Title Author Date

Curious discovery about evolution T, P Nov 07, 2005

Hi

The sender writes computer simulations for molecular evolution and may have discovered something about how DNA evolves. Your email address was found by a relevant search on the internet and if you can spare a few minutes your view would be appreciated...

No-one sensible denies evolution, although some sensible people think that totally random genetic mutation, even after the action of natural selection, still cannot fully account for the rate at which species diverge from a common origin.

But it might be possible that an unknown source of mutation could change the speed of evolution while leaving it thoroughly based on Darwinian natural selection: because while it is impossible for most scientists to accept any intelligence behind species design, any design which occurred as a result of selectively advantageous cell chemistry ought to be completely acceptable.

Visit http://www.mutationengineer.homechoice.co.uk and you will see how a simple molecule could dramatically accelerate evolution in a way which might allow design without intelligence.

In a computer simulation the action of just such an agent threw out three surprising co-incidences :

It generated long sections of repeating short period junk DNA (a genetic mystery)
It explained how gene clusters of common origin could mutate in tandem (another genetic mystery)
It gave a powerful selective advantage to genes organised with introns (another genetic mystery).
The author accepts it's probably all rubbish. But what should you do when you stumble upon something which might make sense, and yet are disinclined to drop everything and become an experimental biologist?

My solution is to publish a website and share the information in the hope that someone picks up the baton.

PT (Nov 2005)

Title Author Date

Curious discovery about evolution TalkReason , Nov 07, 2005

Dear PT:

We have posted your letter here, and also have forwared it to a listserve which includes biologists, computer experts, and other specialists who may choose to reply. At this time we can only state that the idea of non-random mutations has been suggested a few
years ago by Lee Spetner in his book titled Not By Chance. This book has been strongly critisized (see, for example, on this site,
http://talkreason.org/articles/spetner.cfm and
http://talkreason.org/articles/spetner_v2.cfm). Besides containing a number of errors and fallacious contentions, Spetner's book did not contain any suggestions as to what mechanisms could be responsible for the supposed non-random mutations, and his implicit notion seemed to be attributing such supposed non-random mutation to a supernatural guiding hand. Your case seems to be different. As you seem to assert, your computer simulation has
revealed certain specific natural mechanisms whose analogy in the biosphere can be responsible for accelerated mutations and other relevant processes.
If this turns out to be true, it may be of considerable interest and that is why we have forwarded your letter to the mentioned listserve to possibly solicit replies from experts in the pertinent fields.

Talk Reason