Syamsu's Objection to Natural Selection...

I would disagree with this..clones vary from one another i.e. cloned cows have different coat color patterns even though they are genetically identical. There is stochastic variation in the development process that is purely environmental, not heritable, and not genetic. Epigenetic variation is heritable (in some cases) but can alter phenotype without genetic alteration.If you are referring to quantiative traits such as height..both genes and environment play a role though it is usually really hard to figure out which and to what extent the genes are involved whereas the environmental cues can be more obvious such as nutrition.

quote:

---

Told ya I was going to have to start picking fights with the evolutionists.

---

I would offer to remove 99% of my brain and believe anything Jerry Falwell says to further the debate by becoming the other side..but I think that it would hurt too much ...or is being a creationist painless i.e. ignorance is bliss? Sy should be able to answer that one...

quote:

---

Such as the location of particular spots on a calico cat? hmmm... not sure if this is an appropriate example. Pretend it is.

​

Lets say we clone such a cat. Lets clone about a thousand of them. We remove all the cats with white spots on their foreheads, and breed the rest. The frequency of white-spot-foreheadism will not have changed?

---

Acutally a better example would be fingerprints...they are determined by stochastic process which is why no two are the same...if a human clone is ever born it will not have the same fingerprints as the original copy..or whatever the hell you call the person who is cloned.In the cat example a range of coat color patterns should always emerge in unpredictable ways regardless of who you remove from the population...i.e. you can't select for the pattern you want.

quote:

---

Such as mutations in the developing embryo? Ok. That makes sense. hmmm.... but that would be genetic? And, depending on when the mutation occured, might be heritable-- but not always. That leave us with developmental weirdness caused by lead exposure, say? Wouldn't there be a genetic component to susceptibility to this sort of thing?

---

I was thinking more along the lines of Hox gene expression. Most of this is in gradients which give a cell positional information and tells it what to become and when. If this happens a little later or a the gradient is offset in any way, you will get phenotypic variation...this does not require an underlying genetic difference. I don't mean full scale mutations or dramatic developmental abnormalities but more like why I have a unique nose compared to my either of my parents...ok maybe that one is because I have landed on it a few times to often ...ultimately to get gene expression, proteins have to interact with each other and with DNA to drive RNA expression which then involves proteins and nucleic acids again...at each step their will be stochastic variation...the protein does not bind the gene promoter so well..expression is weaker on Tuesday's embryos than Wednesdays because of whatever in the environment...you will end up with phenotypic variation that is not heritable and not based on a sequence difference.

quote:

---

But unless it is the heritable type, the variantion would be irrelevant to evolution, yes? Ok. It is starting to make more sense.

---

Heritable epigenetic changes are selected for or against like plain old genetic differences. There are epigenetic diseases associated with screwed up imprinting like Prader-Willi and Angelmann syndromes...why imprinting even evolved in the first place is a fairly active area of research. But you are correct, if it not a heritable change, evolution won't do anything with it...but it could cause a phenotypic change without changing a single base of DNA...it is probably why a lot of cloned animals suffer from obesity and other developmental abnormalities...got the DNA right but the imprinting was wrong.

and when one generation later the one horse you looked at has not bred, has not left behind a single progeny behind and a different horse that is not the same has...then what was the point of looking at one horse?..you definition is so pathetic you are already having to interject other variant horses as "selective factors" while ignoring their relative fitness i.e. contribution to the next generation..LOL!...and you accuse schrafinator of spouting drivel..LOL!

yeah like those wild herds of parthenogenetic mustangs..hi ho salty

another source of random phenotypic variation is random X inactivation in females. A given cell during female embryogenesis will inactivate one or the other X chromosome...the process is random (though there are cases when there is skewed X inactivation). An example of profound consequence are heterozygous females who suffer from Deuchennes muscular dystrophy. Normally by having a normal copy of the gene and the mutated form is not enough to cause disease...however, if by chance more than 50% of the cells inactivate the good X chromosome (dont't know what the threshold is..it is also probably variable) the person will grow up suffering from muscular dystrophy though milder than full blown DMD....imagine a coat color gene on the X chromsome with two or more variants for the gene and the resultant coat color pattern...you could keep producing females generation after generation without producing the same coat color pattern...it would not be heritable.

quote:

---

When I said, in my original post, that the gazelles are different, I wasn't referring to clones that experienced environmental factors that resulted in morphological differences. I was referring to the actual, genetic differences between the gazelles. Even if those differences are small, they still exist and thus, selection works upon them.

