On Sun, 05 Jul 1998 15:54:43 -0500, Glenn R. Morton wrote:
[continued
GM>...When a new predator begins preying on a plant, the plant
>population has a better chance of surviving if a mutation occurs in some
>members to produce a toxin which makes the predator sick. As those
>plants with toxin become more prevalent, the predator now may find
>itself better able to survive if a few mutations take place in some of their
>members which enables the species to produce an antidote to the toxin.
>In this way the environment of the plant has transmitted information into
>the genome of the plant and the environment of the predator then
>receives information that an antidote is beneficial. Note that the
>information received by the predator is not information on how to
>manufacture the toxin, but the opposite, how to nullify it.
First, this is not necessarily *net* new information. It may be a net *loss*
of information *in total*. For example, a mutation may be selected for in a
new environment, but that puts it at a disadvantage in all other
environments. Some highly adapted species are on the verge of extinction
because their adaptations are too specific. Examples are the Cheetah, the
Koala. Also, some bacteria that live in hospital environments that are highly
resistant to strong bactericides, cannot survive outside the hospital. Cave-
dwelling animals which have lost their vision is another example.
Second, if it was new information in Information Theory terms, it is not
necessarily new information in the biological sense of the term:
"...information theory, which Claude Shannon, a mathematician at
Bell Laboratories, spawned in 1948 with a two-part paper titled A
Mathematical Theory of Communication." Shannon's great
achievement was to invent a mathematical definition of information
based on the concept of entropy in thermodynamics. Unlike
cybernetics, information theory continues to thrive-within the niche
for which it was intended. Shannon's theory was designed to improve
the transmission of information over a telephone or telegraph line
subject to electrical interference, or noise. The theory still serves as
the theoretical foundation for coding, compression, encryption, and
other aspects of information processing. By the 1960s information
theory had infected other disciplines outside communications
including linguistics, psychology, economics, biology, and even the
arts. (For example, various sages tried to concoct formulas relating
the quality of music to its information content.) Although information
theory is enjoying a renaissance in physics as a result of they influence
of John Wheeler (the it from bit) and others, it has yet t contribute to
physics in any concrete way. Shannon himself doubted whether
certain applications of his theory would come to much. "Somehow
people think it can tell you things about meanings he once said to me
"but it can't and wasn't intended to." (Shannon C., Interview by
Horgan J., November 1989) (Horgan J., "The End of Science," 1997,
pp207-208)
See also my post to Brian re Dawkins METHINKS IT IS LIKE A
WEASEL simulation where information content actually declined as
random mutations and cumulative selection approached the target phrase.
Third, even if it was information in both Information Theory and biological
terms, it would not necessarily add up to new information in a *macro-
evolutionary" sense.
GM>The creationist Lee Spetner wrote:
>
>"If we consider the genetic information of a species we find evolutionary
>theory implies that as the environment changes, so the genetic information
>changes. This is a requirement of any evolutionary theory that attempts to
>account for the widespread adaptivity found in the biological world. In
>particular in the modern synthetic theory of evolution, random mutation
>produces an assortment of genotypes of which one or more is favored by
>the environment. The result is that there is a kind of information-
>transmission taking place from the environment to the genetic information
>storage of the species. The mechanism by means of which this information
>is transmitted is natural selection." ." ~ L. M. Spetner, "Natural Selection:
>An Information-Transmission Mechanism for Evolution," Journal of
>Theoretical Biology, 7(1964):412-429, p. 412
>
>and
>
>"The process by which such evolution is realized can be considered a
>transmission of information from the environment into the genetic storage
>of the organism. The information so transmitted will be referred to as
>adaptive information and any theory of evolution can be characterized by
>the mechanism it proposes for the transmission of such information." ~
>Lee M. Spetner, "Information Transmission in Evolution," IEEE
>Transactions on Information Theory Vol IT-14 January 1968, p. 3-6, p. 3
I have ordered both articles but it will probably be a month or two before I
get them. I have also ordered Yockey's "Information Theory and Molecular
Biology", but that will probably take 2-3 months to reach the antipodes.
GM>Spetner is correct that natural selection acts as an information
>transmission mechanism taking information from the environment and
>placing it into the genome. This, from a creationist, is exactly where the
>information comes from which drives evolution.
