John W Burgeson writes:
[...]
>In defense of Bert, who probably ought to have expanded on his one-liner,
>I don't see that as a fair rebuttal. AFAIK, the concept that all
>variations arise only from mutations, while a plausible mechanism for
>evolutionary change, is only that, and a different mechanism is certainly
>possible. At least conceptually. [...]
I tend to group recombination, duplication, deletion, insertion and point
replacements within the general category of "mutations". Recombination may
generate novel sequences (new genes and even new chromosomes) in novel
contexts.
But given the information -- 14 variants on average for each of 30,000
genes -- it still holds that this is hard to accommodate under models
which propose a recent, single-point origin for humans. And that suggested
bottleneck would post-date Noah, and not Adam, by some popular accounts.
Quite possibly an example of CSI, if true.
I suspect the case is even more obvious for chimps, which as a species (or
two) have apparently maintained greater genetic variation than humans.
Regards,
Tim Ikeda (tikeda@sprintmail.com)
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