Mutation
From CreationWiki, the encyclopedia of creation science
A mutation is any spontaneous heritable change in DNA sequence resulting from 2 possible mechanisms.
- Cellular accidents during processes like replication, recombination, or transposition.
- Exposures to foreign mutagens, such as chemicals or ultra violet rays.
If even one of the nucleotides in a gene is changed to another, then a new variation of the allele has been added to the population, and a different amino acid may be assembled into the protein during gene expression.
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Types of Mutations
Mutations are classified as harmful, beneficial, or neutral.
- Harmful - spontaneous changes to genes will render proteins dysfunctional, and can lead to physical deformation, cancer, or death.
- Beneficial - mutations that produce some benefit can theoretically happen even through the destruction of the protein.
- Neutral - mutation where there is no effect (also known as a silent mutation). A neutral mutation either results in a codon that is translated into the same amino acid during gene expression, or the substituted amino acid has no effect on protein function. The following table shows several codons that are each translated into the same amino acid. In each case, the 3rd nucleotide in the codon would be a neutral mutation if changed.
| Amino Acid | Serine | Leucine | Proline | Arginine | Threonine |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Codon | TCT | CTT | CCT | CGT | ACT |
| Codon | TCC | CTC | CCC | CGT | ACC |
| Codon | TCA | CTA | CCA | CGT | ACA |
| Codon | TCG | CTG | CCG | CGT | ACG |
Mutations and Evolution
It is clear that new gene alleles are accumulating in populations today, but there are two possible sources for these changes; mutations, and intentional changes introduced by genetic recombination. The theory of evolution attributes the continued production of genetic diversity to mutations, but evolutionists overlook the fact that the cell was intelligently designed. The cellular machinery was programmed to perform a level of self genetic engineering, and is editing genes systematically so that organisms can adapt to a wide variety of environmental conditions.
Evolutionists contend that mutation, acted upon by natural selection is the mechanism for evolutionary advancement. There are many examples put forward by evolutionary biologists that attempt to show how new genes have been introduced to the genome of an organism. However the new information that is contained in the organism, can be seen in virtually all cases as coming from pre-existing genes already present or what can be defined as built-in plasticity or variation within originally created kinds of animals. Merely shuffling of pre-existing genes within evolutionary thought is woefully inadequate to explain the massive change of molecules-to-man. Especially when in most examples it is often unknown what process is actually responsible for the creation of this new genetic material.
Despite the few examples of genetic mutations that increase the information in the genome, it is unrealistic to assume that this information would assemble in the first place because there would be no genetic information for mutations to act upon. New beneficial types of structures and functions not already resident in the gene pool of the species are highly unlikely through the process of mutation. This is to say that mutations are not a reasonable means of producing cascading morphological change and to suggest that the evidence would support the neodarwinian mechanism is unfounded.
Mutations reduce rather then increase information
Obviously mutations can indeed cause dramatic changes. Many experiments have been performed on fruit flies (Drosophila) where poisons and radiation induced mutations. However, the problem is that they are always deleterious. The Drosophila experiments showed an extra pair of wings on a fly, but these were a hindrance to flying because there are no accompanying muscles. Therefore, these flies would be eliminated by natural selection. Even in the case of mutations which can change the amount of DNA possessed by an organism, an increase in the amount of DNA does not result in increased function. Biophysicist Dr. Lee Spetner in his book, Not by Chance: Shattering the Modern Theory of Evolution, analyzed examples of mutational changes that evolutionists claimed were increases in information, and demonstrated that they were actually examples of loss of specificity, meaning loss of information.
| “ | In all the reading I've done in the life-sciences literature, I've never found a mutation that added information. … All point mutations that have been studied on the molecular level turn out to reduce the genetic information and not increase it." - Spetner | ” |
Beneficial effect of mutations is dangerous
This is not to invalidate beneficial mutations by any means, what is merely trying to be emphasized is the essence of mutational change is degradation of the genome as time goes on. Recently as of April of 2007, such findings have been clearly observed in many instances. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) had published within it an online paper. The definate conclusion implied is that when beneficial mutations begin to accumulate, natural selection takes hold and accelerates the mutation rate. Since benefits to fitness are being produced they begin to establish themselves in a population, eventually however there is, "increased deleterious load," because the findings show natural selection as inevitably short-sided.
The paper released titled, Complete genetic linkage can subvert natural selection states that:
| “ | How Genetic Linkage Can Subvert Natural Selection. There is almost certainly no physiological barrier to such an effect in most organisms: the genomic mutation rate in organisms from viruses to eukaryotes is a quantitative trait affected by many mutations whose effects can readily cumulate to intolerable levels of error. In what follows, we show that there need not be a selective barrier to this process either: because the full fitness effect of increased deleterious mutation takes some time to accumulate after a higher mutation rate has evolved, it is theoretically possible for a population to evolve a critically high mutation rate and subsequently go extinct.