---

I don't mean to nitpick but a lot of the variation is neutral and selection will not work upon it..it will drift to fixation or disappear by chance. The mitochondrial DNA reference for gazelles I posted is largely neutral mutation measures of genetic diversity...it is only surprising that there is so much among population diversity i.e. these guys have not gone through a genetic bottleneck and the populations are likely to be pretty old....now I will step back out and let you and Wounded King keep fighting

quote:

---

You should work up on theory, on the fundamentals of science let alone biology.

---

You should work on your logic skills and at the same time actually address the questions posed to you...otherwise you continue to look like a fool.

quote:

---

Yes you can apply selection to a single individual, you can even apply it to part of the life of an individual if you switch from looking at reproduction to looking at survival as the means of continuation.

---

Oh really, and what exactly is the heritable trait of survival that you are looking at selectively in this model? How is the representation of that phenotype/genotype increasing as a result of ignoring reproductive success?

quote:

---

In science you are constructing knowledge, it's a technical task, you should make decisions about the fundamentals of the theory, and not keep with vague notions like you have.

---

Oh really? That is very interesting for me as a scientist to hear what such a great wit as yourself has to say about science...thanks for the revelations and your clear concise accurate and responsive posts..where would we be without you..

quote:

---

That seems SO COMPLETELY USELESS to calculate comparitive reproductive success. It seems to me you only need to program reproduction as a consequence of some interaction with the environment, and mutation to make a model of Natural Selection.

---

..."some interaction with the environment" which YOU yourself have made a prerequisite of your demented ideas...and that some interaction is the selection on VARIANTS in the population that have more or less ability of spreading their phenotype/genotype to the next generation...you can't even keep your own stupid definintions consistent and have to add vague statements about "some envirnonment effects" etc....do you ever actually think about what you are typing or do you just post to be in opposition to what everyone else is saying?

quote:

---

You huff and puff about your authority as a scientist,

---

Versus the blather and drool of a fundie with not only zero authority, but no grasp of logic that is visible....personal attacks finished..now on to the rest

quote:

---

I present logical argument

---

You have not. You suggest that you can generate diversity without allowing for variation which is a logical fallacy. You have no explantion for how certain traits reach high frequency in the population because you claim there are no variable traits. When pressed, you introduce exactly the opposite of what you claim, that there are environmental factors (which you cannot describe) interacting with no variation (but somehow there is selection for something you cannot describe) which produces variation in success of traits. To sum it up your non-variant variants cannot achieve the outcome you predict without the environment selecting for certain variants. You merely attempt to assert that they did not vary i.e. stupid statements like gazelles don't vary, but in the end you require that they vary...and top it off by somehow associating differential reproduction of phenotypic/genotypic variants as somehow connected with social Darwinism....you are profoundly confused Sy....for yet another example...

quote:

---

You have no argument Mammuthus, no argument about how you invalidate the basic biology of looking at individual organisms by insisting on selection being comparitive to variants,

---

first...no I don't have anarugment about how I invalidate basic biology since I have not invalidated it...second, your fixation on the individual is amusing...so if you die without reproducing...or even if you do reproduce...do you think the H.sapiens will become extinct?..since you believe each individual is a population this is the fallacious but logical outcome of your pet idea.In any case, as Wounded King has pointed out, you have not presented a coherent or logical argument for me to rebut. You have continuously repeated fallacious statments that you cannot support and have failed to rebut a single post from anyone who has engaged you...on the other hand, it is pretty amusing

