When a population geneticist speaks of mutations, he means hereditary mutations, mutations that happen in the eggs or sperm of an organism and therefore can be inherited. Somatic mutations are not inherited, and only occur in some cells of the body.
There are a couple of ideas about mutation, some being inheritance which 'might' produce something completely different, but doesn't really, it is just the variance already existing in the gene pool, thus no 'new' mutation that way.
That's merely recombination. New mutations are those that did not exist prior to the mutation. The nylon gene in bacteria, the EPAS1 gene in Tibetans, and the HbC gene in some African populations are notable examples of favorable new mutations. New mutations are very common. We all have dozens of mutations that did not exist in either of our parents.
Another, is how things affect us, like 'you are what you eat.' We have Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma from glyphosate production increase and usage. It isn't beneficial. Another would be introducing cod (fish) dna into tomatoes so they can be stored longer at lower temperatures. This too is not 'new' but rather a splicing.
It's new to the population of tomato plants, but that's not what I meant. I was speaking of new mutations that did not exist before.
It reminds me of the joke about the scientists saying they could create anything 'God' apparently did. God came down to the challenge. God started gathering dirt and the scientists started gathering dirt and God said "No no. This is my dirt. You have to make your own."
That story always puzzled me. First, no scientist would say that they truly create anything, and second, making computers from dirt seems pretty remarkable for creatures who cannot create. It was made up by someone lacking any understanding of science or scientists.
Does God actually make a new species out of another?
Even most YE creationists would admit the fact of speciation. Some, like the ICR, have endorsed papers saying that new genera and families evolve. Well, they avoid the "e-word", but they say those taxa appear from other taxa. John Woodmorappe, the author of
Noah's Ark; a Feasibility Study once told me that "family is about the limit, I think."
He certainly can, but we'd want to see a LOT more information. My brother, a Biologist, says micro changes occur, but he is ever doubtful of what any given 'intermediate' fossil actually is.
He might want to see what a YE creationist paleontologist has to say about that. Kurt Wise, a YE creationist who actually studied the issue, says:
Evidences for Darwin’s second expectation - of stratomorphic intermediate species - include such species as Baragwanathia27 (between rhyniophytes and lycopods), Pikaia28 (between echinoderms and chordates), Purgatorius29 (between the tree shrews and the primates), and Proconsul30 (between the non-hominoid primates and the hominoids). Darwin’s third expectation - of higher-taxon stratomorphic intermediates - has been confirmed by such examples as the mammal-like reptile groups31 between the reptiles and the mammals, and the phenacdontids32 between the horses and their presumed ancestors. Darwin’s fourth expectation - of stratomorphic series - has been confirmed by such examples as the early bird series,33 the tetrapod series,34,35 the whale series,36 the various mammal series of the Cenozoic37 (for example, the horse series, the camel series, the elephant series, the pig series, the titanothere series, etc.), the Cantius and
Plesiadapus primate series,38 and the hominid series.39 Evidence for not just one but for all three of the species level and above types of stratomorphic intermediates expected by macroevolutionary theory is surely strong evidence for macroevolutionary theory. Creationists therefore need to accept this fact. It certainly CANNOT said that traditional creation theory expected (predicted) any of these fossil finds.
https://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j09_2/j09_2_216-222.pdf
Some, fossils, for instance, thought to be 'transitions between birds' either have ONLY bird dna OR reptile dna and never the two meet.
So far, we haven't found DNA in any transitional fossil between birds and dinosaurs. However, we did find some organic molecules of heme (often incorrectly called "tissue") in a T. rex. It turned out to be more like the heme of birds than like the heme of other reptiles. So we have that prediction confirmed. Jurassic Park is just a story, so far. There is at least one small dinosaur found in amber, and there's an outside chance that DNA might just survive in such a medium. If so, it will turn out to be very much like that of birds. There are only two surviving groups of archosaurs (dinosaurs, pterosaurs, crocodilians, and birds) today. And as predicted...
This phylogenetic diagram shows the inferred evolutionary relationships among birds, reptiles, and mammals. Colors indicate the estimated rates of evolution, with cooler colors corresponding to lower rates of molecular evolution. (Image credit: Richard E. Green et al.)
