Claim CB102:
Mutations are random noise; they do not add information. Evolution cannot
cause an increase in information.
Source:
Response:
- It is hard to understand how anyone could make this claim, since
anything mutations can do, mutations can undo. Some mutations add
information to a genome; some subtract it. Creationists get by
with this claim only by leaving the term "information" undefined,
impossibly vague, or constantly shifting. By any reasonable
definition, increases in information have been observed to evolve. We
have observed the evolution of
- increased genetic variety in a population (Lenski 1995; Lenski et
al. 1991)
- increased genetic material (Alves et al. 2001; Brown et al. 1998;
Hughes and Friedman 2003; Lynch and Conery 2000; Ohta 2003)
- novel genetic material (Knox et al. 1996; Park et al. 1996)
- novel genetically-regulated abilities (Prijambada et al. 1995)
If these do not qualify as information, then nothing about information
is relevant to evolution in the first place.
- A mechanism that is likely to be particularly common for adding
information is gene duplication, in which a long stretch of DNA is
copied, followed by point mutations that change one or both of the
copies. Genetic sequencing has revealed several instances in which
this is likely the origin of some proteins. For example:
- Two enzymes in the histidine biosynthesis pathway that are
barrel-shaped, structural and sequence evidence suggests, were
formed via gene duplication and fusion of two half-barrel ancestors
(Lang et al. 2000).
- RNASE1, a gene for a pancreatic enzyme, was duplicated, and in
langur monkeys one of the copies mutated into RNASE1B, which works
better in the more acidic small intestine of the langur. (Zhang et
al. 2002)
- Yeast was put in a medium with very little sugar. After 450
generations, hexose transport genes had duplicated several times,
and some of the duplicated versions had mutated further. (Brown et
al. 1998)
The biological literature is full of additional examples. A PubMed
search (at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi)
on "gene
duplication" gives more than 3000 references.
- According to Shannon-Weaver information theory, random noise
maximizes information. This is not just playing word games. The
random variation that mutations add to
populations is
the variation on which selection acts. Mutation alone will not cause
adaptive evolution, but by eliminating nonadaptive variation, natural
selection communicates information about the environment to the
organism so that the organism becomes better adapted to it. Natural
selection is the process by which information about the environment is
transferred to an organism's genome and thus to the organism (Adami et
al. 2000).
- The process of mutation and selection is observed to increase
information and complexity in simulations (Adami et al. 2000;
Schneider 2000).
Links:
Max, Edward E., 1999. The evolution of improved fitness by random
mutation plus selection. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/fitness
Musgrave, Ian, 2001. The Period gene of Drosophila.
http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/apr01.html
References:
- Adami et al., 2000. (see below)
- Alves, M. J., M. M. Coelho and M. J. Collares-Pereira, 2001. Evolution
in action through hybridisation and polyploidy in an Iberian freshwater
fish: a genetic review. Genetica 111(1-3): 375-385.
- Brown, C. J., K. M. Todd and R. F. Rosenzweig, 1998. Multiple
duplications of yeast hexose transport genes in response to selection
in a glucose-limited environment. Molecular Biology and Evolution
15(8): 931-942. http://mbe.oupjournals.org/cgi/reprint/15/8/931.pdf
- Hughes, A. L. and R. Friedman, 2003. Parallel evolution by gene
duplication in the genomes of two unicellular fungi. Genome
Research
13(5): 794-799.
- Knox, J. R., P. C. Moews and J.-M. Frere, 1996. Molecular evolution of
bacterial beta-lactam resistance. Chemistry and Biology 3: 937-947.
- Lang, D. et al., 2000. Structural evidence for evolution of the
beta/alpha barrel scaffold by gene duplication and fusion. Science
289: 1546-1550. See also Miles, E. W. and D. R. Davies, 2000. On the
ancestry of barrels. Science 289: 1490.
- Lenski, R. E., 1995. Evolution in experimental populations of
bacteria. In: Population Genetics of Bacteria, Society for
General Microbiology, Symposium 52, S. Baumberg et al., eds.,
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 193-215.
- Lenski, R. E., M. R. Rose, S. C. Simpson and S. C. Tadler, 1991.
Long-term experimental evolution in Escherichia coli. I. Adaptation
and divergence during 2,000 generations. American Naturalist 138:
1315-1341.
- Lynch, M. and J. S. Conery, 2000. The evolutionary fate and consequences
of duplicate genes. Science 290: 1151-1155. See also Pennisi, E.,
2000. Twinned genes live life in the fast lane. Science 290:
1065-1066.
- Ohta, T., 2003. Evolution by gene duplication revisited:
differentiation of regulatory elements versus proteins. Genetica
118(2-3): 209-216.
- Park, I.-S., C.-H. Lin and C. T. Walsh, 1996. Gain of
D-alanyl-D-lactate or D-lactyl-D-alanine synthetase activities in three
active-site mutants of the Escherichia coli D-alanyl-D-alanine
ligase B. Biochemistry 35: 10464-10471.
- Prijambada, I. D., S. Negoro, T. Yomo and I. Urabe, 1995. Emergence of
nylon oligomer degradation enzymes in Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO
through experimental evolution. Applied and Environmental
Microbiology 61(5): 2020-2022.
- Schneider, T. D., 2000. Evolution of biological information. Nucleic
Acids Research 28(14): 2794-2799.
http://www-lecb.ncifcrf.gov/~toms/paper/ev/
- Zhang, J., Y.-P. Zhang and H. F. Rosenberg, 2002. Adaptive evolution
of a duplicated pancreatic ribonuclease gene in a leaf-eating monkey.
Nature Genetics 30: 411-415. See also: Univ. of Michigan, 2002,
How gene duplication helps in adapting to changing environments.
http://www.umich.edu/~newsinfo/Releases/2002/Feb02/r022802b.html
Further Reading:
Adami, C., C. Ofria and T. C. Collier, 2000. Evolution of biological
complexity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA 97(9):
4463-4468.
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/97/9/4463
(technical)
Hillis, D. M., J. J. Bull, M. E. White, M. R. Badgett, and I. J.
Molineux. 1992. Experimental phylogenetics: generation of a known
phylogeny. Science 255: 589-92. (technical)
created 2001-3-31, modified 2003-9-25