Evolution courtesy of Darwin ... no longer works for me ... here's why !

reply to post by Jukiodone

Just out of interest; lets say the Sun is bombarding Earth with billions of forms of EM energy ( some we know about; others we dont) is this the "fuel" of mutation as we know many forms of radiation can cause changes in biomass?

Not sure what you mean about a fuel of mutation/biomass changes - is this a reference to photosynthesis?

Most mutations, as we currently understand it, occur during errors in DNA replication. [size=-3](And by the way, for the attention of the OP, the dice IS loaded - it's a lot more common to replace pyrimidines with pyrimidines and purines with purines than the other way around). It's just chemistry - DNA unpeels, and polymerases fix free bases to the strand, they occasionally throw in the wrong base.

I would also be interested to know whether a large, complex superorganism such as a mammal would be affected any less or more by this radiation than more simple forms of life ( such as bacteria and viruses).

I wouldn't expect so, unless there was some buffering of mutagens by somatic cells (cells that aren't going to turn into sperm or eggs). However, more rapid reproductive cycles in small organisms (bacteria and single-celled protists, for example) mean more rapid DNA replication, which does lead to a more rapid accumulation of mutations.

The response advocating rapid change in simple cells seems to be the most sensible but I wonder if this is the connundrum....that simple life forms can adapt quicker therefore evoloution slows down relative to the complexity of the organism???

And there's the fun part - small organisms, per individual stretch of DNA mutate at a greater rate, but as well as meaning that they acquire beneficial mutations faster, it means that acquire deleterious (read "BAD") mutations faster, and lineages die out all the time - they have to reproduce in vast numbers if any of them want to make it long term. Of course, some of them can do horizontal gene transfer in the meantime (say you had brown hair, and you knew someone who had red hair, horizontal gene transfer would give you that gene for red hair).

In larger organisms, sexual reproduction, combined with independent assortment of genes (if you have children, the half of their genes that they get from you will be a mixture of genes from your mother and genes from your father) and over-reproduction (most pairs of animals have a lot more than two offspring over their lifetimes, even if they are in a population which isn't growing - the spares die), allows dumping of deleterious alleles in some of their offspring (who then die with the bad allele), while the offspring with beneficial mutations survive to breed. Because most animals are wildly promiscuous, alleles get mixed and matched, and novel genotypes can arise without any actual mutations being needed - and so large animals, provided that they have a large population, are evolving at a fairly phenomenal rate.

Originally posted by tauristercus
So where was I wrong ?

You were wrong when you stated, that Citric Acid Cycle must have come into existence very early in evolution, while in fact it would have been useless (in the form it exists today) for the first 2 billion years (ca. 50%) of evolution on our planet.

Originally posted by tauristercus
Anyway, here are the 3 possible scenarios ... by all means provide us with the wealth of your experience and knowledge.

Did the CA cycle evolve 1st and sit there waiting to be taken advantage of when the 1st oxygen metabolizing organism finally evolved ?
Or did the CA cycle evolve but only after the 1st organism capable of metabolizing oxygen had previously already evolved ?
Or did the CA cycle AND the 1st organism capable of oxygen metabolism evolve at the very same time in evolutionary history ?

Got to be one of the 3 above ... which one ?

Many of the Citric Acid Cycle reactions are reversible. Sometimes they're used for catabolic purposes (as part of the Citric Acid Cycle), but other times the reactions are reversed and used for anabolic purposes. So to answer your question, parts of the Citric Acid Cycle that are involved with anabolism most likely evolved before the first aerobes, where as the parts that are strictly used for catabolism probably evolved only after aerobes.

Originally posted by tauristercus
In other words, how the insulin gene has evolved between species but not HOW the insulin gene came into existence originally or WHAT mechanism was responsible for the original insulin gene creation.

Okay, I did a little research. In:

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA
Vol. 77, No. 10, pp. 6184-6188, October 1980
Medical Sciences

Roith et al. report finding insulin-like material from some unicellular eukaryotes. Further they speculate that it functions in them as a intracellular messenger. It's quite interesting topic actually, unfortunately I'm very busy at the moment. As you notice, this article is very old. If you start following the articles that cite it, and then articles that cite the cited ones etc. you should find more and more convincing arguments.

reply to post by Kailassa



Drake Equation VS Fermi Paradox stands as I posted.
Sorry you can't see it.

reply to post by Blue_Jay33


I have to post a link to this thread again because of you? And I have to bump it as per my promise.

