How do new genes evolve?

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jonperry
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How do new genes evolve?

Post by jonperry » Wed Mar 23, 2016 6:16 pm

At Stated Clearly we've recently finished a new animation on how new genes evolve. I think this will be of particular interest here as many of you, including Steve Gregg during our debate a few years back, have been asking how this happens. In the past I've responded by sending people scientific papers or by quickly summarizing the research that's been done on this but now I have an animation explaining clearly how it works, and giving 3 well studied examples:

http://statedclearly.com/videos/gene-duplications/

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morbo3000
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Re: How do new genes evolve?

Post by morbo3000 » Wed Mar 23, 2016 11:51 pm

Good stuff Jon. Keep up the good work!


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Re: How do new genes evolve?

Post by dizerner » Wed Mar 23, 2016 11:58 pm

Nice video. I'd love to see you add something on dissipative adaptation or similar ideas.

http://nautil.us/issue/34/adaptation/ho ... in-physics
https://santitafarella.wordpress.com/20 ... les-darwin

Popular hypotheses [for the origin of life] credit a primordial soup, a bolt of lightning and a colossal stroke of luck. But if a provocative new theory is correct, luck may have little to do with it. Instead, […] the origin and subsequent evolution of life follow from the fundamental laws of nature and “should be as unsurprising as rocks rolling downhill.”

From the standpoint of physics, there is one essential difference between living things and inanimate clumps of carbon atoms: The former tend to be much better at capturing energy from their environment and dissipating that energy as heat. Jeremy England […] has derived a mathematical formula that he believes explains this capacity. The formula, based on established physics, indicates that when a group of atoms is driven by an external source of energy (like the sun or chemical fuel) and surrounded by a heat bath (like the ocean or atmosphere), it will often gradually restructure itself in order to dissipate increasingly more energy....

If England’s approach stands up to more testing, it could further liberate biologists from seeking a Darwinian explanation for every adaptation and allow them to think more generally in terms of dissipation-driven organization. They might find, for example, that “the reason that an organism shows characteristic X rather than Y may not be because X is more fit than Y, but because physical constraints make it easier for X to evolve than for Y to evolve,” Louis said.

Another researcher, Mara Prentiss, is also reported in the profile as contemplating tests for Jeremy England’s idea:

Prentiss, who runs an experimental biophysics lab at Harvard, says England’s theory could be tested by comparing cells with different mutations and looking for a correlation between the amount of energy the cells dissipate and their replication rates. “One has to be careful because any mutation might do many things,” she said. “But if one kept doing many of these experiments on different systems and if [dissipation and replication success] are indeed correlated, that would suggest this is the correct organizing principle.”

The correct organizing principle. Wow. There it is. The whole evolutionary shebang.

Not just an idea, but math. It should be emphasized that what England has put forward is an idea that he has formalized into a mathematical formula, which means that it can be used to make predictions (and be subject to rigorous real world testing):

His idea, detailed in a recent paper and further elaborated in a talk he is delivering at universities around the world, has sparked controversy among his colleagues, who see it as either tenuous or a potential breakthrough, or both. […]

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jonperry
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Re: How do new genes evolve?

Post by jonperry » Mon Mar 28, 2016 8:32 pm

That's not a very fair explanation they give of the primordial soup hypothesis. Life origins chemistry is an active field of research. We're finding lots of fascinating ways in which polymers could have evolved before the formation of the first cells.

Jeremy England’s stuff is still in it's infant stages as a scientific idea. If anything comes of it I'd love to do a video about it.

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