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Originally posted by Selahobed
reply to post by john124
Well copied and pasted... Saves time I suppose, even if it lacks imagination lol.. Only ribbing ya lol.. But if you are using scientific methods to prove your theory then is that not in fact science and not psuedo science?
Originally posted by Selahobed
reply to post by Maslo
Yes, there may be an addition of some information sometimes but is it "the right" information? Thankfully its very rare, particuly for humans where the insertion of an extra chromosome can cause Downs syndrome, or kleinfelter syndrome... Not good..... Both over time, if allowed to reproduce, would destroy human kind....
[edit on 093131p://f46Sunday by Selahobed]
Originally posted by Selahobed
reply to post by ipsedixit
When has a mutation ever been benificial?
The Indo-Australian plate is still moving at 67 mm per year, and over the next 10 million years it will travel about 1,500 km into Asia. About 20 mm per year of the India-Asia convergence is absorbed by thrusting along the Himalaya southern front. This leads to the Himalayas rising by about 5 mm per year, making them geologically active. The movement of the Indian plate into the Asian plate also makes this region seismically active, leading to earthquakes from time to time.
Strictly speaking, this is incorrect.
I'm afraid we will have to disagree on that.
The real impetus for evolution is survival and propagation of DNA. Mutation gives us options.
You are introducing mental factors here, as I do at the end of the post you are responding to.
Natural Selection decides which options work best at the current time.
Please don't anthropomorphise the process or I'm going to start thinking that you are some sort of pantheist. Surely you are not.
Which is just another way of stating that evolution proceeds by genetic mutation. Right? The point I made earlier, which was, in your words "Strictly speaking . . . incorrect."
We are talking about evolution, remember, usually thought of as happening over billions of years?
I am aware of a so called "evolutionary tree" portraying the evolution of man. This is done for numerous sorts, if not all living things so far as I know, but what I wanted to ask is, does a comparable "devolutionary tree" form a part of the study of evolution and if not, why not? I've never heard of devolutionary branches on any of the trees.
Shouldn't they exist if the most important mechanism of evolution is genetic mutation?
When has a mutation ever been benificial?
In genetics, a neutral mutation is a mutation that occurs in an amino acid codon (presumably within an mRNA molecule) which results in the use of a different (but often chemically similar) amino acid that has a negligible effect on fitness. This is similar to a silent mutation, where a codon mutation may encode the same amino acid (see Wobble Hypothesis); for example, a change from AUU to AUC will still encode leucine, so no discernible change occurs (a silent mutation).
A neutral mutation may or may not affect the resulting protein. For example, if the codon AAA is mutated to AGA, arginine would be used in the resulting protein instead of lysine. These amino acids are chemically very similar and may not have any appreciable effect on the protein or its function; alternately, a mutation may in fact be lethal, or prevent the protein from functioning correctly or at all (in this case, it would become a missense mutation).
If the mutation changes the original amino acid codon to a stop codon, it would be termed a nonsense mutation. Among humans, roughly 95% of all mutations can be classified as neutral mutations, with roughly 5% being missense mutations.
Changes in DNA caused by mutation can cause errors in protein sequence, creating partially or completely non-functional proteins. To function correctly, each cell depends on thousands of proteins to function in the right places at the right times. When a mutation alters a protein that plays a critical role in the body, a medical condition can result. A condition caused by mutations in one or more genes is called a genetic disorder. Some mutations alter a gene's DNA base sequence but do not change the function of the protein made by the gene. Studies of the fly Drosophila melanogaster suggest that if a mutation does change a protein, this will probably be harmful, with about 70 percent of these mutations having damaging effects, and the remainder being either neutral or weakly beneficial.[33] However, studies in yeast have shown that only 7% of mutations that are not in genes are harmful.[34]
If a mutation is present in a germ cell, it can give rise to offspring that carries the mutation in all of its cells. This is the case in hereditary diseases. On the other hand, a mutation may occur in a somatic cell of an organism. Such mutations will be present in all descendants of this cell within the same organism, and certain mutations can cause the cell to become malignant, and thus cause cancer[35].
Often, gene mutations that could cause a genetic disorder are repaired by the DNA repair system of the cell. Each cell has a number of pathways through which enzymes recognize and repair mistakes in DNA. Because DNA can be damaged or mutated in many ways, the process of DNA repair is an important way in which the body protects itself from disease.
Although most mutations that change protein sequences are harmful, some mutations have a positive effect on an organism. In this case, the mutation may enable the mutant organism to withstand particular environmental stresses better than wild-type organisms, or reproduce more quickly. In these cases a mutation will tend to become more common in a population through natural selection.
For example, a specific 32 base pair deletion in human CCR5 (CCR5-Δ32) confers HIV resistance to homozygotes and delays AIDS onset in heterozygotes.[36] The CCR5 mutation is more common in those of European descent. One possible explanation of the etiology of the relatively high frequency of CCR5-Δ32 in the European population is that it conferred resistance to the bubonic plague in mid-14th century Europe. People with this mutation were more likely to survive infection; thus its frequency in the population increased.[37] This theory could explain why this mutation is not found in Africa, where the bubonic plague never reached. A newer theory suggests that the selective pressure on the CCR5 Delta 32 mutation was caused by smallpox instead of the bubonic plague.[38
Originally posted by rnaa
reply to post by ipsedixit
Never-the-less, survival of the organism is the impetus for evolution.
or you might mean have we found where a species has retrogressed, or devolved into something more primitive. This question is a non-sequitur.
There is no goal that species evolve toward, . . .
The Vatican, They just try to twist it that it matches there bedtime stories. Enter "intelligent design".. Anyone with a working brain can see how this is just plain stupidity at its finest.
So what you're saying is there's a new crop of student who are smart enough to know B.S. when they here it, and not be led around by the
nose.
We all have imaginations and wonder what else is yet to be discovered. There's a difference between a good scientist who may have personal religious opinions that do not affect his/her evidence-based critical thinking attributes. But for a scientist to use his/her faith as a replacement, then that would make a poor scientist.