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In an article from Evolutionnews.org [2], Casey Luskin of the Discovery Institute attempted to critique a 2010 paper on the evolution of Antifreeze in Antarctic Eelpouts [1]. Although numerous claims were made throughout the article, I'll be focusing on Casey's calculations on gene duplication rates, since that seems to be the most significant argument he's making.
Casey goes on to calculate the time it should have taken for the Antarctic Eelpout to evolve 30 copies of the AFPIII gene in the following quote.
Quote:
Basically he's arguing that because genes duplicate at a rate of 0.01 per gene per million years, then it should take about 3 Billion years to get 30 copies of a gene.
And here's where my concerns with Casey's calculations begin. Casey failed to take into account that organisms can have thousands of genes, so even at a rate of 0.01 duplications per gene per million years can result in hundreds of duplicates in just a few million years.
Quote:
In addition to Casey's failures to properly calculate the rates of gene duplication... He also fails to take into account that not all genes evolve at the same rate. the rate of "0.01 duplicates per gene per million years" is only an average gene duplication rate for an entire genome.
To illustrate by way of example how flawed Casey's calculations are, here we have a paper describing how Dogs Evolved up to 28 copies of an amylase gene (AMY2B) in the last 15,000 years...a far far cry from the Billions of years Casey thinks is necessary to produce them.
Quote:
In conclusion we see that Casey had to both misrepresent the actual rates of gene duplication, and completely ignored observed duplication rates in order to make his "arguments" against the evolution of antifreeze in Antarctic Eelpouts. But what concerns me most about Casey's article is that ABSOLUTELY NO ONE at the Discovery Institute was able to point out the flaws within it. This just goes to highlight the lack of academic rigour being practiced at the Discovery Institute.
REFERENCES:
1) Evolution of an antifreeze protein by neofunctionalization under escape from adaptive conflict; Cheng Deng et al, 2010:
www.pnas.org
2) A Fishy Story About AntiFreeze Gene Evolution; Casey Luskin, 2011:
evolutionnews.org
3) The genomic signature of dog domestication reveals adaptation to a starch-rich diet; Erik Axelsson et al, 2013. [PDF]:
www.researchgate.net
4) Paper: Gene Duplication and Protein Evolution in Tick-Host Interactions; Ben. J. Mans et al, 2017:
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
In an article from Evolutionnews.org [2], Casey Luskin of the Discovery Institute attempted to critique a 2010 paper on the evolution of Antifreeze in Antarctic Eelpouts [1]. Although numerous claims were made throughout the article, I'll be focusing on Casey's calculations on gene duplication rates, since that seems to be the most significant argument he's making.
Casey goes on to calculate the time it should have taken for the Antarctic Eelpout to evolve 30 copies of the AFPIII gene in the following quote.
Quote:
Basically he's arguing that because genes duplicate at a rate of 0.01 per gene per million years, then it should take about 3 Billion years to get 30 copies of a gene.
And here's where my concerns with Casey's calculations begin. Casey failed to take into account that organisms can have thousands of genes, so even at a rate of 0.01 duplications per gene per million years can result in hundreds of duplicates in just a few million years.
Quote:
In addition to Casey's failures to properly calculate the rates of gene duplication... He also fails to take into account that not all genes evolve at the same rate. the rate of "0.01 duplicates per gene per million years" is only an average gene duplication rate for an entire genome.
To illustrate by way of example how flawed Casey's calculations are, here we have a paper describing how Dogs Evolved up to 28 copies of an amylase gene (AMY2B) in the last 15,000 years...a far far cry from the Billions of years Casey thinks is necessary to produce them.
Quote:
In conclusion we see that Casey had to both misrepresent the actual rates of gene duplication, and completely ignored observed duplication rates in order to make his "arguments" against the evolution of antifreeze in Antarctic Eelpouts. But what concerns me most about Casey's article is that ABSOLUTELY NO ONE at the Discovery Institute was able to point out the flaws within it. This just goes to highlight the lack of academic rigour being practiced at the Discovery Institute.
REFERENCES:
1) Evolution of an antifreeze protein by neofunctionalization under escape from adaptive conflict; Cheng Deng et al, 2010:
Evolution of an antifreeze protein by neofunctionalization under escape from adaptive conflict
The evolutionary model escape from adaptive conflict (EAC) posits that adaptive conflict between the old and an emerging new function within a single gene could drive the fixation of gene duplication, where each duplicate can freely optimize one of the functions. Although EAC has been suggested...
2) A Fishy Story About AntiFreeze Gene Evolution; Casey Luskin, 2011:
A Fishy Story About AntiFreeze Gene Evolution | Evolution News
A new paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences claims to explain the origin of an antifreeze protein in an Antarctic fish. Though touted by Darwinian activists (note: I’m talking about…
evolutionnews.org
3) The genomic signature of dog domestication reveals adaptation to a starch-rich diet; Erik Axelsson et al, 2013. [PDF]:
(PDF) The genomic signature of dog domestication reveals adaptation to a starch-rich diet
PDF | The domestication of dogs was an important episode in the development of human civilization. The precise timing and location of this event is... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate
www.researchgate.net
4) Paper: Gene Duplication and Protein Evolution in Tick-Host Interactions; Ben. J. Mans et al, 2017:
Gene Duplication and Protein Evolution in Tick-Host Interactions
Ticks modulate their hosts' defense responses by secreting a biopharmacopiea of hundreds to thousands of proteins and bioactive chemicals into the feeding site (tick-host interface). These molecules and their functions evolved over millions of years as ...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov