In viruses the mutation rate can be much higher.

CHANCE with RARITY does not make a good theory.

It doesn't, but what theory are you talking about. Obviously not about evolution. Evolution is about variety in conjunction with selection. Something rare will be selected for if it is beneficial.

Anyways in order for a specie to become a COMPLETELY different specie you need millions of Mutation, in this case "beneficial mutations". You just admitted that it would be hard, but it would be inevitable for a beneficial mutation eventually. Do you think that eventually happening beneficial mutation is going to in the millions. NO!

That is just your opinion based largely on ignorance. Again, not an argument.

1 benefical mutation cannot change a specie in another specie. You would need millions of benefical mutations at once. This even reduces the probability of this happening. As you admitted that it is hard for beneficial mutations to happen. Then tell me how hard is it going to be for millions of "beneficial mutations" happening at the same time? But not only this but What is the probablity of millions of beneficial mutations happening at the same time, not once, but MILLIONS of time?

No you don't need billions. You think you need billions. That is something different.

USE SOME SERIOUS COMMON SENSE, AND FACTS. When answering these questions.

try to find out the real facts first.

 

[spuriousmonkey]

Your WHOLE Theory DEPENDS ON CHANCE, AN IMPROBABLE CHANCE. NOW THAT, my friend, is NONSENSE.

The theory depends on selection and variatiety within a species. Quite something different. And that is not nonsense.

 

[786]

Lets just leave this debate to the professionals. You didn't prove anything according to me, and I didn't prove anything according to you. So the result is going to be nothing.

Although I think I got my message through, that the WHOLE theory is depended on CHANCES of BENFICIAL MUTATION.

 

[Nasor]

"It is probably fair to estimate the frequency of a majority of mutations in higher organisms between one in ten thousand and one in a million per gene per generation."—*F.J. Ayala, "Teleological Explanations in Evolutionary Biology," in Philosophy of Science, March 1970, p. 3.

Mutations are simply too rare to have produced all the necessary traits of even one life-form, much less all the creatures that swarm on the earth.

Evolution requires millions upon millions of direct, solid changes, yet mutations occur only with great rarity.

CHANCE with RARITY does not make a good theory.
Anyways in order for a specie to become a COMPLETELY different specie you need millions of Mutation, in this case "beneficial mutations". You just admitted that it would be hard, but it would be inevitable for a beneficial mutation eventually. Do you think that eventually happening beneficial mutation is going to in the millions. NO!

Most organisms have tens of thousands of genes. Even if you were conservative and considered and organism with only 10,000 genes, based on your “one in a million” statistic that would mean that in each generation about one in every thousand organisms would have a beneficial mutation. For a small population of a hundred thousand, this would mean that in every generation there were a hundred organisms born with beneficial mutations. That sounds like it could easily produce a healthy variety of organisms from which to ‘naturally select’ the most fit survivors.

1 benefical mutation cannot change a specie in another specie. You would need millions of benefical mutations at once. This even reduces the probability of this happening. As you admitted that it is hard for beneficial mutations to happen. Then tell me how hard is it going to be for millions of "beneficial mutations" happening at the same time? But not only this but What is the probablity of millions of beneficial mutations happening at the same time, not once, but MILLIONS of time?

No one expects an animal to evolve into another species in a single generation. In most cases it would probably take many small changes accumulating over a long period of time to create a new species. Although each generation would be very similar to the generation that preceded it, after thousands or millions of generations the accumulated changes could give you a species that was very different from the one you started with.

 

[786]

The theory depends on selection and variatiety within a species. Quite something different. And that is not nonsense.

Natural Selection only provides variations inside a specie. It DOESN"T CREATE A NEW SPECIE. MUTATION can change species BUT IT DEPENDS ON THE CHANCE OF BENEFICIAL VARIATIONS.

We are talking about the process of species turning into different species. THAT CANNOT BE ACCOMPLISHED BY NATURAL SELECTION. IT CAN ONLY BE ACCOMPLISHED BY MUTATION, WHICH DEPENDS ON CHANCES. I'm done repeating myself.

 

[786]

The Whole Theory Depends On Chances.

 

[786]

You Cannot Escape The Fact That The Whole Theory Is Dependent On Chances. Very Hard, And Rare Chances. I'm done debating this issue.

