Since this topic had not been part of my overall point, I have decided to treat it as a separate issue.
"I don't agree that frameshifts increase information. They simply change the information that is already there."
But it's how they do it that's important. Frameshift mutations are caused either by the addition of a nucleotide or by a deletion. An addition would increase the information content of the gene; a deletion would decrease it. Then there is the fact that the frameshift will produce a unique protein with an entirely new amino acid structure. This would increase the information content of the organism, but it might be counterbalanced by the loss of information caused by the loss of the previous protein. If, however, the new protein had a novel function, especially one that could never exist before, especially one that allowed the organism to exploit a new food source or survive in a hostile environment, that would represent a quite large increase in information, enough to absorb the decreases due to any losses and still come out ahead.
Kevin L. O'Brien