Can mutation and selection increase information?

As I pointed out in another thread, the amoeba genome is a hundred times larger than the human genome. Which is more complex? You can't answer questions like that if you're going to avoid mathematics and information theory.And are answers to those questions meaningful when all that's important is whether an organism is well adapted to its environment? How would you mathematically measure how well adapted an organism is? If you could do that you could then compare level of adaptation to complexity or amount of information and see if there are any meaningful correlations.My guess is that there would be little correlation. Evolution is a random walk. Solutions to the adaptation problems faced by organisms in their environment are presented through allele frequency change and random mutation. Evolution makes do with what is available. How much genome an organism ended up with to achieve adaptation is probably random, though perhaps it may serve as a record of how much environmental change its ancestral species have passed through.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Typo.

I would agree that the production of tissues is what separates complex eukaryotes (animals, plants) from less complex species (protists, prokaryotes). It comes down to the evolution of switches in the genome that respond to chemicals released by neighboring cells. It is interesting to note that complex animals share some of the more important switches which are called homeobox genes.

Over 200 times in the case of Amoeba dubia.My conclusion is that size is not a good measure of information content. I have found that with books. You can't determine the value of the content by weighing a book or by doing a word count.

Just curious: How much junk DNA is there in that amoeba genome?

My conclusion is that the amoeba's genome is EXACTLY the size it needs to be for an amoeba. It containly precicely the correct amount (and value???) of informtion to be an amoeba.How much 'value' or 'information' do you think can you remove from an amoeba's genome before it's no longer viable?

You're still confusing information with meaning, and you still have accepted no way of measuring information (Gitt cannot measure information). Therefore your statements about information gain or loss are meaningless.--Percy

If you found the following sequence in a book, would you think that it contained information?MGDVEKGKKIFIMKCSQCHTVEKGGKHKTGPNLHGLFGRKTGQAPGYSYTAANKNKGIIW
GEDTLMEYLENPKKYIPGTKMIFVGIKKKEERADLIAYLKKATNE

Bsgra jung frrzf tvoorevfu vf npghnyyl dhvgr vasbezngvir. Vmalu doha zlltz npiilypzo pz hjabhssf xbpal pumvythapcl. Tkyjs bmfy xjjrx lnggjwnxm nx fhyzfqqd vznyj nsktwrfynaj.

Sfqfujujpo jt zpvs gsjfoe.--Qfsdz

Uif lfzxpse jt Qfsdz.

Uibu'mm ufbdi nf up vtf nz sfbm obnf.--Nyzaquml

Exactly. But still, no one has presented the working definition of information, how to recognize information or how to determine increase in information. In my example there are actually at least four significant, definable, detectable and applicable bits of information and your post added two more.

You're still confusing Shannon Information with Information. Shannon Information is only a metric for a message.
See Information - Wikipedia
Information is that which informs, so it will have meaning.

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A simple answer to my question would be most appreciated.