Is it true that genes can't acquire new information through evolution?

Question

It's in an answer of a question. It's stated there that genes can only lose information over replication (and therefore there must be something else that created all these species). I highly doubt this by the way. The original answer is here (by answerer 12)
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Aheb0cX6Re6ZY5HdYJimWWdIzKIX?qid=20070812221152AASIrOs

Okay Questioner, now I'll change the question, is it true that genes can't acquire new functionality? Are there any observed proof that shows the opposite?

Answer 1

The answer you refer to is incorrect. He does not understand molecular genetics.

1. A gene is information. The information is stored as a series of nitrogenous bases. Information can change. That is called mutation. The analogy is that the DNA letters are put in an order that spells out words, sentences, paragraphs. Change a letter and It changes the meaning. It leads to a different meaning but there is the information is still there. It can mean something else. Likewise, a change in DNA can lead to a different product. However, it's still information. The sickle cell anemia mutation is a single change in a base that leads to a protein with a change in one amino acid. It is useful if one is living in an area where malaria is endemic. This is a change that gives a benefit to an individual with a single sickle cell allele. How is that losing information?

And single letter changes are not the only type of mutation. There are duplications of entire genes or genomes, as if you copied an entire paragraph. One copy is still there to function as normal, but the other copy is free to change. That is seen in the hemoglobin lineage.

How is going from one globin gene to dozens (there are multiple copies of the various globins) losing information?

Finally, Hugo de Vries lived in the 19th century. I think we've learned just a wee bit more in that time. We do know how the fittest arrive. Why not go back further in time and get someone who thought that people get sick because of ill humors or possession by demons?

Werner Gitt is a creationist who is extrapolating from his work in computer science into living systems. The argument he uses is that all information in a computer has to come from an intelligent being. A computer does not create its own program or design. Then he extends the analogy to living systems. He claims that because living things are complicated, an even more complicated thing must have created them. The problem is that his analogy is not valid. Computers are inanimate machines and living things are exactly that. Living. Organisms are capable of replicating, carrying all the information needed for life stored in DNA and subject to Natural Selection. Just because mutations are random does not mean that evolution is random. Natural Selection is anything but random. It SELECTS.

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Addendum:

Since questioner is refuses to accept anything that contradicts what he wants to believe and continues to put forth the same, illogical responses, I'll just cut and paste myself.

Dr Spetner is a physicist (can’t find a credible biologist to use?) who is well outside his area of expertise, which is clear if he really did say, “all point mutations…reduce genetic information.” He left APL at Johns Hopkins in 1970. It is safe to say that quite a lot has happened in biology since then.


There are numerous cases where a single nucleotide change gives rise to new or modified function.

A single amino acid change increases the esterase activity of Lc(alpha)E7 making insects resistant to pesticides.

A single amino acid change converts a violet photopigment (SWS1 opsin) into an ultraviolet photopigment in insects letting them see in the ultraviolet range.

A single amino acid change in a sodium channel makes flies resistant to DTT.

A single amino acid in cry2 alters flowering time in plants.

A single amino acid change in Hemoglobin b gives frogs enhanced oxygen transport at high altitude.

In each case, a single mutation is sufficient to give the organism an adaptive trait.

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As for mutations that confer increase binding (specificity) there is a recent report out on the evolution of steroid receptors that shows how mutations in a two key amino acids makes a mineralocorticoid receptor into a receptor that has higher affinity for glucocorticoid. Gene duplication and divergence yields two receptors, each specific of its ligand. Again, an obvious increase in information and specialization.

Another mutation that leads to increased binding is fetal hemoglobin gamma where a single amino acid difference between it and hemoglobin alpha gives it higher affinity for oxygen than adult hemoglobin. Again, an obvious gain of information where multiple versions of related genes allowed the development of placental mammals.

Someone else has already taken apart the arguments of Spetner so there is no need for me to comment further here.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/information/spetner.html

As for Behe, his arguments against Natural Selection have been effectively destroyed and refuted by many others so no need to comment further. At the risk of judging a book by it's title, it seems that he has not learned anything and continues his argument of ignorance. Instead of proposing a better model, he only points out (or attempts to) the limitations of the accepted theory of evolution by natural selection. The basis of his arguments being a religious one and not one reasoned through evidence and scientific methodology as he was forced to admit in the recent Dover, Delaware court case.

Answer 2

No. The "no new information" argument is a rather bizarre claim made by creationists without any actual definition of what "new information" even *means*. It is particularly amusing, because the people who repeat the argument have even less of an idea of what they mean than the people who originally concocted the statement. It just sounds all "science-ie."

- By "new information" do they mean *beneficial* information? If so then obviously such new information can occur by basic mutation because we see it every year in viruses that have developed new information that makes it resistant to last-year's flu virus ... certainly beneficial to the virus. I have actually had a creationist reply that this only means that the new information was there ahead of time ... in other words, seriously proposing that God put the genes for immunity to *every possible vaccine that would ever be invented by humans* into viruses at the time of Creation!

- If by "new information" they mean a simple increase in the amount of genetic information (the number of base-pairs or genes), then obviously, a simple gene duplication generates such "new information."

- If by "new information" they mean "different information", in other words a gene different from one that existed beforehand, then obviously, a simple gene transcription error makes a gene different from how it was.