It is not clear from the quotes whether Spetner actually agreed with this in
1964 and 1968 (ie. *thirty* years ago), or whether he is just stating what
"evolutionary theory implies." But if he did believe that he does not appear
to agree with it *today*.
"Information theory, which was introduced as a discipline about half a
century ago by Claude Shannon, has thrown new light on this problem. It
turns out that random variation cannot lead to large evolutionary changes.
The information required for large- scale evolution cannot come from
random variations. There are cases in which random mutations do lead to
evolution on a small scale. But it turns out that, in these instances, no
information is added to the organism. Most often, information is lost. A
process that adds no heritable information into the organism cannot lead to
the grand evolutionary advances envisioned by the neo- Darwinians."
(Spetner L.M., "Not by Chance!" 1997 revised, p.vii)
I have drawn Lee Spetner's attention to the post at:
http://www.calvin.edu/archive/evolution/199807/0034.html in case he wants
to reply to Glenn's critique.
GM>But Spetner's contention requires that there be information in the
>environment. And there is.
First, while there may be "information" (in an Information Theory sense)
"in the environment", to date I have seen nothing from a reputable
Information Theory source that this is so. Second, it is not clear that this
has any relevance to the information in living systems.
GM>Spetner is not dealing with the origin of life, but with the creation and
>transmission of new information after life has already been created.
This is begging the question: "an argument where the conclusion is sneaked
into the premises." (Geisler N.L. & Brooks R.M, "Come, Let Us Reason,
1990, p100). Spetner's quotes above refer only to the *transmission* of
information and he does not even say that it is *new* information.
GM>Spetner's methodology requires that there be information in the
>environment of an animal which is able to be transmitted. Since this will
>probably be a novel concept to many we will examine this aspect of the
>environment.
See above. It is not clear that this *was* and *is* "Spetner's
methodology". He is only stating in the above quotes what "evolutionary
theory implies".
GM>How much information exists in the environment of an animal? Well
>the environment consists both of the organic and inorganic world with
>which the organism interacts. Predominantly a living organism relates to
>other living organisms more than to the inorganic world. So, in the spirit
>of Spetner's observation, we will estimate a lower limit to the information
>in the biosphere.
>
>Humans have approximately 100,000 genes (150,000 by some accounts
>[Isaac Asimov, The Genetic Code, (New York: The New American
>Library, 1962), p. 179]) Assume that the average protein is 200 amino
>acids long and let us use Yockey's value of 2.119 bits/ amino acid
>(calculated from cytochrome c) as the amount of information of the
>average site in a protein(H. P. Yockey, Information Theory and
>Molecular Biology, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p.
>172).
This seems to me to be an `apples' and `oranges' comparison. Genes and
proteins are entirely different things. Genes are made of *nucleic* acid,
whereas proteins are made of *amino* acids:
"...a gene is a sequence of DNA nucleotide bases that code for a product."
(Mader S.S., "Biology," 1990, p243)
"Amino acids are the monomers that undergo condensation to form
proteins, very large molecules that have both structural and metabolic
functions." (Mader S.S., 1990, p46)
GM>What we find is that the amount of protein information in human
proteins is:
>
>100,000 x 200 x 2.119= 4.2 x 10^6 = 42 million bits of information.
In any event, this is a flawed calculation. About 95% of the genome is non-
coding `junk' DNA and introns:
"Actually, the effective information in DNA is much less than six billion
bits because only five per cent of our DNA is used as data by the human
body...The other 95 per cent is so-called junk DNA or introns, which
contain information not used by the target system. Some of this data can be
seen figuratively as stop bits or parity bits- information used internally for
error correction and preservation of the genetic signal." (Valdes R., "What
is BioComputing?", Australian Personal Computer, April 1991, p78)
GM>If we assume that half this value represents the proteinaceous
>information of the average organism
Apart from the above errors, this assumes, without any evidence cited that
the humans genome contains twice as many genes as the average organism.
GM>then given 10,000,000 species on earth, we have
>
>21,000,000 x 10,000,000= 2.1 x 10^14 bits of information in the protein
>instructions for each species.
This misunderstand information theory, which only counts a bit if it is
*new* information:
"Shannon restricted himself to information that expressed something new,
so that, briefly information content = measure of newness, where
"newness" does not refer to a new idea, a new thought, or fresh news -
which would have encompassed an aspect of meaning. But it only concerns
the surprise effect produced by a rarely occurring symbol. Shannon regards
a message as information only if it cannot be completely ascertained
beforehand, so that information is a measure of the unlikeliness of an event.
