6days
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Greg Jennings said:And again, you are in way over your head. The number was pulled from my head because I don't remember if it was one in a 1,000,000 or 10,000,000 or 100,000,000 or 1,000,000,000 and it doesn't really matter what the exact ratio is.
What an interesting defence from someone caught fabricating. *
BTW.... An actual number, estimated by geneticists is that beneficial mutatations are about 1 in a million...NOT one in a million mutations, but 1 beneficial mutation per 1 million deleterious mutations. (Gerrish and Lenski, 1998). So based on those numbers you know natural selection is not removing many of these harmful mutations or we would not exist. It does indicate, we have declining fitness.*
Although that may be what they taught you in grade 9 science.... but there is more to the story. Although the vast majority of mutations are referred to as 'neutral', it does not mean they have zero impact. From the tens of thousands of mutations we inherit.... then pass these to the next generation along with a few more, we can't say even one of those mutations has zero effect. Every geneticist would likely agree that these mutations are 'near neutral'. (Kimura graphs these, in a phrase he coined 'zone of near neutrality). *These mutatations accumulate in genomes...causing problems to future genetations. One geneticist referred to this as "the population bomb".*Greg Jennings said:The point is very very few mutations are anything but neutral, and most of those are negative.