Quote:
Originally Posted by GuyNTexas
What an idiotic thing to say! Unless your name is Webster, we won't be recognizing any old jumble of letters you might toss together randomly, or consider your spelling errors as new words with meaning.
Just to make it clear to you ... language has structure, be it the English language, the C programming language, or the code contained in your damned DNA. And no ... you can't just make up a new language or new words as you see fit, and neither can your genes.
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I'm not talking about adding random words at will. I'm talking about the fact that new words do arise in populations of people, emerge, and either flourish or die out and they utilize the same alphabet that all the other words in the English language use.
Slang is a popular example of this because it changes so rapidly and sometimes that slang sticks to the point that it actually becomes a part of the English language.
My point is that the information that DNA uses is not dramatically different from the alphabet. Instead of twenty-six letters, though, it uses four. A,G,C, and T - which stand for Adenine, Guanine, Cytosine, and Thymine. They basically make up a "word" or, rather, a codon when they are put in threes.
For example, the amino acid leucine is coded by several different combinations but, for example's sake, AAC, or Adenine, Adenine, Cytosine codes for it. If there is a transcription error in the DNA, and it changes from AAC to AAT it is still going to code for leucine. This is called a "synonymous" mutation and typically has no effect on the organism.
But, let's take our same leucine codon and throw another transcription error in there. Let's say that instead of AAT or AAC, the transcription error now codes for AAG. At that point, the codon no longer codes for leucine but now codes for phenylalanine. This is called a non-synonymous mutation and can either be helpful or hurtful to the organism. Typically, scientists will do a "gene sweep" of a given population to determine the number of synonymous and non-synonymous mutations to determine the "K Factor" - a number used in population dynamics - to see if a non-synonymous mutation is a positively selected change. If it has a "K Factor" greater than 1 it is considered to be a positive mutation, if it is less than 1 but greater than -1 than it is neutral and if it's less than -1 than it's considered a negative change.
One prime example of this was the FOXP2 gene in humans as compared to other primates. The FOXP2 gene is often attributed to our ability to have speech, and is widely seen in animals all over the animal kingdom - though with a number of variations. Songbirds express the gene, as do echolocating bats, and of course, humans have it too. There are a vast number of animals that have the gene but there are various mutations in it which have been positively selected over the years. We share the same gene with primates but ours has a number of changes to it that separate us from the rest of the animal kingdom - as well as other primates.
Or, you could just stick with the non-scientific version and go with the Earth is 6000 years old and was created magically and the Flintstones is a documentary.
Here's a nice little scientific article on the FOXP2 gene from MIT.
http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/dm/foxp2.pdf
I suppose you have an equivalent kind of paper from well-respected institutes that can detect "designedness" in species and can account for changes such as this?
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