An extremely unlikely message is thus accorded a high information
content." (Gitt W., "In the Beginning was Information," 1997, p170)
Since the vast majority of these species have the same proteins as those in
their taxonomic categories, the amount of new information (and hence
information in Information Theory terms) is much less than that.
GM>But this is not all, given that our genomes are not identical and are
>not merely clones-- each individual of each species has a unique genetic
>inheritance--then assuming that there are 100 billion individual organisms
>on earth(this figure would exclude microscopic life forms), this leads us
>to the conclusion that there are at least 2.1 x 10^25 bits of information.
>In the proteins of the biosphere.
See above. Most of these genes would be the same, so the bits of *new*
information (and hence Information Theory information) would be much
less.
GM>Information is not conserved as is energy. If information were
>conserved, we humans would be unable to double the database of human
>knowledge every few years. Information is created by the expenditure of
>energy according to the relation
>
>Del (I) < or = Del (E) / k T ln2
>
>Where Del (I) is the change in information
>Del (E) is the change in energy
>k. is the Boltzman constant
>T is the temperature in Kelvin.
>
>(Barrow and Tipler, The Anthropic Principle, (New York: Oxford
University
>Press, 1986) p. 660-62)
Barrow and Tipler say that this formula gives "The absolute minimum
amount of energy required to PROCESS a given amount of information..."
(Barrow J.D. & Tipler F.J. "The Anthropic Cosmological Principle," 1996
reissue, p661), not how much "Information is CREATED by the
expenditure of energy" (my emphasis).
GM>What this means is that the information content in our genes is not the
>entire complement of information that we will have throughout our lives.
>The expenditure of energy creates our bodies, our memories, and human
>knowledge. In this fashion the total informational content of the adult
>human vastly exceeds that of the genome itself. The human brain has
>10^15 dendritic connections (Frank J Tipler, The Physics of Immortality,
>(New York: Doubleday, 1994), p. 22) And if each connection requires 1
>bit (and I think it requires more than 1 bit), these connections alone
>represent a billion times more information in a living human brain than
>exists in the proteins. How is this information developed? It is developed
>by the expenditure of energy during human development. So starting with
>and initial quantity of information each individual creates more during
>growth and development. As I have noted elsewhere there is not enough
>information in the entire DNA to code for the locations of the synaptic
>connections in the brain.
>(http://www.calvin.edu/archive/asa/199710/0403.html) the original post
>(http://www.calvin.edu/archive/asa/199710/0405.html) A correction.
I have read somewhere that is is true in general of *all* organisms, not just
the human brain, that there is not enough information in DNA to code for
the whole organism. When I find the reference I will post it.
Also, that there is "expenditure of energy during human development" does
not necessarily mean that "information" is "developed by the expenditure of
energy."
GM>Given 6 billion people on earth, the information stored in the synaptic
>connections of the brains yields 6 x 10^24 bits of information in human
>brains alone! This doesn't account for the brains of other animals
Since most human brains are very similar in structure, the amount of *new*
information (which is what Information Theory is concverned with), may
be much less than this.
GM>Given the above, the environment of any animal contains a minimum
>of 10^25 bits of information in the biosphere which is capable of being
>transmitted to any population in its evolution.
See above. Because only 5% of the genes in human DNA are coding, these
numbers are vastly overestimated. And it is not clear what connection there
is between the above and this switch from the animal (ie. organism) to "the
environment of any animal".
GM>So, we can conclude that there is much information which can flow
>from the environment into the genome.
That may be true, but I cannot see how that conclusion is drawn from the
foregoing.
GM>But can the transmission of information occur rapidly enough to drive
>evolution. Spetner, in his Journal of Theoretical Biology article says
>'No'. But there is a flaw in his argument. His argument was constructed
>prior to one important discovery and failed to properly account for a fact
>about biological systems from an information point of view. Spetner
>attempts to show that given the observed reproduction rates, the
>informational transmission rate is too slow. His assumption is where he
>fails to be convincing. He writes: "Let the genetic information storage F,
>consist of a sequence of n+l symbols, where l of them represent essential
>information that has already been transmitted from the environment while
>the remaining n are random. These two component sequences need not,
of >course, be physically separated, but they each may be distributed in any
>way over the entire sequence. We shall compute the average number of
>trials necessary to achieve by chance alone a specific sequence of n
>symbols." ~ L. M. Spetner, "Natural Selection: An Information-
>Transmission Mechanism for Evolution," Journal of Theoretical
>Biology, 7(1964):412- 429, p. 415
>
>The last sentence is his assumption and it is where he errs in his quest.
