Never mind population genetics. Bill is operating at a level that would fail Grade 9 remedial biology. “20 non-deleterious mutations in a row”? WTAF?!
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Try to wrap your head around the word salad, thrice blended, that constitutes his latest post. A veritable vortex of gobbledygook. What is it saying? What am I reading?
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As it seems everybody thinks your “toy model” completely fails to implement “Rums assumptions”, it might help if you could explain how you have implemented the following (bolded) assumptions:
Does your model include only 1000 mutations per generation?
Does your model include the deleterious mutations being lethal (and therefore producing no further offspring from that lineage)?
Does your model include everyone producing 2 offspring?
Does your model include deaths being randomly distributed among the non-lethally-mutated offspring such that population size stays stable?
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To answer your question is I used a simple toy model to make the point that variation beyond a few dozen mutations is unlikely for a vertebrate or deer proteins. I did model the process that Rum outlined previously but an error factor around the number should be considered. I would not expect a more sophisticated model to change the outcome by much if the assumptions remain the same.
This model is based on Rum’s assumption that 50% of residue (amino acid) substitutions are deleterious. I used 67% for Behe. The differences are limits of about 16 (Behe) and 20 (Rum) mutations before all the proteins in the population likely have a deleterious mutation. If you look at an individual in a population.
If you look at an individual species the chances of 20 non deleterious mutations in a row is 1/2^20 or about 1 in one million. Since you have 1 million people in the population (allowing for 1 million trials) this equates to 20 generations of mutations ending with deleterious mutations in all the proteins in the population.
When we look at a protein family like WNT the different types have over 160 residue differences. Given these differences and the limitations of mutation in a population how would you claim that the WNT family is the result of gene duplication and divergence.
Bill just gives the first 1 million individuals 1 mutation each. I have no idea why he does this. Then he halves them every generation. New mutations are never added.
With what he calls “Behe’s assumptions” he removes two thirds of the remaining mutations each generation. New mutations are never added.
I haven’t seen anything this confused or absolutely blasted in about 20 years. I am … I …
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I don’t disagree.
I just thought it would be helpful, when Bill is explicitly saying that he’s modelling your assumptions, to point out specific assumptions and ask him ‘where are they in your model?’
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His mathematics would fail Grade 4.
Alright, thank you.
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You asked if this model is realistic in nature and I answered that it is a toy model. That means I altered some of the assumptions to simplify the model. Accelerating the mutation rate allowed the saturation of 20 proteins (all proteins having a deleterious mutation) to occur in 20 generations. The saturation of 20 proteins will happen eventually with a more realistic mutation rate.
I proceeded to explain that even though it is a toy model the outcome in nature should be similar given the important assumption of the model which came from Rum and Behe. That assumption is the percentage of deleterious residue (amino acid) substitutions per mutation.
The fact that this model is not an exact copy of nature does not make a difference to the usefulness of the model to estimate a limit to protein variation in nature.
I asked if it was a model of something that can occur in nature. Whether it could be the case that one member in the population could acquire mutations one after another. I asked to cite something other than comic books in support of this unconventional idea of how population genetics work, if you could. Saying “it’s a toy model” does not answer any of that. Nor, for that matter, does it address concerns about realism.
I disagree. Saying “it works, though, because my model keeps this one assumption” is not a demonstration that your model works, nor an explanation of why it might.
Agreed. It’s not the minute details that render this cartoonish “toy model” of yours useless for the purposes of making predictions about natural processes. It is, rather, some gross mischaracterizations of the foundational governing principles, that make it so. Plugging in one vaguely plausible number (if it even is that; I for one am neither qualified nor interested in verifying that much at this point) into a completely backwards calculation would not make the ouptut any more dependable for it.
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Deleterious mutations to proteins happen in nature.
Proteins can lose function due to deleterious mutations.
The mutation rate you are concerned with does not change the ultimate limit of how many mutations can occur prior to a deleterious mutation. This is the metric of interest.
In no place did I raise concerns about mutation rates. What I asked was if yours was a model of something that can occur in nature. Whether it could be the case that one member in the population could acquire mutations one after another. You even emphasized that passage in particular, only to go on and (a) continue to not answer it as well as (b) lie about what the question was about. It’s been a nice chat, though.
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Thanks for clarifying that you were not concerned about the mutation rate itself.
The model does not have people acquiring mutations one after another it has mutations being acquired in a population from one generation to the next. The model has 20 generations given Rums assumptions.
So is your model one in which every single member of a population gets the same mutation in one generation, then every single member of the next generation gets the same mutation as each other, but a different one than the one that occurred in the previous generation, and so on for 20 generations?
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Probably something like this:
So in his model, since deleterious mutations are not removed and everyone just produces 1 new offspring with a mutation, it would be extremely unlikely for any series of individuals in a generation to keep just accumulating neutral mutations of course. A model with no excess offspring and no selection.
It’s the dumbest “model” known to man.
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It seems to me, in practical terms, the model I suggested Bill was using would not be much different than the one you suspect he is using. The only difference is, in my version, each member of a generation has the same new mutation. I don’t think that would necessarily cause the population to die out any sooner in either case.
If it’s the same mutation occurring over and over in the same lineage, it will just fluctuate back and forth between deleterious and a reversal by chance. Deleterious mutations could not accumulate then.
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Even though Bill uses terms like “fixation,” given his pathetic performance here I doubt that he grasps one of the central misunderstandings (often deliberate on the part of those who promote evolution denialism, like Behe) of evolution–that it can only happen to populations, never to individuals.
Not the same mutation but a mutation on the same gene. The mutations in every generation could occasionally be a substitution to the same residue (amino acid) from the prior generation.
Post 1000. Can we kill this thread now, or should I add another verse to ChatGPT’s poem about deep time?
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