Can random mutations cause an increase in information in the genome?

Percy,I don't think you are even hinting at this but then again maybe you are, still I think there is a fit so I'll toss this out. We focus on the organism as the figure of interest but we need to keep in mind that organism is only part of a complex process of
organism/environment. Organisms can't exist independent of environments and they alter their environment and are envirnoment for other organisms.I don't know if this is the gaia hypothesis or what but it's ultimately one system and the earth system has been growing more complex and this complexity observes the laws of science as we begin to understand them so it's clearly a function of this universe.Now the prescientific religious thinkers didn't have a scientific conception of system theory and could imagination situations that violated much of what we now know can't be done.Like you I don't know what the term information plays in this. I just thought I'd point out to Garrett that it's just not organisms but the total environment that changes and that through various events and pressures "selects" for various mutations.lfen

Here's the definition on wikipedia:Macroevolution refers to evolution that occurs above the level of species. In contrast, microevolution refers to smaller evolutionary changes (generally described as changes in genotype frequencies) in populations.No, doing something you did before isn't an increase in information....usually just the opposite. Take Darwin's famous beetles as an example. He viewed the mutation that led to a loss of wings as advantageous, which it was, because they weren't swept off the tiny island into the ocean. In reality, they had a mutation which resulted in corruption of information in their DNA, which led to a loss of the ability to create wings. Degraded information led to an advantage. This is moving in the opposite direction of evolution.Another example would be antibiotic resistance. Bacteria develop resistence to antibiotics in many different ways, none of which include an increase in the specificity of the DNA. In some instances, natural selection of populations that are already resistant is the method. In other cases, the mutation will cause a defect in the bacteria's process of transporting the antibiotic into the cell. Of course this results in resistance because the antibiotic can no longer be correctly processed. Again, this is a degradation of an existing process and certainly not an increase in specified complexity within the genome.

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An explanation of cause is not a justification by reason.
C. S. Lewis

Right, but how is it that those individuals were already resistant?Via mutations that increased the information in their genes. For instance, the gene that encodes for a certain enzyme may be duplicated (a mutation), and then that duplicate may be altered. That altered enzyme might catalyze the breakdown of the antibiotic before it can interfere with the bacterium's life processes.That would be an information-increasing mutation. Two of them, actually.

I'm afraid your confusing size with complexity. Adding extra copies of the same information doesn't add any new meaning, just more instances of the same meaning.As to my quote, "Information is the product of a mental process, not a material one." The implication is that God put it there, not chance.Again, there is no contradiction. Information is real and exists in the physical world, yet is not a material process. This is plain to see really. MacBeth didn't write itself, a human did. The blueprints used to assemble a plane didn't come together naturally, rather a human designed them. Likewise, the blueprints of our bodies (the information content in our DNA) did not create itself but was designed. Although I'm sure you'd suggest that chimps could write MacBeth given enough time. I think given enough time chimps could create order (AB AB CD CD AB AC AC). But not specified complexity (To be or not to be...that is the question).

