First of all, I am doing research in computational biology. I just read the paper linked from his webpage at http://biology.boisestate.edu/hampikian and I have to say that this is one of the worse papers I have ever read. First of all, I can literally write a program to do all that he proposed in about 10 minutes. Give me the $1 mil, I'll do the research. Although the idea of systematically finding nullomers can have practical applications, there is ABSOLUTELY ZERO evidence that they are incompatible with life. And wow, isn't this the eye catching title that we see on/. The numbers of nullomers that he found in the human genome, for example, looks like they are in line with expectation given a genome genome that is AT rich (more A and T nucleotides than G / C nucleotide). Because the human genome is finite (only about 3 billion nucleotides), of course you are going to find DNA sequence even at only 11 bases long that do not exist in the human genome. Just do the math! 4^11 = 4.2 billion. It makes me so furious that our government wastes so much money on useless stuff.
I hope my post will generate an intelligent discussion and not flames. Here it goes:
As a biologist (molecular genetics), I would say that this is the side of evolution people in the field don't talk about. I don't think I've ever read any papers (doesn't mean it doesn't exist) in which a serious study has been taken to answer the question of how evolution can be a CREATIVE process. Here's what I mean:
Microevolution (the DNA mutations and their inheritance by the progeny) occurs all the time, I think we can all agree on this. Macroevolution and speciation on the other hand, is a very hand wavy thing. In macroevolution, new structures or functions are derived from an ancestor. All the widely cited example of evolution, may it be Darwin's finches or the peppered moths are variation of existing structures. In terms of DNA mutations, this may only take a few changes in the actual DNA sequences which regulate the expression (or the turning on) of certain genes. The probability of these mutation events is already pretty low, but one can imagine this happening.
However, the question in the original post of how single base-pair (bp) mutations can lead to an organism not having a given ability at all to having an ability to control the roaches involves invoking evolution as having a CREATIVE force. As an excercise, let's just imagine that we are trying to create a brand new smallish 100 amino acid neuro-peptide that can control the roach by evolution. If you start with some random DNA sequence and try to evolve a 300 bps (3 bps/aa). You will end up with a probability of 1/4^300 = 2.4x10^-181 chance of evolving that (ok it'll be a little higher because 1/4 of the DNA will already be the one you want). That's a pretty small probability in anyone's book. You also have to account for the fact that while you are trying create this protein, other things are getting mutated in your genome and probably killing off the larvae before they have a chance to pass down their genes. Since you have not created a fully functional gene yet, there is no selective advantage for this specific gene locus, and the half-evolved gene is just being carried along in the population at a very low frequency. This means that it is very easily lost in the population and you have to start over trying to create your gene again.
This is just for evolving the neuro-peptide. For the gene to function properly, you NEED regulatory DNA sequences that control the protein to be expressed in the right place (ie. the stinger). There are also a lot of other things that the protein needs to be delivered to the roaches' brain (like the entire secretory pathway). But let's not go into that.
So I hope one can see, that the probability for all these events to occur is very very low, I would say a mathematical improbablity. And this is just for ONE protein to function properly!
Don't get me wrong, I stare a lot at DNA sequence data, and some things make a convincing case for evolution. But again, it's just microevolution. For creation of new structures and functions, and speciation, a lot more is needed. Speciation is not an observable event, and neither is the formation of new structures. Before we go and hail evolution as the new dogma of the modern man, we need to take this into consideration. And teach it like it is: if the enterprise of science is the search for "the truth" we need to be open and admit the assumptions and the caveats in our hypothesis. And that's what macro-evolution is: an hypothesis.
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China did this too...looks like the commies are reading from the same playbook!
First of all, I am doing research in computational biology. I just read the paper linked from his webpage at http://biology.boisestate.edu/hampikian and I have to say that this is one of the worse papers I have ever read. First of all, I can literally write a program to do all that he proposed in about 10 minutes. Give me the $1 mil, I'll do the research. Although the idea of systematically finding nullomers can have practical applications, there is ABSOLUTELY ZERO evidence that they are incompatible with life. And wow, isn't this the eye catching title that we see on /. The numbers of nullomers that he found in the human genome, for example, looks like they are in line with expectation given a genome genome that is AT rich (more A and T nucleotides than G / C nucleotide). Because the human genome is finite (only about 3 billion nucleotides), of course you are going to find DNA sequence even at only 11 bases long that do not exist in the human genome. Just do the math! 4^11 = 4.2 billion. It makes me so furious that our government wastes so much money on useless stuff.
Many times, our morality is dictated by practicality. This is most likely one of those times.
As a biologist (molecular genetics), I would say that this is the side of evolution people in the field don't talk about. I don't think I've ever read any papers (doesn't mean it doesn't exist) in which a serious study has been taken to answer the question of how evolution can be a CREATIVE process. Here's what I mean:
Microevolution (the DNA mutations and their inheritance by the progeny) occurs all the time, I think we can all agree on this. Macroevolution and speciation on the other hand, is a very hand wavy thing. In macroevolution, new structures or functions are derived from an ancestor. All the widely cited example of evolution, may it be Darwin's finches or the peppered moths are variation of existing structures. In terms of DNA mutations, this may only take a few changes in the actual DNA sequences which regulate the expression (or the turning on) of certain genes. The probability of these mutation events is already pretty low, but one can imagine this happening.
However, the question in the original post of how single base-pair (bp) mutations can lead to an organism not having a given ability at all to having an ability to control the roaches involves invoking evolution as having a CREATIVE force. As an excercise, let's just imagine that we are trying to create a brand new smallish 100 amino acid neuro-peptide that can control the roach by evolution. If you start with some random DNA sequence and try to evolve a 300 bps (3 bps/aa). You will end up with a probability of 1/4^300 = 2.4x10^-181 chance of evolving that (ok it'll be a little higher because 1/4 of the DNA will already be the one you want). That's a pretty small probability in anyone's book. You also have to account for the fact that while you are trying create this protein, other things are getting mutated in your genome and probably killing off the larvae before they have a chance to pass down their genes. Since you have not created a fully functional gene yet, there is no selective advantage for this specific gene locus, and the half-evolved gene is just being carried along in the population at a very low frequency. This means that it is very easily lost in the population and you have to start over trying to create your gene again.
This is just for evolving the neuro-peptide. For the gene to function properly, you NEED regulatory DNA sequences that control the protein to be expressed in the right place (ie. the stinger). There are also a lot of other things that the protein needs to be delivered to the roaches' brain (like the entire secretory pathway). But let's not go into that.
So I hope one can see, that the probability for all these events to occur is very very low, I would say a mathematical improbablity. And this is just for ONE protein to function properly!
Don't get me wrong, I stare a lot at DNA sequence data, and some things make a convincing case for evolution. But again, it's just microevolution. For creation of new structures and functions, and speciation, a lot more is needed. Speciation is not an observable event, and neither is the formation of new structures. Before we go and hail evolution as the new dogma of the modern man, we need to take this into consideration. And teach it like it is: if the enterprise of science is the search for "the truth" we need to be open and admit the assumptions and the caveats in our hypothesis. And that's what macro-evolution is: an hypothesis.