Jesus Tap-Dancin' Christ

Yes there are. You just refuse to admit their existence.
Well, actually, um, you sort of need to know how things work to know whether or not any evidence does exist. So, um, that would, make you wrong again. Which is no surprise, actually.

Jesus Tap-Dancin' Christ

Except that it is the case.

Funny how you expect us to go for your crappy one-sentence explanations that have no basis in reality, but our short ones are simply too short.

Piss off.

RufusAtticus

Mutation, natural selection, genetic drift, migration, etc. Like I said, how about you wait until after you learn the material to poopoo it?

If you don't understand basic biology, how are you supposed to question it? Sorry, Vander, but arguing from and ignorant position is no argument at all. You are seriously reminding me of a fish who argues that air doesn't exist.

[ October 27, 2002: Message edited by: RufusAtticus ]</p>

Jesus Tap-Dancin' Christ

When we use the same terminlogy for you arguments, you take scream bloody murder about being insulting and unfair etc.
[quote[
How is the demonstrated assessment of a "gross misunderstanding", "overconfidence" and "eroded position" an insult. Are you saying it's insulting because of his credentials?
[/quote]
No. It's insulting because of YOUR credentials.
And you WONDER why pz and others treat you like you are uneducable? You provide NO evidence, nor do you even ATTEMPT to, and then when evidence is provided for you, you refuse to acknowledge its existence, and then demand that people provide evidence.
Thou art a troll.

mfaber

Boy does John love to flatter himself! It was not Rick's claims, but HIS that were "utterly and completely unfounded". It is his own failures that he is projecting onto Rick (IMO he's also jealous of Rick's credentials....he goes out of his way to demean them). He admits that he doesn't understand basic biology and his denial that basic evolutionary mechanims exists brands him as ignorant of that topic as well. John looks like a good example of the persons described in this article:

Unskilled and Unaware of it: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Leads to Inflated Self-Assessment
<a href="http://www.apa.org/journals/psp/psp7761121.html" target="_blank">http://www.apa.org/journals/psp/psp7761121.html</a>
[ October 27, 2002: Message edited by: mfaber ]</p>

Nat

It is clear that you do not have the reasoning skills to understand the point of my last post[ .. ].

Now let see if this time you figure out what I am talking about and actually try that little introspection thing. I doubt it - but there is always hope.

[ October 27, 2002: Message edited by: pz ]</p>

RufusAtticus

Okay, people. Tone it down; address the issues and not the individuals.

RufusAtticus
E/C Moderator

Blinn

Um, as others have already pointed out, yes there are mechanisms. Let me list them for you and provide brief explanations (from Campbell, 2nd ed):

Genetic Drift Random change in a small gene pool due to sampling errors in propagation of alleles. The two main situations that lead to populations small enough for genetic drift to occur are the bottleneck effect and the founder effect.

Gene Flow Change in gene pools due to immigration or emigration of individuals between populations.

Mutation Pressure Change in allelic frequency due to net mutation.

Nonrandom mating Two types - inbreeding: mating with closely related individuals - and assortative mating: selection of mate based on phenotypic characters, for example, snow geese, which occur in two color phases, mate preferentially with partners of the same color.

And the big one, Natural Selection differential reproductive success.

</strong>

Mutation is the ultimate source of the variation that gets shifted around in populations by the above mechanisms. If you want to understand the what, where, how, and why of variation, then the goings on of DNA replication and meiosis are good things to understand.

scigirl

So...are we ever going to actually talk about the urate oxidase pseudogene?

(scigirl politely admonishes everyone for derailing monkenstick's excellent scientific thread).

Genetics anyone?

How about coffee?

scigirl

Baloo

In regards to the topic of point mutations,
Vanderzyden, I realize you did not know what meiosis, nucleotides, codons, or mutations are when you first came here (or at least, the definitions of these terms in the realm of biological sciences) - and it appears (to me) that you are still struggling to grasp many of these concepts.

Thus, I ask with complete sincerity - do you realize that all of these discussions pertain to very small-scale objects called molecules, which, in small numbers, cannot be seen by the naked eye? I only ask because, from your quote above, it would appear you want to see evidence for them as you stroll through a sunny park whistling a gay tune, or maybe as you sit on the dock of the bay, gazing wistfully at the sunset. Or did you have a different non-laboratory location in mind to observe evidence for point mutations, perhaps somewhere over the rainbow?

Seriously, your demand for macroscopic evidence for a point mutation amounts to finding evidence of a snowflake hitting the ground amongst data collected by a seismograph.

Are you really interested in the truth?