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Beneficial Mutations?
As-Salam-Alaykum,
The well known creationist author, Haroon Yahya, has advocated in a number of his books that the concept of mutations acting as the mechanism for evolutionary change, as professed by "The Modern Synthetic Evolution Theory", is flawed.
From whatever i studied in basic biology, i know that mutations occur due to the random destruction of nucleotides in DNA caused by radiation or chemical action.
Haroon Yahya claims that no beneficial mutations have yet been discovered. According to him, mutations typically lead to disease and deformity or, at best, they have no effect - but they are never beneficial.
My question is weather anyone is aware of any research in which mutations (caused by radiation or chemical action) have been beneficial.
Thanks.
The well known creationist author, Haroon Yahya, has advocated in a number of his books that the concept of mutations acting as the mechanism for evolutionary change, as professed by "The Modern Synthetic Evolution Theory", is flawed.
From whatever i studied in basic biology, i know that mutations occur due to the random destruction of nucleotides in DNA caused by radiation or chemical action.
Haroon Yahya claims that no beneficial mutations have yet been discovered. According to him, mutations typically lead to disease and deformity or, at best, they have no effect - but they are never beneficial.
My question is weather anyone is aware of any research in which mutations (caused by radiation or chemical action) have been beneficial.
Thanks.
Comments on this journal
However, in regards to your statement that random mutations do not occur due to radiation or chemical action, i disagree.
I have read of a couple cases where radiation has lead to mutations in certain organisms because of damage to the DNA. This damage was specific enough to not kill the organisms, but rather lead to mutations. In most cases, though, these mutants die, are sterile or tend to revert to the wild type.
One example would be children conceived shortly after the Chernobyl disaster. Another example would be experiments carried out on drosophila by subjecting them to treatment by chemicals and radiation. In both these cases, offspring with physical deformities resulted. Additionally, cells in which the gene that encodes the p53 protein has become damaged due to chemical action (typically caused by cigarette smoke) tend to become cancerous.
Would you consider these to be examples of random (non beneficial) mutation brought about by chemical action, temperature or radiation?
Wa'salams
i promised myself i would not get into any big discussions about ID w/ MA anymore. cause it seems that we are condemed to wander around in circles.
But, a direct question can be met with a direct answer.
Beneficial random mutations : sickle cell trait, C- hemoglobin, Thalassemias, and G6PD deficiencies all confer different degrees of immunity to malaria, each works through a different mechanism and each arose and flourished in different populations. so each beneficial mutation arose spontaneously and remained in the population because of their usefulness.
If it was indeed Inteligently mandated, then why so many different versions? why not pick the best one and insure that it would go to all necessary populations?
The HIV resistance gene (produced immunity to HIV in populations that have it) CCR5delta32. is another usefull bugger that cropped up in northern europe, while, alas, CXCR turned up in southeastern africa, which makes people succumb to HIV all the quicker. it makes people go through a fullminant course of the disease process.
and - www.hopkinsmedicine.org
the mighty mouse gene.
now have any of these been created in a lab?
no.
but they can, and are reproduced artificially in a lab. The problem with blasting DNA with radiation is that you are more likely to destroy the strand. Radiation is not site specific, not are chemicals.
In nature the mutations that arise are usually after random DNA copying errors, or transsfer of genetic strands (in the case of Bacterium).
If you blast humans or bugs with chemicals and radiation you kill them, you don't mutate them.
Selection works with point mutations, slight variance (the HIV resistance, C- and sicke cell hemoglobing are differences in 1 or 2 amino acids) and if they are beneficail, which is rare, they spread.
while the thalassemias are errors of deletion, it still confers malarial immunity. and so it spread.
you cannot bombard DNA with radiation, but if you send in site specific enzymes, splicing proteins and gene fragments, you can recreate the adaptations.
we can alter the genetic structure of baterium enough in the lab to have them produce human insulin, Inulin (tm), that was us doing the site specific mutations.
Random mutations that are beneficial are few and far between. they are unpredictable, but are never due to full throtle bombardment by chemicals and radiation.