Timeline for Evolution: How could all useful traits evolve simultaneously?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
9 events
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| Apr 12, 2019 at 10:45 | comment | added | user38945 | The question about the "improbability of all traits" has a hidden assumption: that traits have had a given function since they appeared. This is not true however. Hemocyanin is an oxygen carrier today, but in the past protected anaerobic life forms. Feathers allow flight today, but they probably began as "tendrils" that allowed insulation, only to later "branch" and improve this function. | |
| Feb 21, 2019 at 18:53 | comment | added | Remi.b | Well, it depends which study you look at (consider finding some numbers on bionumbers). I would personally tend to think that the standard error for this kind of study is large enough so that whether or not we consider genomic rearrangements is negligible in the estimate as those mutations are relatively rare. That is just my opinion though.You might find some estimates of the relative frequencies of the different types of mutations in the work of Sharp | |
| Feb 21, 2019 at 18:42 | comment | added | user38945 | @Remi.b By "mutation rate" do you refer to any kind of mutation, or only nucleotide substitution? So far, I haven't encountered the rate for genomic rearrangements (duplications, deletions...). | |
| Apr 12, 2014 at 16:55 | history | edited | Remi.b | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 160 characters in body
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| Apr 12, 2014 at 15:44 | vote | accept | isarandi | ||
| Apr 12, 2014 at 14:42 | comment | added | Remi.b | @quorilla You might want to go for few lectures concerning the concept of "Muller's ratchet". The absence/presence of recombination is a very interesting subject. For example, it is the absence of recombination between the chromosomes X and Y that causes the Y chromosome to shrink. | |
| Apr 12, 2014 at 14:35 | comment | added | isarandi | Thanks. I think sexual recombination is the key to the answer to my question. It would allow the population to mutate in many different directions in parallel and then "merge" the successful mutations together later on. Very interesting! I never realized that recombination is so crucial in this regard. | |
| Apr 12, 2014 at 14:14 | history | edited | kmm | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Fix mathjax
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| Apr 12, 2014 at 14:04 | history | answered | Remi.b | CC BY-SA 3.0 |