Re: How can the evolutionary progress from slime to humans be linear?
- From: "Anon." <bob.ohara@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 11:33:25 -0500 (EST)
William Morse wrote:
> "Francois Sabot" <sabotfran@xxxxxxxx> wrote in news:dnngdi$1hp3$1
> @darwin.ediacara.org:
>
>
>>Uno Lapideus wrote to sci.bio.evolution on the 01/12/2005:
>
>
> Again I would note the wrong date - I hadn't noticed this before but may
> pay more attention to it.
>
>
> (snip)
>
>
>>>This means that 3 000 000 000 base pairs has been added
>>>in 800 000 000 Years... By random mutations in the germ
>>>line... All of them favourable! All of them
>>>"saturating" the existing genome! Wow!
>>
>
> (snip)
>
>
>>>Seeing this straight line of evolution from "simple" to
>>>"complex," from the Ediacaran to humans, how can anyone
>>>call this "random"? Shouldn't we at least expect
>>>something resembling a random walk pattern? Please help
>>>me understand this!
>>>
>>>Uno
>>
>>au sein du forum de News sci.bio.evolution
>>
>>Ce à quoi je me propose de répondre:
>>
>>Just a last thing: human genome is far not the biggest one
>>(4000 Mb, and some plants from the Liliaceae family have
>>more than 1 000 000 Mb!), and not the most complex (25-35
>>000 genes, more than 35 000 in wheat/barley even in their
>>diploid form). The only thing different with human is the
>>level of intelligence. And this is not a genetic or genomic
>>componant.
>>
>>The size of genome does not reflect the complexity of an
>>organism nor its evolution level!
>>
>
>
> Au contraire, mon ami.
> (Actually my French is extremely limited - and no real French speaker
> might use that phrase - but I figured it can't hurt to do my bit to keep
> the internet more cosmopolitan)
>
> The size of genome does reflect a complexity difference between
> prokaryotes and eukaryotes, although within each of these two groups your
> statement may be correct.
>
Hang on, what do you mean by "size"?
This is not pedantic (*), but if by size you mean number of base pairs,
then there may not be a correlation, because the amount of junk DNA will
add noise into the analysis. OTOH, if by size you mean the number of
genes, your arguments sound reasonable (they may not be right, of course!).
The next problem is how to define "gene"! A classical geneticist's
definition may work better here because it will include transcription
factors, and all those other messy bits developmental geneticists insist
are important.
Bob
(*) This is totally off-topic, but from here:
<http://football.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,4284,1664680,00.html>
I read this:
"He asked me what I meant when I said I thought my article was
'pragmatic'? I asked what he thought I meant, and the chairman said
'answer the question'. I accused the QC of meaningless semantics, so he
asked me: 'What do you mean by semantics?' "
--
Bob O'Hara
Dept. of Mathematics and Statistics
P.O. Box 68 (Gustaf H?llstr?min katu 2b)
FIN-00014 University of Helsinki
Finland
Telephone: +358-9-191 51479
Mobile: +358 50 599 0540
Fax: +358-9-191 51400
WWW: http://www.RNI.Helsinki.FI/~boh/
Journal of Negative Results - EEB: http://www.jnr-eeb.org
.
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- How can the evolutionary progress from slime to humans be linear?
- From: Uno Lapideus
- Re: How can the evolutionary progress from slime to humans be linear?
- From: Francois Sabot
- Re: How can the evolutionary progress from slime to humans be linear?
- From: William Morse
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