actually, there is a way to do this, in mice at least, with the Xce locusMol Cell. 2003 Mar;11(3):731-43. Related Articles, LinksXite, X-inactivation intergenic transcription elements that regulate the probability of choice.Ogawa Y, Lee JT.Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02114, USA.Allelic expression differences contribute to phenotypic variation. In X chromosome inactivation (XCI), unfavorable XCI ratios promote X-linked disease penetrance in females. During XCI, one X is randomly silenced by Xist. X chromosome choice is determined by asymmetric expression of Tsix whose antisense action represses Xist. Here, we discover a cis element in the mouse X-inactivation center that regulates Tsix. Xite harbors intergenic transcription start sites and DNaseI hypersensitive sites with allelic differences. At the onset of XCI, deleting Xite downregulates Tsix in cis and skews XCI ratios, suggesting that Xite promotes Tsix persistence on the active X. Truncating Xite RNA is inconsequential, indicating that Xite action does not require intact transcripts. We propose that allele-specific Xite action promotes Tsix asymmetry and generates X chromosome inequality. Therefore, Xite is a candidate for the Xce, the classical modifier of XCI ratios.There are Xce alleles that can dramatically skew X inactivation...however, this is usually seen when makes interspecific hybrids such as M. musculus x M. spretus F1s...

Hi WK,
I only brought up skewed X inactivation since I worked on it in a roundabout way long long ago...but I also realized that we were talking with Peter about a 50:50 chance developmental effect that is non heritable that a locus (still not defined yet) can skew the ratio and Xce alleles are heritable. However, I have not heard of this in cats..only mice. A heterozygous X linked coat color gene with skewed X activation would lead to a predominance of one color over the other...but it would still hold that you could not predict what the pattern is since it is only skewed..not 100%...and you could not pass your pattern on...

quote:

---

Competitive is when through reproducing the one causes the other not to reproduce.

---

And when competitive means through reproducing one produces 100 kids and the other 1 and the 100 kids produce 100 each and the 1 produces 1 for n generations? By your logic, if one variant reproduces then no other is able to which is not in line with reality.

quote:

---

Differential is a comparison of reproductionrates, it doesn't neccesarily result in anything.

---

No...it does not result in anything except the higher representation of a variant/allele (higher fitness) in a population...oops you cornered yourself into admitting there are selective differences in the population

Must be a full moon or something..Percy claims Sy wrote a coherent post??? Well, this one at least goes back to standard.Ok Sy...explain why a population has to be at carrying capacity for resource competition to occur.

Show specifically where Quetzal or Wounded King have created a complication for natural selection involving the concept of carrying capacity...the more your statements are challenged the shorter, more incoherent, and vague your posts are becoming.

you are projecting Sy...I asked you to point out specifically where Quetzal and WK were wrong and you belly ache about the fact that you don't know what you are talking about...tough..educate yourself.The carrying capacity debate started because both WK and Quetzal made fun of you for not understanding the concept...the issue that you avoided addressing completely wasfrom WK:

quote:

---

Well then show us a program which simulates natural selectipon with absoloutely no recourse to comparison. The articles aren't actually interpretation, they are written by the people who write the code and state the fundamentals fairly plainly. You might argue that the relevance of the simulations to how natural selection actually occurrs is open to interpretation, but unless you think they are lying I think we must assume the people who write the code know what parameters they used.
Did you look at the supplemental data on the PNAS site? That goes into more specifc details of the logic operations performed and the program setup. There is also further information here which also includes links to the avida program and the configuration files they ran on it. You can get the source code to Avida at sourceforge.

​

Can you explain the difference between your competitive and differential reproductive success. Suppose instead of the one shortest route you took the top five shortest and tried again, would that then be differential.

---

So now you have two pieces of homework 1) to show specifically where Quetzal is wrong 2) to address this post from WK.

You are projecting your insecurities on the rest of us.Could you now point out where Quetzal says that natural selection can only occur in a population at carrying capacity?Here is your answer to WK's post

quote:

---

As far as I can tell there could be a comparison in deriving the "computational merit" value, since otherwise there seems to be no reason to have a "computational merit" value. It's still not clear to me.
I have no clue it that would be comparitive or competitive.

​

regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

---

For someone who is so afraid that individuals are different and adamantly maintain such a stance in the face of logic and evidence claiming you have no clue is a bit of a lame answer...after having had time to reflect do you have a more coherent answer to WK's post?