 

[MacM]

CHANCE with RARITY does not make a good theory.
Anyways in order for a specie to become a COMPLETELY different specie you need millions of Mutation, in this case "beneficial mutations". You just admitted that it would be hard, but it would be inevitable for a beneficial mutation eventually. Do you think that eventually happening beneficial mutation is going to in the millions. NO!

Lets see. Earlier I believe it was posted that there should be around 120 mutations per reproduction. Assuming a reproduction every 20 years, STARTING WITH ONLY ONE PAIR:

120^(1,000,000 YEARS/20 YEARS) = 120^50,000! DAMN THE NUMBER OF MUTATIONS BROKE MY CALCULATOR.

LETS TRY A SMALLER PERIOD OF TIME.

120^5,000 = Damn still broke my calculator

120^50 cycles = Still won't work

120^40 cycles (800 years) = 1.46977E83 mutations!!!!

146,977,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Now I believe you complained that it takes 1,000,000 mutations to affect substantial change so that means:

146,977,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

From which you said 99% were harmful and only 1% positive, but to make my math easier I'll make it 10 times harder and say that it is only 1/1,000 not 1/100 mutations that are advantages hence:

146,977,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

You have this many positive mutations from only one breeding pair is less than 1,000 years!!!

What sort of numbers do ou think we are dealing with in reality for millions of breeding pairs over millions of years?????

1 benefical mutation cannot change a specie in another specie. You would need millions of benefical mutations at once. This even reduces the probability of this happening. As you admitted that it is hard for beneficial mutations to happen. Then tell me how hard is it going to be for millions of "beneficial mutations" happening at the same time? But not only this but What is the probablity of millions of beneficial mutations happening at the same time, not once, but MILLIONS of time?

You are adding words to the process again. The mutations do not go from a pig to a pig with wings in one reproduction. Many mutations have no deliterious or positive affect until combined with later subsequent mutations which "Collectively" start to create change.

USE SOME SERIOUS COMMON SENSE, AND FACTS. When answering these questions.

I believe I just did.

Oh BTW: Note that we still only have one pair of breeders. I didn't have the first pair and subsequent pairs produce but only once. If they reproduced twice in their life time the population grows and numbers of this magnitude would occur in just over 6 generations!

 

[Nasor]

786: I still don't understand what your hangup on the word 'chance' is. With a sufficiently large sample size virtually anything, no matter how unlikely can occur. I just posted figures showing that based on your own numbers there can easily be hundreds or thousands of organisms born with beneficial mutations every generation. What's the problem?

 

[spuriousmonkey]

Natural Selection only provides variations inside a specie. It DOESN"T CREATE A NEW SPECIE. MUTATION can change species BUT IT DEPENDS ON THE CHANCE OF BENEFICIAL VARIATIONS.

We are talking about the process of species turning into different species. THAT CANNOT BE ACCOMPLISHED BY NATURAL SELECTION. IT CAN ONLY BE ACCOMPLISHED BY MUTATION, WHICH DEPENDS ON CHANCES. I'm done repeating myself.

What is with these caps?

Obviously you haven't read anything on evolution. Selection is what creates a species and what maintains a species and what makes a species go extinct. Selection is based on variation.

Obviously you don't know what you are talking about because the only facts you seem to have a a publication of 1970 (that is before molecular biology was invented) on mutation rate. You haven't even got a clue about true mutation rates. I gave a reference. Nobody in the scientific world seems to think that mammals couldn't have evolved with this mutation rate. But you do for some unknown reason.

Mutation is also not entirely a change event. genetic variation is also increased by processes such as sex. So you may continue to repeat youself, but maybe you should get your head out of the sand and actually read something relevant.

 

[MacM]

First of all I am not trying to prove God.

Good, since you nor anyone can.

Second of all you call my argument nonsense. LOL hahahahahaha. My argument only shows the improbability of your so-called "theory".

1 - It is not my theory.

2 - You have only shown that you haven't done the math as I have above.

It is only a hypothesis. because it is depended on CHANCE. And you call my argument nonsense.LOL. You crack me up. I can't take it, that is, I can't take so much lauging

Guess who gets the last laugh.

