Understanding Gene Duplication

Do you understand gene duplication? Jonathan Wells, fellow at the Discovery Institute, thought he did. Turns out he didn't. But thanks for the analogy, Jon, I think it goes a long way.

Here's the blog post version of this video - it's much less... ramble-y, I assure you: http://www.naontiotami.com/?p=871

For more skepticism and youth-related things, feel free to check out two of my other websites, http://naontiotami.com (my personal evolution/creation-themed blog) and http://youngausskeptics.com (the Young Australian Skeptics, home of the Pseudo Scientists podcast).

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• intelligent
• design
• skepticism
• science
• skeptical
• creationism
• evolution
• discovery
• institute
• gene
• duplication
• genet

[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.

[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. ;)

[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...

[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.

[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 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]

@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.

[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 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.

[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)