Mutations that matter September 27th, 2013 in Genetics
Excerpt: “The great challenge for the era is to determine which mutations are neutral, injurious or beneficial,” Williams said. “This difficulty is especially challenging for so-called genetic ‘switches.’ “
My comment: The greater challenge is to show that mutations are fixed in the DNA of the organized genome of any species from microbes to man. If they are not fixed (and no biologically based experimental evidence has ever suggested they are fixed) they cannot benefit the survival of any species. Thus, the ‘mutations that matter’ are the ones that perturb nutrient-dependent pheromone-controlled adaptive evolution of species from microbes to man, which occurs via ecological, social, neurogenic, and socio-cognitive niche construction. The mutations that perturb adaptive evolution are obviously involved in flipping the so-called genetic ‘switches,’ which are flipped on or off by nutrient stress and social stress, then flipped back to an epigenetically effected epistatic state by the lack of nutrient stress and social stress.
Yamamoto and Koganezawa (2013) concluded that: “Analysis of D. melanogaster courtship and its neural basis will pave the way to unraveling how the most fundamental dichotomy in a species — the sex difference in behaviour — arises at the single-cell and single-molecule levels and will provide a general conceptual framework in which adaptive changes in behaviour can be explained by the circuit plasticity attained through genome–environment interactions.”
Yet, here we have what appears to be an ongoing misrepresentation of mutation-driven evolution in the same model organism: “Drosophila melanogaster fruit flies.” If others would begin to consider the physiology of reproduction in the context of adaptive evolution, we could dispense with the idea that beneficial mutations will ever be found and learn more about how to prevent mutations that are obviously prevented in the context of nutrient-dependent pheromone-controlled adaptive evolution. For example, at the advent of sexual reproduction in yeasts, morphogenesis is clearly nutrient-dependent and pheromone-controlled. When an article posits “Recurrent Modification of a Conserved Cis-Regulatory Element Underlies Fruit Fly Pigmentation Diversity” others need only ask: “Is there a model for that?” Since pigmentation diversity exemplifies nutrient-dependent pheromone-controlled species diversification in species from microbes to man, it is clearer that there is no model of mutation-driven pigmentation diversity. Thus, the concept of mutation-driven pigmentation diversity will remain only in the minds of those who are unwilling to examine biological facts, but who are willing to instead tout ridiculous theories.
How’s your mind working for you, today? You just read that Rogers et al., “…discovered that species related to D. melanogaster harbored evolutionarily relevant mutations in this same CRE, altering its regulatory activity in magnitudes and patterns comparable to the D. melanogaster alleles.” But, and I repeat this because I know that deep down inside some of you really, really, really want to keep believing in mutation-driven evolution, no biologically based experimental evidence has ever suggested mutations are fixed in the genome. How could Rogers et al., have discovered evolutionary relevant mutations that don’t exist in the organized genome of any species that has adaptively evolved?