Crocodiles are the closest living relatives of the birds, sharing a common ancestor that lived around 240 million years ago and also gave rise to the dinosaurs. A new study of crocodilian genomes led by scientists at UC Santa Cruz reveals an exceptionally slow rate of genome evolution in the crocodilians (a group that includes crocodiles, caimans, alligators, and gharials).
The UC Santa Cruz team used the crocodilian genomes, combined with newly published bird genomes, to reconstruct a partial genome of the common ancestor of crocodiles, birds, and dinosaurs. The study, part of an ambitious international collaboration to analyze the genomes of modern birds and gain insights into their evolution, is one of eight papers from the Avian Phylogenomics Consortium being published in a December 12 special issue of Science.
https://news.ucsc.edu/2014/12/crocodile-genomes.html
It isn't as simple as that, since I'm 70% related to an onion.
All eukaryotes are at least that closely related. You're much closer to birds and dinosaurs, though, since you have a much more recent tetrapod ancestor in common with birds and dinosaurs.
The point he was making was (your explanation of the numbers notwithstanding), was that these 'changes' are nothing new, but the way DNA already responds to different stimuli.
Normally, "stimulus", in biology refers to nervous systems, not molecular biology. Not sure what you mean.
Do you, for instance, believe you've come from an earlier link between you and a chimp?
Common misconception, that. We didn't evolve from chimpanzees. Humans and chimpanzees have a common ancestor that was neither human nor chimpanzee. Both species have diverged from that. That common ancestor had already diverged from other apes, which is why humans and chimps are an ingroup relative to other apes.
True, but this still is not 'new' information, but merely a 'new' (possibly) mixing of what is already in any given gene pool. Correct?
Very doubtful. The chimpanzee wrist and the human hand show recent modifications that were very unlikely to have existed in their common ancestor. And there are many, many alleles in both species that are unique. So lots of mutation over a few million years time.
Doesn't this agree with the gene-pool explanation?
No, that doesn't fit the evidence, showing all those new mutations. The human myostatin gene, for example, is an allele not found in other apes, and accounts for us being much weaker than they are. It's a mutation that occurred after humans and chimpanzees diverged.
Barbarian observes:
New alleles only happen by mutation. This is fairly common; all of us have dozens of mutations not found in either of our parents. Most of them don't do anything measurable.
Still awkward for me: you are describing what is ALREADY pre-existent.
No. These are modifications of alleles that happened to sex cells of parents, who passed them to offspring. But they did not exist in the parent genome.
I suppose, in this sense, any evolutionary Christian can acquiesce that God put all of it already there and nothing happens without His interaction.
He created life with the ability to change over time and to evolve to fit new environments. Why is that such a surprise?
Such is important between the 'us/them' discussions but most of the time TOL discussions are over species change, especially ape to man.
Speciation is an observed fact, "Answers in Genesis" and the Institute for Creation Research admit this much. Some of them go much farther, as I mentioned above.
To me? Just a bigger gene pool than the attending scientist previously held. There is (as far as the world is concerned), no new gene pool.
Each new population is a gene pool. Speciation seems to most often happen by allopatric (isolated populations) conditions.
They are all already here, from what I understand. You may well argue that things change and I agree, men are taller today BUT there was a time when that already happened.
Like our increasing intelligence (Flynn Effect), that's not genetic, but mostly environmental. It's happened far too rapidly to be evolutionary in a genetic sense.
Barbarian, earlier:
Yes, and biologists often assume a good understanding of high school biology on the part of laymen. Which is not a good assumption.
True. The link I gave does say this is a mutation. I think it important to define very well, what is meant but 'mutation' itself is such a broad term, that often the bigger concept gets lost because of how different groups mean something different when talking about the same word (including "evolution").
In biology, it means "change in allele frequency in a population over time. So it includes the sorts of evolution you envision as well as evolution from new mutations. I think it would confuse creationists less, if we used Darwin's term: "descent with modfication."
I'd like to leave my 'inquiry' mode open.
Probably a good idea.
