An Increase in Information

Presenting ribozyme evolution experiments as positive evidence that mutations can increase information.

A random sequence was added to a functioning ribozyme. This caused the ribozyme to lose function. It was then put under selective presure to evolve further function, overtaking the original ribozyme in catalytic activity.

This is proof of the ability of evolution to create order and function.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid=...

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• ribozyme
• evolution
• creationism
• creationist
• increase
• information
• science
• biology
• biological
• function
• theory
• genetics

[kewltony]

1337 views

[gamesbok]

'Evolution of Biological Information'

Dr Thomas D. Schneider

Neuclaic Acid Research

2000, Vol 28, n0 14.

[EvoBiologist]

When genes are duplicated, they make copies of the protein nearly twice as fast. This means the product of any reaction catalyzed by that protein is made almost twice as quickly. The product then triggers the downregulation of expression of the gene.  However, if the copy mutates enough, it will catalyze a different reaction, and thus gene regulation will normalize to it's original one-copy rate.

Examine any gene family and you will see the signals of common descent and new information.

[spark300c]

how ever Dr Standford wrote in his book that gene duplication reduces expression of the gene. Also gene regulation is effected. the rate of gene duplication, as far as I know that beneficial gene duplications extremely rare. Even more rare than non gene duplication beneficial mutation. the size of genome. The section pressure. These topics have to be address.

[EvoBiologist]

Interestingly enough, basic body plans don't have to change much. Worms are not very different from invertebrate chordates, which have the same basic body plan as all vertebrates.

[EvoBiologist]

Gene duplication followed by mutation of the duplicated gene. Voila! New information! PLENTY of peer reviewed papers showing that it happens all the time. All genes form gene families, providing evidence that most information in DNA is made this way.

[EvoBiologist]

Actually, there is ample evidence to suggest that gene duplication solves this problem. Genes form gene families where individuals can do very different things.

A gene adapted to do one thing is duplicated. If that duplicated gene gets a mutation that makes it better than the original gene at binding to something new, now matter how weakly, then as you admitted, natural selection is "able to optimise that weakly performing simple function, towards being a high performance simple function."

[MrKrov]

Nylonase: frameshift mutation. Science: it works, bitches!

[tubewatch59]

"The claims of organisms being created to evolve are nothing more than ways to dismiss observed evolution."

In the newish book 'The Plausibility of Life' the authors argue that life, after having evolved the fundamental processes of cellular machinery, and the right kinds of control networks with 'weak linkages' are then all set up to evolve. The problem is: where did these gene control networks and the cellular machinery come from? And does it really allow evolution across basic bodyplans?

[tubewatch59]

It doesn't really matter to me whether you agree with that or not because it's all pretty uncontroversial.

What is uncontroversial is that you cannot expect to easily get sophisticated functionality in a small number of steps. You can't evolve this kind of thing by Darwinian means unless these functions already exist. Before they exist, they don't exist!! To get them, you need poorly working versions first, to then refine, but we don't have that! Blind search is the only option!

Time!!!