Now, the thing is that probability doesn't rule out possibility. If that were so, the chance of any deck of card being in any order would be 0. The probability of you encountering two (not factory sorted) decks of cards that are in the same order in your lifetime would be 0. Yet both of those happen often enough even though the probability is 1 in 52!...which is a big number that I don't feel like writing it out. Just multiply it out for yourself or check my thread.

And the Fermi paradox actually doesn't stand. There could be all sorts of issues:

Maybe intelligence is an incredibly rarely selected for trait.
Maybe we're the most advanced species in our reasonable corner of the woods.
Maybe it's simply impossible to properly communicate over those distances with technology even a thousand years ahead of us.
Maybe other forms of life that have developed communicate in a completely different manner. Imagine trying to communicate with a truly alien species. It would be a nightmare.

I can actually pull out quite a list as I've had numerous discussions on the Fermi paradox because it's an interesting question.

And the Drake equation...well, some of the values are entirely arbitrary as they have no basis in any observations, they're simply guess work. We have one technological species on this planet out of five million living ones and millions upon millions of extinct species....but that's a single sample size. We can't make any judgments based upon that sample.

reply to post by tauristercus


Dammit, I'm just going to post the number

1 in 52!

or...


1 in 8x10^67

That's the probability of a deck of cards being in any order. Now, it has to be in any one order, but the probability of it being in the order its in is still 1 in 8x10^67...which is pretty damn close to 1 in 10^68

What're the chances of getting dealt a Royal Flush in a hand of poker (5 card stud)? Well...
1 in 311,875,200
Twice in your life? 1 in 97,266,140,375,040,000

The problem is that I'm being mildly deceptive. Why? Well, you can play at least 60 hands in an hour. Two hours of poker a week for 10 years with some friends? 62,400 hands...so 1 in 4998 people might get a Royal Flush straight on the draw.

My point? People are being deceptive with numbers...more so in creationism because they're simply stating that something is mathematically impossible. I've yet to see an actual concrete mathematical formulation of the impossibility of evolution.

Oh, and your insulin example is silly for one reason: evolution and genetics don't work like that.

Evolution is more like Yahtzee!, you get to take away some of the bad options to go with the better ones and reroll to get something better.

Originally posted by Blue_Jay33
reply to post by Kailassa

 

Drake Equation VS Fermi Paradox stands as I posted.
Sorry you can't see it.

First you trumpet math as being the way to prove evolution wrong.
Next you cite an article as proof that math can disprove evolution.
Then I show you how your article, instead of disproving evolution, supports evolution.
You reply by using a discussion of the Drake equation to debunk the conclusions you drew from your article and dismissing the use of math in discussing evolution.
And now, to avoid admitting you were wrong, you are waving an imaginary dispute between two ideas as if they are somehow relevant to evolution.

Would you like to tell us, in your own words, in what way do these ideas contradict each other, and how are they relevant to evolution?

I'd wager they don't, they aren't, and you will cover up the fact you can't do this by pretending people who see through you just "can't see it".

reply to post by Kailassa


Really?

First you trumpet math as being the way to prove evolution wrong.

Correct

Next you cite an article as proof that math can disprove evolution.

Sorry you perceived it that way, not sure how you could have, here is my comment on that

some scientists have even discredited this notion BECAUSE they believe in evolution, the point is because evolution takes so long by the time intelligent life evolves, the Star in their system makes life uninhabitable, and they would be killed off.

I capitalized it the first time hoping nobody would miss it, you obviously did, this time I know you won't

Then I show you how your article, instead of disproving evolution, supports evolution.

No kidding, I knew that, that's why I used it. WOW!

You reply by using a discussion of the Drake equation to debunk the conclusions you drew from your article and dismissing the use of math in discussing evolution.

No, I was showing the two sides to the discussion one of which you put forth, the Drake Equation supports your perspective the Fermi Paradox support my perspective, nothing more.

