How Evolution Monkeys with Duplicate Genes

Academic Press Daily InScight ^ | March 5, 2002 | Ben Shouse

[Physicist]

A common creationist canard is the insistence that there is no mechanism by which new genes can arise through natural selection. Here is one mechanism by which that occurs.

[Physicist]

Any of you folks have a comprehensive bump list?

[general_re]

Like so? ;)

[general_re]

lists

[Physicist]

Others credit the lack of negative selection; because the new gene is redundant, it is free to mutate until it finds a new job.

I would say that because the genes are redundant, either is free to mutate (in the first step). It doesn't matter which one changes at first; this doubles the chance that the first step will be in a helpful direction.

[f.Christian]

Evolution and blimps never went anywhere---remember the hindenberger-darwin kaput-bust!

[PatrickHenry]

Ping.

[f.Christian]

Exlax--enema(physics?) is more like it--blocked brain-colon!

[general_re]

Too bad Christmas has passed, but when's your birthday? I think I'm gonna shell out a couple of bucks and buy you a copy of "Elements of Style"....

[Physicist]

remember the hindenberger-darwin kaput-bust!

lakehurst--flames/death--natural selection...helium modification/change--goodyear: evolution!!1!

[f.Christian]

...diarrhea-evolution too!

[f.Christian]

From the evolution outhouse--methane-sewer gas(match?)!

[f.Christian]

Welcome!

Free Republic is an online gathering place for independent, grass-roots conservatism on the web. We're working to roll back decades of governmental largesse, to root out political fraud and corruption, and to champion causes which further conservatism in America. And we always have fun doing it. Hoo-yah!

[general_re]

[DaveyB]

You have first assume evolution then seek mechanisms. That is a belief based approach - you know like a religion.

[TXFireman]

It doen't really talk about the mechanism of how an extra copy jean arises. It just says they pop up spontaneously.

[mlo]

Reason furthers conservatism.

[f.Christian]

Any ol reason...plant--animal--mineral--liberal??

[HiTech RedNeck]

True so true. This screed does nothing to suggest how such a copy of an existing gene could so frequently get into the right place and so seldom get into the wrong place, other than the old canard of blind chance. We are being asked to believe that genes that hop around frenetically enough to create a significant number of new developments like this, are not at the same time throwing a vastly worse monkey wrench (pardon the pun) into overall survival, with not just serious but also cumulative damage. If I copy words around randomly within a document, I am far more likely to produce nonsense than I am to create something new that makes sense.

[Neuromancer]

I might add that "microdeletions" are also an important part of the evolutionary mix.

I have been following Dr.Karayiorgou's work with chromosome 22 and schizophrenia, where Karayiorgou and her colleagues "favor proline as the culprit" for schizophrenia.

"Earlier studies have shown that between 25 percent and 30 percent of people with certain errors on a narrow region of chromosome 22 develop schizophrenia in adolescence or adulthood. The flaws, called "microdeletions," are also rampant in the rare cases of children who develop the disease."