GeoTheo

My brother-in law is defending his doctoral dissertation. His thesis is on solving optical problems using evloutionary algorithms. Assuming he gets his Ph.D. he will start in the R and D dept of General Electric for a hefty starting salary.
If Philip Johnson is right and the Creation/Evolution debate is a war of two religions only and that evolution has no basis in fact why would the richest company in the world risk the bottom line promoting a religious belief?
Answer: They wouldn't.

Doubting Didymus

I heard of a company proposal a short while back, whose buisiness objective was going to be to do with biotechnology, designing their market to compete with genetic engineering.

What they were going to do was use selective breeding to create new superior breeds and varieties from existing animal and plant stock. They are using a method of 'switching off' the DNA proofreading mechanisms, thus producing a very high mutation rate. The resulting new lineages can be bred for a huge variety of desirable traits, many of which can be considered macroevolutionary (along the greywolf --> pugdog kind of scale). The products will be very competitive when they hit the market, because they will not have the stigma of big bad GM food.

Anyway, the point is (yes there is a point!), that this companies proposal was attractive enough to obtain some pretty goshdarn hefty stock investments. Would this company have any hope if evolution was as impossible as creationists make out? No. There are a few of these examples.

P.S: if anyone has any information on this company I am thinking of, like the name or a webpage, I would love to see it.

pz

A while back, Uri Geller was claiming that he was receiving consultancy fees from oil companies for his help in using psychic powers to discover new oil fields. Surely a rich and prosperous oil company wouldn't risk their money on paranormal hocus-pocus...unless it really worked!!!!

Seriously, I think your assumption that possessing wealth is an accurate predictor of rationality is just plain wrong.

RufusAtticus

It is a horrible idea. DNA proofreading is a well tuned item. It is there for a reason. Even bacteria populations have problems tollerating the reduction of error production. It might work if they want to sell simple bacteria.

It is not going to work with complex organisms, especially in ones with low reproductive rate. Toss on that the small populations sizes used in breeding and you have one disastorous buisness plan.

Doubting Didymus

I don't understand. They are turning DNA error correction off (or down), so that they get a higher rate of mutation. That's what they want. I know it is not so simple as more mutations = faster evolution, but my guess is that they know what they are doing enough to get a reasonably speedy artificial selection and evolution process. They just have to plan their generations well.

[ October 02, 2002: Message edited by: Doubting Didymus ]</p>

RufusAtticus

The problem is that they with an increased mutation rate, they will get both more desireable and more deleterious mutations. For a population to survive this, it needs to have a large reproductive potential. Artifical selection, which relies on inbreeding small populations, greatly reduces the reproductive potential of a population.

For example, dog breeders have major problems with deleterious mutations showing up. Imagine the problems if you increase the error rate.

simian

Speeding up the mutation rates is done relatively frequently in the plant breeding world. Expose seeds to radiation or mutagenic chemicals, grow them out and see if you got the mutations you want. Canola was developed this way, from what I understand. Most of the older work I am aware of was knocking out genes that you did not want. It appears some of the newer work is about getting features you do want. What I find really, really interesting is that biotechonology, where you introduce the exact trait you are looking for, and no other (if things go according to plan) is considered "bad" (unnatural), while hitting seeds with radiation, and possibly (probably?) getting traits you are not looking for is considered "good" (natural). The mutagenic process counts as a "traditional" breeding technique, and is perfectly OK for organic crops.

(Keep in mind my area of knowledge is processing - I keep up on biotech because some consumers are concerned, and it also teaches me about some more biology)

Simian

RufusAtticus

Mutagenizing is a one time event. That can be tollerated. Removing error-correction is equivalent to appling mutagens every generation, even after the desired product is produced.

[ October 03, 2002: Message edited by: RufusAtticus ]</p>

MortalWombat

Well frankly, I wouldn't believe anything that came out of Geller's mouth even if he said the sun would rise tomorrow.

James

Does anyone have any links/references to any elementary, or pop-sci articles, about evolutionary/genetic algorithms?

It would be great to use them on creationists who argue that evolutionary theory has no practical/economic use.