Garret: from the archives....To lift a post of my own from a different forum, where the canard of "no new information" is actually the subject of the thread, but the example is one of my favorites. I think of Hemoglobin C as sort of a "sickle-cell lite."
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Ref: Nature, vol 414, pp 305-308 (2001) - "Haemoglobin C protects against clinical Plasmodium falciparum malaria" , by D Modiano et al. It's not online, to my knowledge, except by paid subscription.
Normal human hemoglobin ("HbA") is coded for by DNA which reads, as the 16th through 18th positions of a certain gene, GAA. This codon tells a cell's protein factory to put the amino acid glutamate at the sixth spot along the peptide that will become the beta chain of your or my hemoglobin. However, in a large number of West Africans, particularly the Mossi of Burkina Faso, this speck of DNA reads AAA. The distribution of folks with this variant looks like a bull's-eye: lots of the gene in one area of Burkina Faso, and fewer and fewer people with it as you move away from that center. The distribution is consistent with the idea that one person had the mutation about a thousand years ago, and that it spread through his or her descendants since. (Most people weren't terribly mobile in that area until nearly modern times - at least until the slave trade started.)Now this DNA change alters that sixth amino acid on the beta chain of hemoglobin to lysine, making HbC. Most people with hemoglobin C never know it - some have mild anemia, gallstones, or spleen problems. But Modiano's paper documents that Mossi children that have both genes for HbC are 7% as likely to develop malaria as their classmates who have boring old HbA. 7% as likely to get the disease that kills a couple of million kids in West Africa every year. And that's because their genome has the information to make a protein that has one amino acid that's different from the one in their neighbors, and in their ancestors, too, if you go back a ways. New information. Useful new information. (You will agree that being able to make two different proteins is "more information" than being able to make only one, won't you? Kids in the study that had the AC genotype - that had both HbA and HbC in their blood - had a 29% reduction in their chance of getting malaria.) New, useful, "information" from a mutation.Now a footnote: if your DNA reads GUA instead of GAA in this position, you get a valine in position 6 and have sickle-cell trait - the result of a different mutated hemoglobin called HbS. This protects against malaria, too, but the side effects can be severe, including fatal, especially if you have both genes for HbS. This, too, is "new information" - a different protein is being made.
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Comments?

It's not just extra copies of the same information. It's an extra copy of the same information that is then changed to different information.Where before you had one gene, now you have two different ones. If that's not an increase in information then your concept of "information" has no relevance to biology, and isn't necessary for the development of new species and functions. The problem is that the specificity exists in our minds and not in the physical world. A cloud that looks like Abraham Lincoln has a considerable degree of specificity - not too many clouds look like Abraham Lincoln - but that specificity is not a function of any part of the cloud, but of our intellect and our perception of the world. The cloud is perfectly content to either look like Lincoln or not. Likewise, DNA is perfectly functional regardless of how specified we choose to percieve it. Indeed, nearly half of all randomly-generated polypeptides exhibit some degree of metabolic function; at that density, it's possible to travel from any one functional protein to any other through a successive series of amino substitutions, deletions, or additions that result in the intermediate step still exhibiting some useful function.Because proteins do not exhibit specificity, and DNA does little but encode proteins, there's no requirement that DNA be considered to have any specified complexity whatsoever.

I'm wondering if you could help us out with specified complexity.

quote:

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Macroevolution refers to evolution that occurs above the level of species. In contrast, microevolution refers to smaller evolutionary changes (generally described as changes in genotype frequencies) in populations.

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What is the specified complexity of that definition?

quote:

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Znpebribyhgvba ersref gb ribyhgvba gung bpphef nobir gur yriry bs fcrpvrf. Va pbagenfg, zvpebribyhgvba ersref gb fznyyre ribyhgvbanel punatrf (trarenyyl qrfpevorq nf punatrf va trabglcr serdhrapvrf) va cbchyngvbaf.

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What is the specified complexity of that, equally long string of characters? How does that all measure up to a bad german translation:

quote:

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Macroevolution bezieht sich auf Entwicklung, die ber dem Niveau der Sorte auftritt. Demgegenber bezieht sich mikroevolution auf die kleineren Entwicklungsnderungen (im Allgemeinen beschrieben als nderungen in den Genotypusfrequenzen) in den Bevlkerungen

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More specified? Less complex? You tell us! If your ideas on complexity are right, then it would be a great demonstration of or falsification for evolution.

I suggest you check out Message 13, which describes how information easily increases through replication errors. A corruption of information is not the same as a loss of information. This might seem counterintuitive, but information theory isn't about meaning, it's about information, which it measures as the sum of possible messages that might be sent. It doesn't matter if the messages are meaningless - from an information theory perspective, all messages are without meaning. Or, as Shannon put it in his landmark paper, "Frequently the messages have meaning; that is they refer to or are correlated according to some system with certain physical or conceptual entities. These semantic aspects of communication are irrelevant to the engineering problem."If the change in the beetle's DNA was removal of an allele or even of an entire gene for wings, then the information in the population has declined. But if the change was the addition of an allele or gene that turns off or otherwise prevents growth of wings, then information has increased. Has research uncovered which it is? If by "increase in the specificity" you mean "increase in information", then this would be incorrect. Any mutation which adds an allele to the bacteria population's gene pool is an addition of information. This is a commonplace event during reproduction.--Percy