>By this assumption he is stating that there is one and ONLY ONE
>sequence of n symbols which will perform the FUNCTION he desires to
>evolve. Indeed Spetner makes this claim in his abstract. He states:
>
>"The information-transmission rate possible for natural selection is
>computed as the average number of trials (i.e. births) necessary to specify
>a unique nucleotide sequence of length n."~L. M. Spetner, "Natural
>Selection: An Information-Transmission Mechanism for Evolution,"
>Journal of Theoretical Biology, 7(1964):412-429, p. 412
Spetner says nothing about *function* in the above.
GM>But any anti-evolutionary probability argument is erroneous if it
claims
>that only a single unique sequence can perform a given function. This
>simply isn't observationally true. In almost all functional biological
>molecules there are hundreds of billions of FUNCTIONAL versions. For
>instance, cow, sheep, pig etc insulins are all different from human insulin
>in their sequence, but they can all be injected into a human and they will
>perform well enough to keep the person alive for years. Do they work as
>efficiently as human insulin? No, but they do perform the function of
>human insulin in spite of having a different sequence. In 1977 Yockey
>calculated that there were 10^61 different sequences which could perform
>the function of cytochrome c. (Yockey, "A Calculation of the Probability
of
> Spontaneous Biogenesis by Information Theory," Journal of Theoretical
>Biology, 67(1977):377-398). By 1992 new discoveries had increased that
>number to 10^93 different protein sequences which perform the specific
>function of cytochrome c. (Yockey Information Theory and Molecular
>Biology, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 59) This is
an
>increase of 32 orders of magnitude in the likelihood of finding a
>cytochrome c sequence in only 15 years!
The above proves Spetner's point. It is not an increase in biological
information if a mutation leads to a *loss* of function:
"The neo-Darwinians would like us to believe that large evolutionary
changes can result from a series of small events if there are enough of
them. But if these events all lose information they can't be the steps in the
kind of evolution the NDT is supposed to explain, no matter how many
mutations there are. Whoever thinks macroevolution can be made by
mutations that lose information is like the merchant who lost a little money
on every sale but thought he could make it up on volume." (Spetner L.M.,
"Not by Chance!" 1997 revised, p160)
[...]
GM>What this shows is that natural selection's information transmission
>capacity is sufficient for the construction of any viable sequence length
>less than 10^92 nucleotides long in 10^7 generations. , If a generation
>consists of a year, then this represents 10 million years of evolution.
>Since most genomes are only of the order of 10^12 nucleotides , this is
>plenty of channel capacity.
>
>The information which the environment is transmitting to the genome is
>information concerning alterations of the environment. Once an organism
>has received the 'message' and is adapted to the environment, there is
>little morphological change because the already received 'message' is
>repeated.. But when the environment alters the channel capacity is not a
>limiting factor in the organism changing.
Whatever the theoretical ability of random mutations and natural selection
to build information, the fact is that Spetner claims that there are no cases
where it actually happens:
"None of the above examples show the kind of mutations the NDT needs.
In fact, there are no known cases of evolution that meet the conditions of
cumulative selection. There are some known cases of evolution with
copying errors, but they show only a kind of microevolution that one
cannot extend to macroevolution. None of them adds information. All that
I know of, actually lose information. There are no known examples of
copying errors that have been observed and that have been studied on the
molecular level that qualify to be a step in cumulative selection." (Spetner
L.M., "Not by Chance!", 1997 revised, p107)
GM>I would like to thank the three gentlemen who helped me on this.
>Their help was invaluable in shaping this report. I will not name them
>since in this fashion they can dissociate themselves from the views (one
>is not an evolutionist) and from any errors that might be found in this in
>the future. I am the responsible party for any errors.
Noted!
Steve
"Evolution is the greatest engine of atheism ever invented."
--- Dr. William Provine, Professor of History and Biology, Cornell University.
http://fp.bio.utk.edu/darwin/1998/slides_view/Slide_7.html
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