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

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.

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.

That doesn't make any sense. Individuals always are part of a species. Therfore any mutation - since mutations always occur in individuals - is within the "species level." The theory of evolution proposes that all living things on Earth are the decendants, via successive events of speciation, of one population of organisms. If you accept speciation within "microevolution", then the entire evolutionary history of life needs be considered nothing more than successive microevolutionary change. There's no need to substantiate "macroevolution" because macroevolution has just been defined as something that need not ever occur for all species to be the ultimate decendants of a single organism.You've both destroyed your own argument and proved why the micro-macro terms are essentially devoiud of meaning and best abandoned by serious biologists.

So, you don't accept randomness. Why not just come out and say that? How about pseudorandomness, like the random numbers generated by a computer? Can you accept that?Would it satisfy you if we said that mutations were pseudorandom? Except that we detect that mutations are randomly distributed. Pseudorandomly, at least. (Pseudorandom numbers, for instance, would be strings of numbers that are deterministically generated but statistically indeterminable from a truly random sequence. By definition there's no way to distinguish a random sequence from a pseudorandom one after the fact.)

Nondetermined. Given a specific situation, a random outcome is one not absolutely determinable from the initial conditions. I.e. a coin toss, rolling dice, the roulette wheel, etc.Now, I know you've produced research before about how certain sites are more likely to mutate than others; that's not really significant. Random doesn't imply that all outcomes are equally probable. Roll two 6-sided dice and you're more likely to roll a 7 than a 12; that doesn't mean that two dice aren't a random test.Pseudorandomness would be the phenomenon where deterministic formulas create sequences or outcomes that are statistically indeterminable from random ones; this is how computers generate "random" numbers, for instance. If you knew the random function of your computer, and the initial state it used as input, you could easily predict its outcome. One major function of cryptography - which relies heavily on random numbers - is disguising this fact and concealing these formulas. They're very closely guarded trade secrets.

deletedThis message has been edited by crashfrog, 02-14-2006 07:14 PM

Can I take a shot? I'm not convinced that the concept itself is entirely without merit. Or perhaps a better term is more appropriate for what I'm about to describe.If you could imagine an outcome space, where each different way to do something - in this case, each way to arrange DNA base pairs for polypeptide synthesis - were linked in such a way that you could travel from one to another by one "step", where a step was a change of one element, specified complexity might be considered to be the degree to which a sequence that actually did something was surrounded by sequences that did nothing. The farther apart each little "island" of function would be seperated on a sea of nonfuction, the more specificity each island represents.But it turns out that:

quote:

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One of the most surprising discoveries which has arisen from DNA sequencing has been the remarkable finding that the genomes of all organisms are clustered very close together in a tiny region of DNA sequence space forming a tree of related sequences that can all be interconverted via a series of tiny incremental natural steps.

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and

quote:

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at this density all functional sequences are connected by single amino acid changes.

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So, the specificity of DNA doesn't to me appear to be that high. Functional protein sequences are clustered very tightly together and it's very easy indeed to get from any one to any other through a series of small, functional steps.(cites from CB150: Functional genetic sequences changing

Oh, hell if I know. Presumably there's some kind of topological analysis you could perform on the n-dimensional sequence space and find some way to describe how seperate each functional island would be. I certainly don't have the math to do it. The Yockey paper in my cite would seem to indicate that the number would be 0; in other words, there's no separation. No specificity. If you'll scroll back you'll see I haven't. What I deleted was a redundant reply to Garret about hemoglobin C, which Coragyps is defending admirably by himself. Reconsidered at the last minute.

I don't think you understood my definition. Is one die not random if you can't roll a 7? Of course something can be random within a range of possible outcomes; that's the basis of probability, statistics, and gambling. Unless there's only one possible outcome, it's random. We might express the probability of one outcome over another but the actual outcome, which must be one of the many possibilities, is random.You flip a balanced coin. You roll an unweighted die. I can tell you the probability of each possible outcome but nobody would reasonably suggest that these events are not random. Your concept of "random" is drastically at odds with mathematics, probability, and even simple common sense.

Dude, you don't even need to roll it. You can determine the probabilities from simple inspection of the die.You look at a 6-sided die. (I hate to sound redundant, but anybody with a Monster Manual knows that they come with a lot more sides than that.) Each of six sides is equally likely.You're about to roll it. What will you get? There's absolutely no one on Earth who can tell you. The outcome is random.

Each roll is random. Each mutation is random.Dice rolls are therefore random; mutations are therefore random. Your definition of "random", if you even have one, is staggeringly at odds with mathematics and common sense.

I think we all agree on what "random" means, because we've all had basic statistics classes. Not sure what your problem is. It's hard to believe that a person could graduate high school in the United States and not have a familiarity with basic probability. No, it's actually not. Just because you roll one dice a thousand times and you get close to a pattern, doesn't mean that the dice were guided. Each roll was random. Rolling dice is random, by definition.Mutations are random because each mutation is random. The fact that you can develop a statistical pattern in some cases doesn't mean they're not random. Seriously, Rand. This is textbook stuff. You're way out of the mainstream about what "random" means.

Dice rolling is random. If we can't agree on that, at least, we're not even speaking the same language.Until you're committed to speaking English in these discussions no debate with you is possible. If you insist on your own private definitions of words then it's simply not possible to speak to you.Come back and find me when you're willing to speak the same language as the rest of us.

If contiingency explains complexity, and natural law explains specificity, then why is the explanation for specified complexity supposed to be "intelligent design" and not contingent natural laws?

What makes you think you can't go from the bottom to the top this way? Like I said, there's almost no biological novelty. Every biological function is the side effect of an old function. Every single one.I don't see the need for all this novelty you claim is required. Oh, well, I'm glad we need nothing more than your subjective opinions about "complexity" to dismiss the single most successful model in the history of biology. Oh, wait.