So, we’ve been talking about directed mutations a bit the last few days, whether reactivating pseudogenes, or recognizing that cells can direct mutations to genes that need mutating. The point that I made to Bob was that there is a middle ground between “general mutation rate” and “mutations going to a specific base pair that needs changing”. There’s a HUGE middle ground that is decidedly non-Darwinian. As far as I’m aware, I’m the only one who has attempted to come up with a measurement for this phenomena. The paper, published a year and a half ago, is titled Measuring Active Information in Biological Systems. Essentially, this shows how we can use the Dembski/Marks “Active Information” metric, which Dembski/Marks/Ewert use to Read More ›

One thing that I’ve found interesting is how ignorant many people – even many biologists! – are about the mutational processes in the cell. The idea that mutations come from copying “errors” is so embedded in our collective consciousness, that it is hard to get people to even fathom alternatives. Thinking of mutation as a biological process – one under the organization/direction of the cell – leads to a lot of interesting biology. There are indeed copying errors, but my guess is that by the end of the century we will find that the ones that are actually errors are by far the least numerous. This is like the discovery of microbes. We first found them *because* they caused disease. Read More ›