Understanding Gene Duplication

[skocijan]

To 1truth55 and inkling43... non-affecting mutations ('silent mutations' - which have no effect) and 'mistakes' (deleterious mutations) are constantly made... that's what often leads to miscarriage and genetic diseases... so you're right in saying the chance of there being a 'successful' mutation (one that leads to a new & advantageous function) is low but thats what happens when you create an organism and give it a few billion years to procreate. eventually, by chance, we get to where we are

[1truth55]

a protein is a lot more than 30 base pairs long, I think it's more like 300 for a small gene. And a protein's function is basically dependant on all of the base pairs being in the correct order. If you mutate one or more base pairs you don't automatically have a new functioning protein. And even if you do get a new functioning protein there is no garantee it will benefit it's cell.

[inkling43]

"Fortuitously" for you, house and mouse are one character apart. So your straw man example is evidence FOR intelligent design, not against it. "Nature" would have to make the "right" choice among 28*X20 = 560 possible choices with no mistakes along the way to come up with your "new information." *28 because space and period are also necessary parts of the game you are playing. I don't think that DNA molecules are quite so convenient for you. 8-)

[katmariebokon]

Yup...What I do not understand is how this information is not latent within the specific genome to begin with, regardless of whether or not it is expressed.

[katmariebokon]

I don't understand. The entire genetic sequence is not represented by a single gene. Perhaps if it was, your analogy would make sense to me. The m came from somewhere. Let's assume the alphabet represented the entire genome. If this is the case, no knew information is produced at all, but only a shuffling or recombination of latent genetic information. What am I not understanding here?

[NaoTio]

@katmariebokon Genes can undergo extensive changes once they are duplicated. Point mutations, like I showed in the video, are only one type of change. Pieces can be deleted, duplicated genes can merge, internal segments can be duplicated, moved around... until the gene looks nothing like it once did.

[katmariebokon]

@NaoTio Okay, fair enough. To continue with your analogy though, the alphabet has been sequenced in so many ways, giving rise to innumerable messages. This doesn't change the fact that the alphabet is still the alphabet and it doesn't change the fact that all the information contained in every one of those messages was really just unexpressed information encoded in the alphabet. This isn't a challenge, I'm really just trying to understand how this all works!!

[assalane]

@katmariebokon I will try to explain. There are 21 amino acid (aa) that can produce one protein. Not all of them have to be used but the number of amino acid on 1 protein does not have a hard limit. it can be 2 aa or an infinite number of aa. Now protein are like meaning of information because the number of aa and their arangement is paramount to their 3D function. In the DNA what code for the position of a aa on a protein are a sequence of 3 nucleotides. (continue in next comment)

[assalane]

@katmariebokon Finaly EVERY combination of word between the word begin and the word end have a meaning. That means that like there is no limit in the number of sentence one can make by putting random word to make a sentence, there is no limit the limited code of a gene can produce an infinite amount of differente kind of proteins.

[katmariebokon]

@assalane And what percentage of these mutations produced randomly actually code for a trait that leads to an advantageous function (or at the very least one that is not deleterious), observably?

[assalane]

@katmariebokon it depends. Or I should say it is not important. A better question would be to ask: how much time is needed after an environmental change before the subject can adapt. It is usually measured in generations. Because the mutation that counts, deleterious or not, are those that are transmitted. I can't give you an exact figure, but you can google for example the passage from a single cell organism to a multicellular one. I think it took under 1000 generation or so in the lab.

[assalane]

@katmariebokon 2nd part. The important thing to understand, is, evolution is NOT a random process, as it is driven by natural selection, and that it is gradual. Gene mutation is of course random, but only those that make the right step are preserved. take for example this serie of number: 12345678. the probability for this sequence to appear is 1 over 43 046 721. Imagine now that the environment *want* this sequence. so that when one figure appear it is preserved. (continue next and last)

[assalane]

for a 1 to appear first in the beginning of this sequence is 1 over 10. This figure doesn't change in the next generation, so their are only 7 figure left. then the probability that a 6 appear in the 6th position is also 1 over 10. etc... so in the end it will take on average log(10*8) generations for it to reach this sequence. That's only 5 generations! for an odd of 1 over 43 046 721. That's mind boggling isn't it? Of course this is an oversimplified example. watch?v=M2SVMKZhV2g

[assalane]

@katmariebokon Actually scrap the 5 generations only. I just made a simulation and it seams like 24.5 generations on average are needed to reach the target sequence. I may be rusty on my probabilities because I don't understand why is that. PM me if you want more informations.

[solobackpacking]

I am familiar with both information science (basically a part of computer science) and biology.

I am not familiar with this man, but gene duplication inherently has a load limit, a limit in diversity.

I think you may have taken a overly simplistic meaning of what he was trying to say.

[unicorn2010]

You might want to metion Retrotransposition and Unequal crossing over which are two processes that most duplications result from .

[cursedu]

ty i acutally learned something from you this will help me on my bio exam :D

[jdbadboy]

Creationists love their analogies. What they fail to grasp is that the best analogy only illustrates the point you are trying to make. They don't prove anything. They can't take the place of research and facts.

[OnTheFritz602]

Creationists love analogies, until you counter with one that obliterates their attempt to *prove* something.

Then they poo-poo it and say it doesn't mean anything!

[mathmexican4234]

I think theists just keep switching between ambiguous definitions of 'information' to fit whatever point they want to make, even though any analysis will show they are full of crap. Yeah anywho.

[sweetsweethickory]

Let's get married.

[BrisOwnWorld]

KELLI!

It's creepy that I'm not surprised by this comment.

[intelligentfalling]

Wells MUST know this. This is pretty basic genetics. He's just lying for Korean Jesus.

Good analogy though :-)

[dave28lax]

Nice. Or to put it another way, duplicated genes are free to mutate independently from the original gene, and that mutation creates new information.

[Saukko31]

Simple and easy to understand, not that creationists will get it, otherwise, they wouldn't be creationists. ;)

[samten54]

I have a granddaughter doing year 12 in Melbourne. Are you doing year 12? If so you would have sat your English exam today. How can you do a 3 hour English exam and put up a video in the same day? If you did that you brilliant.

[NaoTio]

Haha, I do English Language instead of English, so my exam is on the 4th of November. Very astute though. ;)

[samten54]

OK but I still think you are brilliant.

All the best in the exams...

[Arcofdarkness]

Greetings, Monsieur Scanlan! You've finally started making vids again... Long gone are the days of VFX, yet you continue to make insightful videos. =]

[eddygoombah]

welcome back!

[NaoTio]

Thanks! Exams in a few weeks, but after that, I should be making a lot more videos. :) I've been meaning to tackle Cornelius Hunter, Discovery Institute fellow, in video form for a while now...