Posted: Feb 17, 2012 4:00 pm
Spearthrower wrote:Once again Joe. Can you spell out how this in any way, shape, or form damages the case for evolutionary theory?
Please be specific.
For 40 years we were brainwashed into believing that gene duplicates were the raw material for evolutionary innovation,. We were told that they diverged and acquired new functions. This paper reviews the literature in the introduction and shows how all the recent evidence shos that gene duplicates actually serve as useful backups and are retained as such by natural selection. It then conducts a computer simulation that demonstrates this compensatory effect and how the need to retain existing functionality supercedes any potential for novelty. In other words, it exposes a natural limit to biological change.