And now, to avoid admitting you were wrong, you are waving an imaginary dispute between two ideas as if they are somehow relevant to evolution.

What? If an one evolutionist leans toward the Drake Equation and another evolutionist towards the Fermi Paradox, as per that article, it does effect the different theories between evolutionists that are not in agreement.

Would you like to tell us, in your own words, in what way do these ideas contradict each other, and how are they relevant to evolution?

Already answered, no further response required.

reply to post by madnessinmysoul


Hey Madness I know you are Star Wars fan, let me ask a question about Star Wars, how many Galaxies are featured in the original OT & PT movies?

Now that you have your answer, think about the Fermi Paradox.

Originally posted by madnessinmysoul
reply to post by tauristercus

 

My point? People are being deceptive with numbers...more so in creationism because they're simply stating that something is mathematically impossible.

Please re-check everyone of my posts (well, I know you won't because there's simply to many to re-read ) and you'll not find a single instance where I claim to believe in creationism (which I certainly do not). In fact, my opening post carried a disclaimer to that effect.

I've yet to see an actual concrete mathematical formulation of the impossibility of evolution.

Again, I've never claimed the absolute impossibility of evolution ... otherwise how did we humans get here ?
What I have been trying to say is that some evolutionary processes are so incredibly statistically improbable with astronomical odds against them occurring, and yet they obviously have occurred as in the insulin example that I keep referring to. To explain this discrepancy, I simply make the observation that there must be some kind of as yet unrecognized mechanism/effect in operation that significantly influences and dramatically increases the rate of nucleotide mutation.

Oh, and your insulin example is silly for one reason: evolution and genetics don't work like that.

According to whom ? And written in stone, where ?

Evolution is more like Yahtzee!, you get to take away some of the bad options to go with the better ones and reroll to get something better.

So you're saying for example, that nature manages to get the 1st 50 insulin nucleotides correct but then stuffs up the next 5 nucleotides with incorrect insertions. According to you, nature then manages to somehow determine the incorrect 5, replaces or deletes them, and then continues building the insulin sequence with new, and correct, nucleotides ... and continues ?

Originally posted by madnessinmysoul
The problem is that I'm being mildly deceptive. Why? Well, you can play at least 60 hands in an hour. Two hours of poker a week for 10 years with some friends? 62,400 hands...so 1 in 4998 people might get a Royal Flush straight on the draw.

My point? People are being deceptive with numbers...more so in creationism because they're simply stating that something is mathematically impossible. I've yet to see an actual concrete mathematical formulation of the impossibility of evolution.

That was one of the first points that hit me when I was reading this: that the assumption is just one organism changes and no other organism changes... instead of "we have a soup full of billions of algae, etc and they're all undergoing changes as radiation and replication errors occur." The actual rate is 1 mutation per 300 replications ( see this paper )

And the time span for this is around 40 minutes: en.allexperts.com...
...so around 30 replications per day for a single bacteria (I used e. coli in my searches). Within the human body, cells live different lengths of time (according to this (unverified) table, some bone cells can live 30 years: vitanetonline.com... )

A closer model would be :all the people on the planet playing poker (with time out for eating and sleeping and going to work.) -- and calculating the number of times a flush or royal flush, etc, would occur during that span.

Originally posted by tauristercus
So you're saying for example, that nature manages to get the 1st 50 insulin nucleotides correct but then stuffs up the next 5 nucleotides with incorrect insertions. According to you, nature then manages to somehow determine the incorrect 5, replaces or deletes them, and then continues building the insulin sequence with new, and correct, nucleotides ... and continues ?

Generally the cell dies or may not replicate or simply may not produce. Feedback loops in the body adjust production if it's a big enough effect.

Within your body (right now) there are thousands of cells with incorrect sequences in them. In a large organism, this does very little harm (tiny organisms are a different story, however.)

reply to post by tauristercus

As can be readily seen, the odds of nature randomly selecting the 1st 10 correct bases are at most approximately 1 million to one against

And there is your fundamental error. SELECTION IS NOT RANDOM. Mutation is random. SELECTION IS NOT RANDOM. Rinse and repeat. SELECTION IS NOT RANDOM. Mutation is random. SELECTION IS NOT RANDOM.

