Oh I didn’t know that, I can see how that changes everything now that you’ve quoted the same sentence twice.
ENCODE isn’t right though.
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I guess it depends on what you mean by evolution. It certainly doesn’t depend on shared ancestry. At most, it depends on population genetics within a species which most creationists already accept. Function, according to Graur, is defined by a region of a genome where mutations can cause a reduction in fitness. Even YEC’s agree that deleterious mutations can occur.
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Graur, in a different paper, pointed out the ludicrous idea that a stretch of DNA can maintain the same function or beneficial function no matter how many bases you change within that section of the genome.
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I’m just gonna ask him what he meant lol
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I would be happy to know why you think that Graur is wrong when he asserts that if Encode is right, then evolution is wrong.
Below is the abstract of the paper he wrote to make this point. Do you see a flaw in his reasoning ?
Abstract
For the human population to maintain a constant size from generation to generation, an increase in fertility must compensate for the reduction in the mean fitness of the population caused, among others, by deleterious mutations. The required increase in fertility due to this mutational load depends on the number of sites in the genome that are functional, the mutation rate, and the fraction of deleterious mutations among all mutations in functional regions. These dependencies and the fact that there exists a maximum tolerable replacement level fertility can be used to put an upper limit on the fraction of the human genome that can be functional. Mutational load considerations lead to the conclusion that the functional fraction within the human genome cannot exceed 25%, and is probably considerably lower.
Would you agree that mutations that cause severe and often lethal genetic diseases are not going to spread through a population over several generations at the same rate as a beneficial or neutral mutation? If you agree with this scenario, then you would also have to conclude that ENCODE is wrong.
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The issue I was discussing with Joshua was not about whether ENCODE is wrong but whether It is true that if ENCODE is right, then evolution is wrong.
Yes, of course
I don’t see why
It would be on the same level as someone claiming to have a perpetual motion machine disproving thermodynamics. If there wasn’t selection against any deleterious mutations at the level of a single population then evolution would be wrong.
There would have to be deleterious mutations in functional DNA. Since deleterious mutations are selected against at the level of a population this would mean there should be conservation of sequence in functional DNA. The conclusion that ENCODE drew was that it is impossible for deleterious mutations to occur in the vast majority of functional DNA in the human genome. From everything we know about biology, this simply can’t be the case.
By all means, but we don’t really have to. Here is Larry Moran who was present when Graur said those words:
One of the things that Graur said was that if ENCODE is right then evolution is wrong. Now this may be a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much. If the ENCODE leaders are right that 85% of our genome has a biological function then we really do have to rethink the C-value paradox and genetic load. We also have to re-think a lot of biochemistry. I think that’s what Dan meant
This prompts some creationist crackpot calling himself Vashti to attack Larry Moran with this statement in the comments:
Is a total distortion of Graur’s public statement and is clearly a lie. Graur never said anything like that, and he never even referred to anything you are implying. Not even a bit.
He simply stated that if ENCODE is right then evolution must be wrong. Nothing else you are implying.
Why are you trying to water down Graur’s strong believes?
Further down in that blog post, Dan Graur himself comments on Larry’s take:
Larry Moran did not misrepresent me, although I question his decision to acknowledge the existence of an anonymous cockroach like Vashti by answering his/her inane proclamations.
Clearly Dan Graur was talking about population genetics in relation to genome size constraints. The relative frequencies and fitness effects of beneficial to neutral and deleterious mutations. Not about all things evolution, or common descent.
So now we get to see Gilbert squirm about how Graur, contrary to his own words, really meant what Gilbert would have liked him to have meant.
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Gotta love Dan Graur. Not one to mince words.
Honestly, I don’t know about this.
ENCODE scientists were puffing their work using a profoundly ambiguous term, “function.” In terms of evolution, what really matters is tolerance to mutation, not the wide net catch all meaning “function” that the ENCODE scientists were playing with to boost their numbers.
That number, tolerance of organismal fitness in humans to mutation, we already know by other means So was ENCODE right or wrong or in conflict with evolution? I think it should be stupidly obvious that they were using different definitions for “function” than would be important for determining the plausibility of evolution.
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Well there we go. Now I feel bad for bothering him haha
I think this could also mean that mutations aren’t uniformly spread across the genome (i.e some regions are more prone to mutations than others) or that the genome is more resilient and most mutations aren’t deleterious (i.e the genome is configured in such a way that mutations are always neutral in some regions ).
In short, if more of the genome is functional, Graur’s methodology of measuring functional genes through the no: of mutations that negatively effect fitness would be wrong.
This would also mean that natural selection is not the main reason for atleast some genes being conserved.
And genes being conserved through drift wouldn’t be accidental or random.
If Graur is wrong, then it would imply that mutations are not random and hence change in the genome is more strictly regulated than currently thought by Scientists. This would then imply that the scope for change in am organism through mutations would be limited.
We would have a scenario similar to what Behe proposes. That evolutionary change has a limit.
Only thing being that this limit would be enforced by the nature of the genome itself and not just probability.
In short, Graur better be right.
Good recent post by Dan
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Sorry, but nothing you said made any sense to me; it seems self-contradictory, and I have difficulty supposing that you know what you meant by it.
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@T_aquaticus quoted Graur as below… Two points I made are mentioned by him also-
I would qualify his comment by replacing the word “no” in the first part with very low no: of mutations and the second part of his comment on deleterious mutations by replacing the word “ever” with “deleterious mutations in these regions are yet to be detected” (probably because they are rare).
The third point I made was that the genome is more resilient in some parts and most mutations are not deleterious.
If the above are true, then it would mean that mutations are restricted and the amount of change a genome can experience through mutations is also restricted. This would mean that there is a limit to how much an organisms genome can change. Thus putting a limit to the change possible through evolution.
Hence if Graur is wrong, then it could imply that there are hardbound limits within a genome that limits change through evolution. This will have implications on common descent.
It seems important to note this:
This is distinct from the ENCODE data. The Consortium refers to a bunch of scientists, not the actual data. This is Graur saying that he disagrees with these scientists, not that evolution has a problem with the evidence.
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I am not mischaracterising Graur. Things are quite simple in fact. What Graur is rightly saying is that the more the fonctionnal fraction of the genome is growing the more implausible the idea that human and chimps evolved from a common ancestor by some undirected mechanisms becomes. According to Graur’s calculation, such an undirected evolutionary scenario even becomes impossible when the fonctionnal fraction reaches the 25% threshold. It would be better for evolutionists if future discoveries did not overly reduce the non-functional fraction of the genome. But I am pessimistic about this possibility.