This is a definition of "macroevolution," not a definition of the "macro level" term that was brought up. Incorrect. Evolution does not have a set direction. Loss of features through mutation and natural selection is an example of evolution.This message has been edited by Belfry, 02-14-2006 11:19 AM

Garret, there is a formal, mathematical definition of "information" already widely used. Percy has refered to it in his calculations.Since it seems you are NOT refering to that term you may NOT use it any more. Please supply a clear term for what you are referring to and a clear definition of what you are referring to so that the same kind of calculations that Percy did can be done.Let's call it "Garrett Information" -- GI. That'll keep it clear what is being discussed in this thread.Now you can take Percy's simplied, few allele example and calculate the GI of both cases. Thanks. ( see Message 13 )This message has been edited by NosyNed, 02-14-2006 11:21 AM

I know you don't understand my point...no need for clarification there.In addition, I don't think you even understand the creationist position, but that again would be another topic.I don't refute the fact that great complexity exists in the universe...in fact my view would require it. Also, I wouldn't disparage the idea of "natural selection" which you refer to. Of course this happens...it is observable science. What isn't observable science is that a mutation would give a frog the information needed to generate an opposable thumb. No matter how many successive mutatations you put the poor chap through, he's still a frog. Granted, he may be awful weird looking at the end. It's evolutionary thought that promotes the fairly tell that a frog can become a prince.As for religious thinkers violating the laws of science with their theories...I think we have a serious Pot/Kettle relationship going on here. Try these on for size:The Law of Cause and Effect (What was the first cause again?)The Law of Biogenesis (rats surely come from trash right?)The Law of Inertia (what was the outside force that triggered movement?)The Law of Angular Momentum (how did the universe settle into orbital patterns or condense into lumps with no outside force?)The Law of Probability (the probability of just 1 specific protein arising by chance has been figured at 10 to the power of 520. And that is just for one protien. The number of atoms needed to completely fill the universe is 10 to the power of 130)Not to mention the problems in the area of thermodynamics.

WARNING!!
A SENTENCE WITH INDETERMINATE MEANING. We don't know what "information" is yet.If you don't define what you are talking about you are talking gibberish.Since it is clear that the genetic differences between a frog and our selves can arise from selected mutations and that the real "information" differences in the genomes can be suppled by mutations your sentence (with the only definitions we have available) is WRONG.The rest of your post is ALL off topic. Please stick to the topic -- it is after all yours. They have been discussed at one time or another in other threads. But don't take on more than you can chew on for now.This message has been edited by NosyNed, 02-14-2006 11:30 AM

Not to get into a whole 'nother debate, but the creation/evolution controversy developed out of attempts by the evangelical community to gain representation for their views in science classes by crafting laws and by lobbying boards of education and publishers of textbooks. It was successfully argued that only science should be taught in science class, and so the evangelical community over a period of decades developed increasingly sophisticated science-like scenarios that never mention God or a creator. The necessity for removing God from creation science was recognized early on.So I'm surprised to see you mention God. Almost all IDists argue that the designer is unknown but stress that he is not supernatural. Thus, your approach seems to lose the argument for you outright since it's a concession that you're not doing science but religion.--Percy

I'd like to echo NosyNed's comments in Message 27 and suggest that you restrict yourself to the topic of your thread, the possibility of increases in genetic information.--Percy

I'd say macro-level is refering to those activities occurring at the level of macroevolution. ;-)You do agree that DNA contains the genetic instructions needed for the biological development of all cellular forms of life, right?If you simply define evolution as change, then the loss of information needed to build a certain feature surely is evolution. The problem is that is not an intellectually honest definition of evolution. Unless the instructions were present in the first simple celled organism that were needed for the biological development of all life forms to come, then extra info would be needed along the way.Are you suggesting that all of the instructions were there from the beginning?