OP obviously has a grasp of some sophisticated genetics but fails to understand the basic underpinnings of concomitant probability theory, as well as Darwin himself.

Lets say I have a set of 52 standard cards and ask you to draw one card. The probability that you draw a 3 of clubs is 1/52. But the probability that you will draw ANY card out of the cohort of possible cards is 52/52. The insulin molecule has been calibrated out of readily available resources to confer a benefit to any amount of genetic material with a tendency to construct the insulin molecule. Regardless of its structure, it is the way it is because ancestors that carried the insulin gene had more sex than others in the population, while those that carried an "alternative version" were at a disadvantage (not necessarily from any means inherently of a good or bad nature, but perhaps just out of sheer "random" mating).

The absurdity of your first argument concerning the mutation rate of HUMANS as a function of the last 3.8 billion years (really?) offers little commentary and is obviously not sound logic, rather an excrement of the emotional contrivances that have led to some sort of disdain for evolutionary theory. Aside from the banal consideration of generation turnover vs actual years that would certainly refute your beliefs, the great thing about sex is chromosomal crossover and genetic recombination, which more immediately serves to contribute to an organisms reproductive fitness than that of mutation. (Or widens the candidature for evolutionary change).

Alas to close, Darwin himself emphatically stated his acknowledgment of sexual selection and mating systems that ultimately act as the engine of evolution, not the environment. An organism doesn't have sex with their environment. The only way the gene frequency in a gene pool shifts, among sexually reproduction organisms, is through sex. Thus the change in gene frequency is a measure of the magnitude of the forces acting on the mating system(s) of the population. And we have seen this happening, not only in the laboratory, but in the natural habitats of Drosophilia, mice, and nematodes. Meaning we have directly witness the changing of one species of fruit fly to another.

reply to post by Byrd


You could actually calculate that quite easily if you had an accurate figure of the world's population. If anyone wants me to go through poker math, just say so...I lived of online poker for a bit over a year now

Poker teaches you that no matter how unlikely, improbably outcomes DO HAPPEN...and often they happen more often than we think before doing the math.

To give a simple example:

You're playing heads-up holdem and get dealt AA preflop. Your opponent goes all-in preflop...and you're obviously super happy about that and snap call. Now, you should obviously be happy because you can't have a better preflop hand than AA, and you got a huge edge preflop.

However...one out of 5 times, you will lose with AA all-in preflop no matter what villain has.

There's a fun free program called "pokerstove" that allows you to do probability calculations for poker. If you play around with it, you realize there's a lot of surprising results.

Now, this example was talking about holdem poker...if you were to play pot limit omaha, everything changes and your AA preflop would be worth a lot less as more combinations are possible (4 starting cards). Funny enough, the "rare" hands like flushes/straights/FH/etc happen a lot more once more combinations are possible...suddenly you get straights every 2nd or 3rd hand...

Anyway, bit off topic...but we were talking about probabilities

reply to post by Blue_Jay33


Not sure what the Fermi paradox proves...or what you think it proves/disproves.

But here's an interesting video that tries to explain why an advanced alien species that's capable of inter-stellar travel might not even be interested in us.



Neil DeGrasse Tyson's awesome...very few people can explain interesting concepts like him. He also got a fun podcast called "Startalk" with a comedian co-host.

Startalk

"When was the last time you stopped at an ant hill and tried talking to the ants?"

Best analogy ever!! If an alien species can travel to other stars (galaxies?), they got an abundance of energy and their technology would be so far above ours, we wouldn't have anything that could possibly interest them...

Also, if you stand right next to an ant hill, how (if at all) do you think the ants perceive you?

Some fun probabilities:

You are 3,000,000 times more likely to die of an asteroid impact in 2029 than to win the lottery. Also, your chances of dying of a lightning strike are also around 120 times more likely. Your chances of winning the lottery are around 120 million (!!!) to 1 depending on the type of lottery...that means if you play every single week, you'd have to play for almost 2.5 million years to have a realistic chance of winning once. Yet people win the lottery all the time!!

