Originally Posted by borked

Nope, I think you misunderstand evolution. Our bases mutate every second of every day. The cell mostly corrects these mutations, but quite a lot get through, because they are silent (ie they are silent mutations) or they are in a mutation hotspot (a region of DNA where the repair machinery is less eficient than others). This mutation can have advantageous effects (+ve personal gain), deleterious effects (lifespan shortening/inherited nastiness), or neither gain, nor advantage (single nucleotide polymorphisms - SNPs). SNPs account for the vast majority. +ve personal gain is extremely rare, but does exist, for example a particular mutation in the p53 gene which somehow make you more immune from cancer that ?normal? people ? a feature of knockin gene therapy that is hotly researched. The vast majority of evolutionary advantageas are a build-up of SNPs, which eventually create a protein with de novo function.

This takes many thousands of years and it is subtle in its phenotype. As such, you can?t ?see? evolution happening.



No ? absolutely not. The missing link can quite clearly be see in analyzing the genetic material, and it can be seen how the genetic material ?evolved? ? you have clearly never looked into developmental genetics.



Random gathering? Gene clusters exist for a reason ? because gene clustering is essential. Take the classic example of the Hox genes ? those that say your head is your head and not in your ass. They specify body pattern plan, and are clustered according to their expression profile ? those at the ?head? of the geome are expressed in the head, those in the ?tail? are expressed in your feet. Per chance??


Noooooope ? having 200x more genetic material than us does not make an amoeba 200x more complex than us. Expression my dear friend is what it?s all about. And of course non-encoding expression. Ever heard of ?junk DNA? ? look it up in wikipedia ;)
Humans are ?more complex? than a fruit fly in your estimation, yet when it comes down to it, we are very very scarily similar. Yet we run, and they fly. We run porn sites, and they lay eggs in bananas. And so what?s your point? Genetic ?complexity? isn?t what dictates ?superiority? ? it?s how your cells use that information ? the entire raison d?etre of the proteome.



Nah ? that?s outside the realm of evolutionary biology and more into the mathematics of monkeys? With enough monkeys, anything is possible.