Your WHOLE Theory DEPENDS ON CHANCE, AN IMPROBABLE CHANCE. NOW THAT, my friend, is NONSENSE.

See above. Your lack of comprehension is amazing. Do you really believe that you, not (I assume without hesitation) having no specific training or knowledge in this field but are merely reading distorted, biased interpretations and failing to consider the mathematics of the probabilities, not impossibiities of evolution, know more that the collective world of top scientists?

Now that makes me laugh. HeHeHe HoHoHo HaHaHa.

 

[spuriousmonkey]

start here

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-intro-to-biology.html

 

[James R]

786:

Natural Selection can do nothing. It gives you no direction. It only tells us that the "fit" will survive.

Causing only the fit to survive is doing more than nothing, don't you agree?

EVERYTHING is depended on the action of MUTATION. Natural Selection without Mutation cannot do ANYTHING evolutionary.

Wrong. Natural selection without variation can do nothing. But there are other ways of producing variation than mutation, as I said (e.g. sex).

But on the contarary Mutation can do MANY things without Natural Selection.

Mutation has no direction, though. It is random.

Natural Selection is a theory talking only common sense, which is that the "fit" will survive, nothing else. This to me is not even a theory. Even a child can tell you that the "fit" will survive.

That's the beauty of the theory of evolution. It is so elegantly simple that even a child can understand it. It is really surprising that nobody thought of it before Darwin, isn't it?

Natural Selection only provides variations inside a specie. It DOESN"T CREATE A NEW SPECIE.

I agree.

MUTATION can change species BUT IT DEPENDS ON THE CHANCE OF BENEFICIAL VARIATIONS.

I agree.

We are talking about the process of species turning into different species. THAT CANNOT BE ACCOMPLISHED BY NATURAL SELECTION. IT CAN ONLY BE ACCOMPLISHED BY MUTATION, WHICH DEPENDS ON CHANCES.

I agree.

The Whole Theory Depends On Chances.

I agree.

I'm glad you're done repeating yourself.

So, you now agree that evolution is a viable process, I take it?

 

[MacM]

Well if you believe in God the way we do then you wouldn't have asked the question, how did God do it?

I thought this discussion was about evolution and not God? You have just shown your preferred view.

Anyways Science cannot even show us how was the first cell formed. If you read the Cell Theory it clearly states that cells come from pre-existing cells.

And just how do you believe saying "God did it" gives any clearer answer?

Now this is an obvious question. How did this first living cell get formed?

Good question but there are thoeries on that issue. I think it might be difficult to provide specific evidence in the form of artifacts however. You would need to understand "and accept" chemistry", mathematical probabiity, etc.

The cell is very complex, it cannot be made by "self-organizing" mechanism to do this. Because almost all the components of the cell are needed for the cell to work. This means all must be formed simitaneously.

This sounds like a personal belief and not a scientifc analysis.

Even DNA is very complex, and it is arranged in very precise way. It obviously cannot be a product of chance.

And why not? If I take 10,000 dice and throw them on a table I will get the equivelent of a DNA type chain. Are you arguing that such a sequence cannot exist by chance? If I throw the dice once again what are the chances that the chain would repeat? Rather low I would suggest. Hence throwing the dice a few trillion, trillion, trillion times I should at least get a trillion different sequences. One of which can be a flying pig.

DNA is so small but it contains so much information. DNA is an extrodanary molecule.

Nobody disagrees with that.

There is no theory which can give us the answer to this question. How did life being? (by life I mean the first living cell)

You are making an erroneous assumption. Such theories exist.

 

[James R]

Hence throwing the dice a few trillion, trillion, trillion times I should at least get a trillion different sequences. One of which can be a flying pig.

Yes, but that's not how evolution works. It isn't a matter of throwing the dice until a good combination comes up. Natural selection means the good is retained, while the bad is discarded.

 

[MacM]

Yes, but that's not how evolution works. It isn't a matter of throwing the dice until a good combination comes up. Natural selection means the good is retained, while the bad is discarded.

We agree. I was trying to show the odds of producing a specific string resulting in a specific creature (which would be considered a postive throw of the dice). Not that a flying pig would have positive benefits on pig farms, it might for the pigs to avoid slaughter.