Either way, probabilities are just that...probabilities. They're an indication and measure a likelihood...nothing more, and nothing less. It's something you have to realize when playing poker, otherwise you go berserk every single time you lose with AA against 72o

It's all about VOLUME. In the long run, you will win more with AA than 72o...but in the short run, everything can happen. And that's the important thing to remember when it comes to evolution (and even abiogenesis). The time frame is so incredibly immense, it makes it a lot more probable that "rare" events occurred. Even if you could calculate the probability (and imo you can't accurately because of the number of variables), and it were something ridiculous like 500mil to 1...given that the timeframe we're looking at is measured in billions of years, it's not that unlikely that rare events did in fact happen. That's of course not proof that they did happen, but it makes clear why using probabilities to prove/disprove evolution is beyond silly

I'll start my response with "I take offense to your condescending attitude".

i will limit my activity in this thread because your belligerant insistence on ignoring the answers provided is offensive to me in the highest degree. not to mention that i personally wrote out some very thoughtful responses in your last thread on this topic and i was summarily ignored.

you seem to think that we (meaning those of us with an understanding advanced enough to be critical of your position) have missed something essential. we have not.

we are your peer reviewers, like it or not. if you cannot convince us of your argument, it will never get off the ground. this means that you are doomed to the continuing circle-jerk between you and the people who are NOT advanced enough to understand your argument.

if you intend to have a technical conversation, then you are obligated to learn the current technical conventions. you failed miserably at doing so in your last thread and instead of backtracking to find out where you have gone wrong, you started this new thread compounding your confusion.

what makes this truly sad is that, indeed, our understanding of the genomic processes is at a very elementary stage. we really are on the brink of making some fascinating advances. and you certainly appear to be smart enough and curious enough to participate in such a discussion. but instead, you insist on being mired in your pooly founded position.

i will not reiterate where you have gone wrong. it is so totally clear to me, and to many others here. and when you see it, it is going to smack you over the head and you will look back over this thread and see it exactly the way we are now. it has been shown to you (i myself did it once) over and over again. slow down and go back and read. i assure you that the information you need has already been given.

Originally posted by Astyanax

Nature didn't have to roll the same four dice over and over again. She selected the combinations she 'wanted' in a cumulative process. Each roll of the dice increases the likelihood that the next roll will be the one she wants.

your reply:

You're kidding me ? C'mon ... you've got to be !

no. he is not kidding.

Kailassa

Originally posted by Kailassa
You're being dealt playing cards, and there are only 4 types of card, ace, king, queen and jack.
You want 16 cards in a particular order.
You have 1 chance in 4294967296 of getting all the cards in the right order. This is the cumulative probability.

Why do so many people apparently have so much difficulty in working out simple combinations and probabilities ?

In your above example, you haven't specified any particular order such as A,A,A,A,K,K,K,K,Q,Q,Q,Q,J,J,J,J or J, Q, K, A, J, Q, K, A, J, Q, K, A, J, Q, K, A, etc and so I'm going to assume that ANY order will do.

If that's the case then with 16 cards only, there are exactly 20,922,789,888,000 different ways of arranging those 16 cards ... and NOT 4,294,967,296 as you've stated.

So this means that if you do want just one particular order of those 16 cards, then you have just 1 chance in 20,922,789,888,000 of dealing the cards and actually getting the order that you want.

When you have the first 15 cards in place the odds of getting the queen you want are not 1 in 10^9, they are 1 in 4. The odds for getting any single correct card are 1 in 4. Your notion that the cumulative probabiliy should be applied to each card draw, and then all multiplied together, is just nonsense.

Again, you haven't quite got a handle on cumulative probability (for multiple sequential draws) as opposed to individual probability (for a single draw).

Let me try to make it clearer for you by using a normal (unbiased) coin in the following examples.

Ok, for the 1st experiment, all we're interested in is tossing the coin and getting a head.
What's the odds (probability) of actually getting that head ? Of course it's just 1 in 2 or P=0.5.

Now we're going to toss that same coin and this time hope to get a tail.
What's the odds of a tail this time ? Again, it's just 1 in 2 or P=0.5.

Now we're going to toss that coin again a 3rd time and hope to get a head.
What's the odds of a head appearing on this 3rd toss ? No rocket science here as again, it's just 1 in 2 or P=0.5.

