>>The data he offered (the "59 alleles of MHC genes") lacks
>this necessary information. Glenn ASSUMED (out of thin air) that SIX
>substitutions are necessary. He is wrong for doing that. That data for
>typical genes shows no such thing. <<
I did not assume any number of mutations for the number of substitions in the
MHC complex. If you will go read the posts carefully, the six came from an
example of how to calculate the problem, nothing more. I gave an example of
a sequence with six substitutions. Never did I say that only six were
required to form a new allele.
Jim used the six in his calculation. I was responding to Jim. Jim got the
six from me when I mentioned how many alleles on average must come from the
10 alleles on the ark. On the ark there could only be 10 alleles. Today
there are 59.. Thus on average each allele on the ark must have given rise
to 6 new alleles. If you haven't noticed, 59/10 ~ 6.
This is where the 6 came from. So Please, PRETTY PLEASE, if you are going to
attack what I say, please understand what I am saying.
I think most reasonable people will realize that I have not made the
assumption Walter is saying I made.
Below is The history of what I said, using the number 6.
I wrote on 95-09-07 13:39:55 EDT:
>>.Let me illustrate two alleles, using letters
in
place of nucleotides.
allele 1
abbdcbdabcdbabdbad
allele 2
aabbabdabccbabdcdd
If I counted correctly there are 6 differences between these two very short
alleles. If the logic of the situation requires that allele 2 be derived by
random substitution from allele 1 then what you have is one of those puzzles
I can never do, in which you are asked to go from the word "wore" to "bass"
by making a one letter substitution at each step always having a real word at
each step. In other words you can't have "wors" because that is not a word.
wore-ware-wart-dart-dare-bare-bars-bass<<<
and on the same date:
>>All 59 alleles must be derived from parent-child mutations from the 10
alleles on the ark. They must be derived in a pattern in which each gene on
the ark gives rise, on average to about 6 mutated genes today.<<<
I wrote on 95-09-08 01:53:18 EDT responding to Jim's use of six
substitutions.
:
> I think the problem is that you calculated the time necessary for a
given location to have six successive substitutions.
0001000000
0002000000
0003000000
etc...
rather than the required result,
6100203405
This is a gene, a sequence with 6 substituions. Since there are 1000
nucleotide locations in the gene, each location has a 1e-7 probability,
butthe probability for the whole gene is 1000 * 1e-7 = 1e-4 for the gene as a
whole.
*** end of my quote***
I also said that there were some amino acids coded for by 6 different DNA
triplets. Walter, is English your native tongue?
Is there an expert around here in population genetics who could do us all the
favor of getting involved here? If you want to tell me how wrong I am I will
bow before your expertise. Walter, would you make the same promise?
glenn