- If by "new information" they mean both added and different, then the combination of a gene duplication followed (perhaps generations later) by a transcription error on one of the duplicate copies, produces such a new gene.

If by "new information" they don't mean any of the above ... then what the heck *do* they mean?

It is a bogus red-herring argument.

Answer 3

Evolution occurs because of evolution. There are deletions, which cause certain parts of the DNA to be missing. However, there are also additions, situations in which a section of DNA is copied. Additions add to the length of DNA and can explain many adaptations. Take hemoglobin for example. (Hemoglobin is a molecule that allows red blood cells to carry air throughout the body.) Hemoglobin comes in several different varieties: alpha, beta, gamma, etc. However, scientists believe that originally, there was only beta hemoglobin. Later, the gene for hemoglobin copied itself. After some mutations, either the original or the copy changed into alpha hemoglobin. This process occured several times, resulting in many different types of hemoglobin in the human body.

Be careful when listening to people like the one mentioned in your question. Just because a person is quoted does not tell you a) if the quote is what was actually said b) if the source is credible c) what led the person quoted to make the comment or d) if the quote's assertion is true.
For example, I can say the following: "Albert Einstein once said, 'The Earth is flat.' " However, just because I said this is no reason for you to start believing that the Earth is flat.

Answer 4

Suppose that one day you decided to go on vacation, so you got your suitcase down from the closet where you had kept it for years and discovered that you no longer remembered the combination to the lock. Oops.

Lacking any better ideas, you decided to just pick random numbers. You spin a dial and see if it opens. If it doesn't, you spin another one. Given a long enough time, you will probably be able to eventually open your suitcase... in fact, it seems almost indisputable that you will EVENTUALLY. How long it takes just depends on how lucky you are, but I think most of us would expect such a task to take hours.

Now... where did the information about the correct combination for your lock come from? You didn't know it. You were picking numbers randomly. To someone not versed in such things, it might seem to have come from nowhere. In fact, the information about your combination came from THE LOCK. You tested each random code against the lock to see if it opened, and it was the lock that selected the one that actually worked.

Evolution works in the same way. Copying strands of DNA without error produces no new information. Introducing errors in the copy produces different combinations... but like the combinations in your luggage, most of them won't work too well and will be discarded. But every now and then, one of them WILL work. And it is the ENVIRONMENT that determines this through 'natural selection'.

In this way, it might be said that a creature is a description of their environment just as your combination is a description of the tumblers inside your lock. Something with gills probably NEEDS gills. Something that is tall probably NEEDS to be tall. And so on. Because the environment chooses, creatures tend to be ones that do well in that environment. And because the environment often changes, creatures are often changing too.

Depending on how you look at it, you might say that evolution is really just copying information about the environment. Or you might say that the energy necessary to drive evolution is producing information and garbage and that the environment just gets rid of the garbage. It depends on your precise definitions of the terms involved. But it actually works pretty well.

Answer 5

No. There are clear cases of information gain. In an experiment, a known strain of yeast was challenged in a glucose poor environment. The analysis of a strain that had evolved after 450 generations showed that it had three copies of a new, hybrid gene for a glucose uptake transporter. It required at least two events for this to occur. Since a novel sequence existed and more functional mRNA was produced, information was gained.

Answer 6

your talking about 2 very subjects. The first is genetic mutation and the second is genitic degeration. Mutation is what is said to have started the diveristy of life we now enjoy on this planet. That is casused be the forming of geans by division and reformation as a mannor of reproduction. Genetic degeration is caused by errors made when dna is copied to make a new cell. While this can lead to evealution it is not the cause of it because the changes are so small that it can not possably be repeated enough in a orginisms lifetime to cause any drastic eveolution.

Answer 7

No, mutations are creating new "functionality" all of the time. Most of it is bad, which gets de-selected (i.e. the poor critter doesn't survive), but some of it is good and/or better than what was there before.

Many mutations happen during replication. It isn't a perfect process, which is just as well, since if it was, we would not have evolved to what we are.

Answer 8

jim: "Scientists, because they have no faith in the God of the bible would like you to see a variety of bears and then swallow that this means bears are related to acorns." "The real reason why this evolutionary teaching is around is because men did not want to regard God" 40% of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences believe in a personal god. That's over 50,000 scientists who believe and god and know evolution to be true. Sort of blows your whole little conspiracy theory out of the water, doesn't it? You know why they support evolution? Because it's a demonstratable fact that's been directly observed many times. You're century old apologetics are horribly out of date. The correct answer is A.

Answer 9

It turns out to be a very difficult thing to define the concept of information. In any reasonable definition, however, the information in a genome can increase in a number of different ways: duplication and mutation is a very common way. While the duplication itself usually is not said to increase information, the mutation (and natural selection) afterwards does.

Answer 10

Only if the new information is introduced from an external source and spliced into DNA for potential replication....we have yet to figure out to do that without the loss of the entire project....unless somebody else somewhere else has done it and then I would be curious to see that....we have tried to genetically alter our DNA and then replicate or procreate the same thing but it's a highly unstable process and the results have been to this point unsatisfactory....however I would like to point out that vaccinations are an attempt/form of genetic alteration....some people now are born with natural immunitites to certain things that have taken years and years for us to duplicate and then introduce into the human DNA system as part of the "original" package. I think environmental factors probably have a greater success rate at genetic evolution than anything we can create in our "labs"