... Our theoretical findings indicate that mutator hitchhiking can set in motion a self-reinforcing loss of replication fidelity, but the question of how a process as robust as natural selection could allow this to happen remains. The key fact is that natural selection, although eminently robust, is a short-sighted process that favors traits with immediate fitness benefits. The fitness cost of mutator hitchhiking is generally not anticipated because of the slow accumulation of deleterious load. When a mutator hitchhikes with a new beneficial mutation, a simple model shows that the increased deleterious load due to the mutator is in fact suppressed during the spread of the beneficial mutation. Indeed, the full fitness cost of the mutator is only realized well after the beneficial mutation has stopped spreading (SI Text). A mutator may therefore enjoy the immediate benefit of producing a new beneficial mutation without anticipating the eventual increase in deleterious load. Because of this delay in the accumulation of deleterious load, natural selection can drive mutation rate up to the point of no return, where fMmMu2 becomes the dominant term (Fig. 4A); even if the increase in deleterious load is lethal, it is not anticipated (Fig. 4B). At the population level, this failure to anticipate the establishment of a lethal deleterious load is partly due to the sharpness of the threshold separating lethal from viable mutation rates (22, 24), such that there is no slow fitness decrease to "warn" of impending extinction. [1] | ” |
Mathematical challenges
What has been known for years by the evolution and creation science communities is the severe lack of mathematical probability of related mutational change. This is the way by which production of truly new biological structures is accomplished, or what is essentially molecules-to-man type change that Darwinian evolution proposes. This is to say that the relationships between mutated genes are generally random and an increase in mutations only increases this randomization. For example, if 2 effected the same function or structure, they would be related. However, the relationship would be random and there is even less of a chance that the 2 mutations would work together progressively. An increase in the amount of mutations over a long period of time, while still adding progressively related mutations, would be adding a very large amount of harmful related mutations and neutral related mutations, and thus makes the chance for successful progressive gene evolution less likely.
First and foremost, mutations either beneficial, negative or neutral are rare instances. They happen on average about once in every 10 million duplications of the DNA molecule (107, a one followed by 7 zeroes). The problem comes when following the evolutionary paradigm and ultimately having to rely on hundreds if not thousands of related mutations.
The probability is extremely rare for the allowance of many related mutations and the ultimate conclusion of new biological body plans is an unobserved evolutionary phenomena. Simply put the odds of getting two mutations that are related to one another is the product of their separate probabilities. If every 107 duplications of DNA a mutation occurs the equation would start to look like this; 107 x 107 or 1014. That is a one followed by 14 zeroes, or once every hundred trillion for just two related mutations. Mutations which are related or not would barely change finch beak sizes due to drought, or change the shape of a fly wing.
What are the odds of getting three related mutations? That is, again taking into account the mutation rate of duplicated DNA, one in a billion trillion or 1021. Suddenly the ocean isn't big enough to hold enough bacteria to make that chance very likely. You can quickly tell that at just three related mutations, evolution via related, dependant mutational change through natural selection as its mechanism to produce truly novel information or molecule-to-man change is woefully inadequate. [2] [3]
Protein folds
Calculations have been done and research published in the Journal of Molecular Biology by Douglas Axe, a protein scientist. He shows just how exceptionally rare the chance of getting certain working protein sequences can be let alone whole genomic structure evolution from fish to man as ultimately predicted. In other words, as Dr. Axe wrote regarding the probability it is, "less than one in a trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion." [4]
References
- ↑ Complete genetic linkage can subvert natural selection by Philip J. Gerrish, Alexandre Colato, Alan S. Perelson, and Paul D. Sniegowski, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, published online before print April 3, 2007
- ↑ Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution (Wistar Institute Press, 1967)
- ↑ Dr. Gary Parker. Creation: Facts of Life [1]
- ↑ D.D. Axe, “Estimating the Prevalence of Protein Sequences Adopting Functional Enzyme Folds,” Journal of Molecular Biology, 341(5) (2004):1295–1315
External Links
Creationist References
- Genetic Variability by Design by Chris Ashcraft. TJ 18(2) 2004.
- Fruit Flies in the Face of Macroevolution by Frank Sherwin, M.A.
- Genetics Questions and Answers by Answers in Genesis
- Goldschmidt's Monster Mechanism - Goldschmidt's desperate theory
- Argument: Some mutations are beneficial Chapter 5 of Refuting Evolution 2 by Jonathan Sarfati, with Michael Matthews.
- Darwinism and the Deterioration of the Genome by Jerry Bergman, Ph.D.
- The contribution of epistasis to the architecture of fitness in an RNA virus Comparison and study finding that "all significant interactions [mutations] were antagonistic."
Secular References
- The contribution of epistasis to the architecture of fitness in an RNA virus Comparison and study finding that "all significant interactions [mutations] were antagonistic."
- Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution (Wistar Institute Press, 1967)
- Epistasis in RNA Viruses Mutations, even those judged to be "beneficial," decrease fitness
- Mutation improves memory, may lead to memory-enhancing pill
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