The important thing to bear in mind here is that we don't care at all what the previous tosses gave as each one of the 3 tosses is treated as a UNIQUE and isolated toss ... each toss completely independent of past or future tosses.
This means that no matter how many tosses you make, 1, 2, 20, 100, 1000, etc, each toss has exactly the same probability as any other toss i.e. P=0.5 when treated as completely independent of any past/future tosses.


Now, in this 2nd coin tossing experiment, and before we toss any coins, we decide in advance that we want to see the following result after 2 tosses ... a HEAD followed by a TAIL.

Unlike the 1st experiment, this time we're not interested in individual probabilities but rather the combined or CUMULATIVE probability of successfully achieving our goal, i.e a H followed by a T.

So, this time we have to multiply together the individual probabilities to get a cumulative probability. In other words, the 1st toss has a P=0.5 ... the 2nd toss has a P=0.5 ... but the cumulative probability is calculated as
0.5 x 0.5 = 0.25.
This means that you have only P=0.25, or 1 chance in 4 of getting a H followed by a T.

To show this is correct, here are the 4 possible outcomes after tossing a coin twice:

HH
HT
TT
TH

As can be seen, the desired outcome of a H followed by a T is just 1 possibility out of a total of 4 ... or in other words, it has a P=0.25 ... which is what was the result of our cumulative probability calculation just above.


So the way that you looked at it was from an independent pick/toss point of view, which is fine if we're only interested in a single outcome e.g. a H or a T or a K or a Q, etc ... but we're actually interested in multiple picks resulting in just one specific predetermined outcome ... which in this case happens to be a final 153 picks (random mutation) of the correct nucleotides.

So determining the cumulative probability of nature stringing together the correct sequence of 153 nucleotides (the "expected" outcome) is exactly the same scenario as deciding what coin sequence you want to see but only before you've started the tossing.

And the cumulative probability is 0.25^153 ... with the odds stacked astronomically AGAINST the correct 153 nucleotides being strung together in the required sequence somewhere in a chromosome.

Hope the above has clarified your misunderstandings regarding simple combination and probability theory





TheWill

Originally posted by TheWill
reply to post by tauristercus

 

No, identical mutations aren't expected to occur simultaneously in two separate organisms.

but

... the number of organisms within a system is VERY relevent when talking about the odds. One of them that receives a beneficial mutation in the germ line(and just so you know, most proteins are likely to have evolved in very rapidly-reproducing organisms, which produce hundreds or even thousands of babies at any one time, rather than slow reproducing tetrapods which rarely go over a couple of hundred in their lifetimes) would enjoy greater survival of their offspring which inherited the mutation, and so on and so on, until they outnumbered their conspecifics without the mutution, and were more likely to mate with a relative than a non-relative, until eventually the allele comes to fixation in the population.

Ok, I can see now that we're looking at this from 2 different points of view.

Your point of view, based on your above examples, is that you're essentially assuming that any mutation, as long as it doesn't prevent the owner from breeding successfully, will eventually become assimilated into the species genome. And this I tend to assume would apply to not only completely functioning proteins but also for nucleotide sequences that don't currently result in a functioning protein but with additional fortuitous mutations, potentially might result in a working protein somewhere in the future.

I however am looking at it from the point of view that even if there were millions of copies of partial (potential proteins of the future) nucleotide sequences, that still does not alter the fact that at best one and only one organism in its species will receive the final chunk of nucleotide sequence through random mutation to be capable of expressing that protein.
Only then will there be a possibility of passing on the complete working nucleotide sequence to its descendants and locking it into the species genome.

I'll try to make it clearer ... just in case I've confused everyone even more
Again, I'll be using my favourite protein, namely insulin.

Firstly, can we agree on a few of initial points ?
1. At some point in evolutionary history, insulin did not exist in any organism/specie.
2. There is very little chance whatsoever that a single mutation gave rise to the necessary (and correct) 153 nucleotide sequence in any organism.
3. That the insulin sequence was initially started, and then gradually added to, over evolutionary time.

Ok, let's assume that at some point in time an organism, gained through random mutations, say the 1st 20 correct nucleotide sequences.
This organism was a fast breeder and eventually this 20 sequence strand became established in the genome ... therefore many, many copies of this sequence will exist.

