# Are Mutations Random With Respect to Function?

**URL:** <https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/are-mutations-random-with-respect-to-function/10270>\
**Category:** Side Conversation\
**Tags:** Science\
**Created:** [April 22, 2020, 2:36am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/are-mutations-random-with-respect-to-function/10270 "2020-04-22T02:36:12Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 3

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**Author:** ![John\_Harshman](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/john_harshman/32/1121_2.png) [@John\_Harshman](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/John_Harshman)\
**Post date:** [April 22, 2020, 2:45am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/are-mutations-random-with-respect-to-function/10270/3 "2020-04-22T02:45:13Z")

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> [@Jonathan Bartlett: Measuring Active Information in Biological Systems](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/jonathan-bartlett-measuring-active-information-in-biological-systems/10203/43):
>
> If you dispute this, we can take that up in a different thread.

I do dispute it. You are thinking, I believe, entirely in the context of protein-coding exons, which is a problem. And there it’s not that transitions are more likely to be beneficial, it’s that they’re less likely to be deleterious, because they are more often silent and thus often nearly neutral. Non-silent transitions are also more likely to produce a change to similar amino acids, again not so much beneficial as not deleterious. I consider that a crucial difference. Now, the genetic code may have been tuned so as to reduce damage from the more common mutations. But is that active information?

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