Re: Nei's "new mutation theory" resurrects William Bateson
- From: "John W Edser" <edser@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2007 00:53:08 -0500 (EST)
arlin.stoltzfus@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
Mutationists saw evolution as a two-step process of mutation
followed by acceptance/loss. It would be more accurate to call this
the mutation-selection view, but don't blame this on the
mutationists-- they didn't invent the label.
JE:-
Evolution "as a two-step process of mutation followed by acceptance/loss" is
just bog standard, monocentric Darwinian evolution by natural selection
acting on just fertile forms allowing populations of same to evolve.
A harmless mutation might
be accepted by chance (i.e., neutral evolution), but the probability
of acceptance would be increased if the mutation had a beneficial
effect (i.e., adaptation).
JE:-
Once again just standard mono centric Darwinism.
This gave a new twist to the concept of
"selection" or "survival", a significance not apparent in Darwin's
theory, which invoked a fuzzy continuous process of variation, and
rejected any role for distinctive sports or mutants.
JE:-
DARWINIAN Selection is NOT produced by differential survival rates. A "fuzzy
continuous process of variation" represents a "new twist" to "Darwin's
theory"?!?
The MS argued instead that adaptation occurs by shifting the
frequencies of alleles (with infinitesimal effects) already present in
the "gene pool". They redefined "evolution" as "shifting gene
frequencies".
JE:-
Again, just standard monocentric Darwinism.
Of course, they knew that the origin of new alleles by
mutation had to be included SOMEWHERE, but they forced it to enter
through the back door (so to speak), not as part of evolution, but via
the precondition that "evolution" (= shifting...) can't happen unless
there is heritable variation; they insisted that mutation had no
direct or controlling influence on what happens in evolution, due to
the buffering capacity of the "gene pool".
JE:-
The "buffering capacity" of genes is represented within monocentric
Darwinian evolutionary theory by critical non additive epistasis, i.e. the
empirically based non additive gene fitness relationship that minimally
exists between two loci within the same genome and maximally, between all
the loci within the same genome. While all of non additive epistatic fitness
was and remains deleted within just a heuristic, polycentic Neo Darwinism.
However, it remains 100%% undeleted within empirically falsifiable
monocentric Darwinism.
Today, the two-step view of the mutationists is the framework of
adaptation implicit in cutting-edge work in evolutionary genetics such
as Orr's models of adaptation: a mutation is introduced, and it faces
acceptance with some probability.
JE:-
Again, just more standard monocentric Darwinism.
This two-step view is the basis for
the novelty of the Neutral Theory (not the same as mutationism, since
the NT focuses only on neutral changes) and for many subsequent
advances in molecular evolution.
JE;-
So called "neutral alleles" are indeed dragged about by the force of
Darwinian monocentric selection. This is only because of non additive gene
fitness epistasis existing between a proposed neutral allele at one locus
and at least one non neutral allele at another. Again, just standard
monocentric Darwinism.
We now know that evolution depends
on the rate of mutation in a way that the architects of the MS
rejected outright.
JE;-
No. Evolution can only be LIMITED by a base random rate of mutation.
Evolution remains 100% CONTROLLED by the NON random rate of natural
selection. Between them exists critical things like the rate of
recombination and sexual selection. The entirely RANDOM processes of
mutation and drift (sampling error) can only limit and not control
evolution. This is because just a proposed random form of selection cannot
possibly compete against any non random form of selection. In falsifiable
monocentric Darwinism random processes can only provide heritable variation
and never evolution as such. The massive error of allowing just a random
process as a theory of science in-its-own-right, which has produced so much
confusion, can be laid fairly and squarely at the feet of the ignorant
mathematicians who have taken over evolutionary theory in the last 50 years
or so.
The dependence is so sensitive that just a few-
fold difference in rates of mutation (e.g., transition:transversion
bias) shows up in the pattern of evolutionary divergence.
JE:-
Again, this is only because of the extreme non additive gearing effect of
non additive gene fitness epistasis. This remains deleted entirely within
just a heuristic, polycentric Neo Darwinism but remains 100% included within
simple, monocentric Darwinism. I refer you to C.H. Waddington's criminally
ignored work in both experimental biology and Neo Darwinistic theory, e.g.
the genetics of a phenocopy.
My understanding of your view: any mutation acting within non additive gene
fitness epistasis (which remains 100% deleted within the polycentric Neo
Darwinian model but not within the theory this model was oversimplified
from) can _vastly amplify_ the effect of just one allele which may have only
appeared neutral to start with. Waddington called this genetic assimilation.
The reverse highly geared effect, where one allele massively increases the
conservation of a phenotype such that even when the major gene/genes coding
for that pheotype have been deleted the phenotype is developed (a
phenocopy), he termed Canalization. So what is new under the sun when
evolutionary theory is taken out of the hands of incompetent mathematicians?
Regards,
John Edser
Independent Researcher
edser@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
.
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