The origin of new genes

What colour are your wife's eyes?In what way are those definitions of genome 'diametrical', no.2 seem to encompass no.1 provided one is prepared to allow that viruses are organisms.No.1 will allow one to discuss subsets of a full human genome such as the haploid genomes of sperm and egg cells. This is by no means clear, we would have to know exactly what mutation was present in your child and whether or not it was already present in the gene pool. If it wasn't then you would have at least a novel genetic, if not phenotypic, allele.TTFN,WK

Are you saying that there are theoretical functional intermediate variants of 1 amino acid change steps between all functional proteins or that there are actual extant functional proteins which all differ by only 1 amino acid?I assume you mean the former, but it wasn't entirely clear.TTFN,WK

Um, no. Did anyone ever say they did? I think you'll find that as soon as pharyngeal slits appeared in proto-chordates they were gill slits. Over time some vertebrate phyla developed which no longer required the gill slits for respiration although they are still sometimes inaccurately referred to as gill slits or branchial slits, even though they aren't associated with gills anymore and are not necessarily ever true slits, many structures which develop from the surrounding pharyngeal arches were retained and modified. The odds are probably higher than of you ever making a post which accurately represents any aspect of evolutionary biology. You still seem to have no idea what evolutionary theory posits, no wonder you think it is a fairy tale, the version of it you are familiar with is but it was one made up by creationists.TTFN,WKP.S. How complex is a slit? Seriously. Some of the accessory structures may be complex but a slit itself is probably about as uncomplex a structure as you can come across.Edited by Wounded King, : No reason given.

I can't imagine you are likely to get much of a response for a post from 4 years ago, but who knows, maybe in another 4 years jerker77 will come by and respond.TTFN,WK

I'm 100% behind the general thrust of your post but I think that at least in the case of the myostatin mutation it is a bit early to say whether that is a beneficial mutation or not.Certainly similar mutations are considered desirable when they have arisen in sheep and cows, but that is a matter of our own preference in selecting animals which will produce leaner meat or more of particular cuts. Whether this would be a beneficial mutation in the wild is another matter since myostatin mutations have also been linked to reduced fertility and calving difficulty in cattle.Similarly tetrachromacy is a fascinating phenomenon, and it is easy to see how better colour discrimination could be beneficial in an everyday sense, but isn't necessarily an evolutionarily beneficial mutation, i.e. one that improves reproductive success.TTFN,WK