nyj
Goodbye, my puppy
- Feb 5, 2002
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I don't know why you have resorted once again to misrepresenting my position. Perhaps it is because your own position is untenable and you got caught with your pants down because you didn't know of reductive evolution. I never claimed that complexity and information is related to the size of the genome, I claimed that it is possible (though not the only means) for an organism to evolve by dropping information, which would result in it's losing the ability to perform certain functions. In these particular cases, it would most definitely be a loss of complexity.
If you had any clue, you'd realize that G+C content is the first and simplest way to scan a genome to look for foreign DNA. You cannot compare 1.5 million base pairs of DNA that is one organism that isn't in another, can you? If the G+C content of that extra 1.5 MB though is divergent from that of the sequence you can compare however one can surmise that that DNA was not 'donated' to the larger genome by a common ancestor but rather was acquired from another species (either bacteria or more likely phage).
You are really hung up on this G+C content business when all it's showing is that there was no major foreign acceptance of DNA on the part of Bb which does, clearly indicate, that Bp has lost information while Bb has strayed less from the common ancestor. If Bb had acquired a large dose of information in the form of foreign DNA, the G+C scan of the genome would indicate such (phage DNA is typically in the 30% G+C range whereas Bb is in the 50% G+C range).
Then how do you explain the following in that very abstract?
Mycobacterium leprae has the longest doubling time of all known bacteria and has thwarted every effort at culture in the laboratory.
M. leprae, an obligate intracellular pathogen, grows worse. One would think that by dropping this redundant machinery, that it would grow as well, or perhaps better. In this instance, it grows much much worse.
Also, Bp is not an obligate intracellular pathogen but went through a similar (but not as drastic) reductive evolutionary process. How do you explain this?
Lucaspa, is this typical of the way you argue... misrepresenting your opponents argument? If you can't find where I said that evolution is always a loss of information, something that is ridiculous in and of itself, I expect you to retract this comment.
I don't know how you came to this conclusion. The abstract states that the genes in mitochondria and R. prowazekii were lost because those functions were found in the host. The abstract never states that the genes were transfered... you need to read the abstract better. This is a case of reductive evolution. It is the same exact thing that happened to M. leprae
So because they don't use the term "reductive evolution" it means that it isn't? Are you kidding me? This is the same exact thing that we're seeing with M. leprae, but to a lesser extent (given the much higher proportion of pseudogenes in M. leprae as compared to R. prowazekii.
In closing, I said:
To which you replied:
Hmmm... if the loss of 1.5MB in Bp, dropout of ~24% of the genes in R. prowazekii and over 50% in M. leprae cannot be considered a loss of information, exactly what would you consider a loss in information?
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