Now at this point, you'd think with so many copies, that nature would now have many more opportunities for additional random mutations of this sequence and that it would be so very much easier to complete the entire sequence and arrive at the insulin gene.

But here's the point that's been missed.

It makes no difference if there is just one copy of that 20 base sequence or millions of copies of that 20 base sequence. From a probability point of view, all these millions of copies are treated as essentially just ONE copy because the odds of a random mutation inserting the next correct nucleotide into position 21 of the sequence is IDENTICAL for each of those millions of copies.
Eventually, one of those copies may receive that correct 21st mutation at which point, every other 20 sequence is now redundant and we have now gone from millions of identical copies to just a single "enhanced" copy in just one individual organism.
Then the cycle starts again ... that single organism needs to breed profusely to establish the new 21 sequence strand into the genome ... one of those millions of descendant organisms will have to wait for additional mutations adding to that 21 sequence strand resulting in once more, just a single organism carrying the new sequence ... breeds ... etc ... etc ... etc

Therefore, if the odds of one of those organisms with the 1st 20 nucleotide sequence in place is say (just an example) 1 in 10^50 of acquiring the remaining 133 nucleotides in the correct sequence to make insulin ... then the exact same odds apply to every other organism that carries those same initial 20 nucleotides.
So 1 organism or 1 million organisms carrying the identical 20 sequence, the odds remain the same for each of them ... absolutely astronomical !

So from natures point of view, all the multiple copies are completely superfluous and the evolution of the insulin sequence from 1 nucleotide to the final 153 nucleotides, for all intents and purposes, only takes place in just one organism at a time. Just like pruning back every branch on a tree except one and then following the path of that one single branch as it develops over time whilst continuously pruning away any side side branches as they develop on that branch we're following.

reply to post by tgidkp


I'm the 1st to admit that there is a hell of a lot (and I do mean A LOT) that I don't know about many areas of knowledge, genetics included. And yes, I have taken your "many" suggestions onboard ... for which I do thank you

But having said that, I certainly consider myself more than knowledgeable in how to apply basic combination and probability theory to a very straightforward observation. You can deny the maths all you want and try to to sidestep or rationalize it away, but the fact remains staring us all squarely in the face.

At the absolute bottom is the plain and simple fact that mathematics clearly calculates for us a simple answer that gives us the probability of a certain occurrence that we're interested in, actually happening.

In this case, the number of ways of arranging the 4 nucleotides (A, C, G, T) in a VERY SPECIFIC SEQUENCE (disregarding for the moment degenerate alternatives) is a value of

0.25^153 to 1 AGAINST

All this time you've been attempting to come up with different reasons as to how nature pulled of this seemingly impossible stunt ... not just for insulin but for every other protein ever evolved ... which is fine and I have no problems with.
But not once have you addressed or even denied the mathematical implications or for that matter come right out and told me that the maths is incorrect and I have stuffed up the calculation somewhere.

In fact, is that what you are saying ? That the maths is invalid ?

Now again, I stress that I personally do NOT deny the fact that evolution happens but I do need solid, substantive and clearly logical reasons/explanations as to how nature managed to overcome this seemingly insurmountable barrier.

reply to post by tauristercus

Is that what you are saying ? That the maths is invalid?

No, the maths is inapplicable.

You've already had that explained a few times, and you're still playing about with probabilities.

Natural selection is not a random process, so why are you still tossing coins and shuffling cards?

reply to post by tauristercus

And the cumulative probability is 0.25^153 ... with the odds stacked astronomically AGAINST the correct 153 nucleotides being strung together in the required sequence somewhere in a chromosome.

Thats the probability of getting the whole sequence for the first time in just one completely random draw. Nothing else. Thats not evolution, which is sequential and includes natural selection. See the weasel applet.

You can imagine sequential evolution with selection like randomly mutating a string of 153 bases (which is initially random), but when the correct base appears in correct place, it no longer changes, subsequent mutation is its place is ignored (selection). Since there are 4 bases, correct base appears in a given place in average after 2 mutations. That means we need in average only 306 (!) beneficial and neutral mutations to get the sequence. (and on top of that, genetic code is degenerated, so many sequences correspond to one protein)

So the correct question would be: What is the probability that after for example 100 generations of population consisting of 10 000 strings, the wanted protein would be evolved, or very close to wanted sequence? Assuming every reproduction produces in average 1 mutation, we get 1 000 000 mutations, compared to 306 beneficial and neutral needed. The number of ignored detrimental ones in relative to beneficial and neutral ones increases as the sequence approaches the one we want, so its not that easy, but you get the picture. The probability would be really high.

Never use simple probability calculations when sequential and hereditary solution space sampling with selecting function is involved - evolutionary algorithms. Read something about them, its very cool stuff:
en.wikipedia.org...
www.talkorigins.org...

Sato et al. 2002 used genetic algorithms to design a concert hall with optimal acoustic properties, maximizing the sound quality for the audience, for the conductor, and for the musicians on stage. This task involves the simultaneous optimization of multiple variables. Beginning with a shoebox-shaped hall, the authors' GA produced two non-dominated solutions, both of which were described as "leaf-shaped" (p.526). The authors state that these solutions have proportions similar to Vienna's Grosser Musikvereinsaal, which is widely agreed to be one of the best - if not the best - concert hall in the world in terms of acoustic properties.

A field-programmable gate array, or FPGA for short, is a special type of circuit board with an array of logic cells, each of which can act as any type of logic gate, connected by flexible interlinks which can connect cells. Both of these functions are controlled by software, so merely by loading a special program into the board, it can be altered on the fly to perform the functions of any one of a vast variety of hardware devices.

Dr. Adrian Thompson has exploited this device, in conjunction with the principles of evolution, to produce a prototype voice-recognition circuit that can distinguish between and respond to spoken commands using only 37 logic gates - a task that would have been considered impossible for any human engineer. He generated random bit strings of 0s and 1s and used them as configurations for the FPGA, selecting the fittest individuals from each generation, reproducing and randomly mutating them, swapping sections of their code and passing them on to another round of selection. His goal was to evolve a device that could at first discriminate between tones of different frequencies (1 and 10 kilohertz), then distinguish between the spoken words "go" and "stop".

This aim was achieved within 3000 generations, but the success was even greater than had been anticipated. The evolved system uses far fewer cells than anything a human engineer could have designed, and it does not even need the most critical component of human-built systems - a clock. How does it work? Thompson has no idea, though he has traced the input signal through a complex arrangement of feedback loops within the evolved circuit. In fact, out of the 37 logic gates the final product uses, five of them are not even connected to the rest of the circuit in any way - yet if their power supply is removed, the circuit stops working. It seems that evolution has exploited some subtle electromagnetic effect of these cells to come up with its solution, yet the exact workings of the complex and intricate evolved structure remain a mystery (Davidson 1997).

Altshuler and Linden 1997 used a genetic algorithm to evolve wire antennas with pre-specified properties. The authors note that the design of such antennas is an imprecise process, starting with the desired properties and then determining the antenna's shape through "guesses.... intuition, experience, approximate equations or empirical studies" (p.50). This technique is time-consuming, often does not produce optimal results, and tends to work well only for relatively simple, symmetric designs. By contrast, in the genetic algorithm approach, the engineer specifies the antenna's electromagnetic properties, and the GA automatically synthesizes a matching configuration.

Altshuler and Linden used their GA to design a circularly polarized seven-segment antenna with hemispherical coverage; the result is shown to the left. Each individual in the GA consisted of a binary chromosome specifying the three-dimensional coordinates of each end of each wire. Fitness was evaluated by simulating each candidate according to an electromagnetic wiring code, and the best-of-run individual was then built and tested. The authors describe the shape of this antenna, which does not resemble traditional antennas and has no obvious symmetry, as "unusually weird" and "counter-intuitive" (p.52), yet it had a nearly uniform radiation pattern with high bandwidth both in simulation and in experimental testing, excellently matching the prior specification. The authors conclude that a genetic algorithm-based method for antenna design shows "remarkable promise". "...this new design procedure is capable of finding genetic antennas able to effectively solve difficult antenna problems, and it will be particularly useful in situations where existing designs are not adequat