I previously identified three entirely different versions of Glenn's
argument. Nonetheless his argument remains ill-formed and ambiguous. The
following issue is central to one of those versions:
>I want to make clear that I do not know how many
>nucleotide substitutions are required to make a new allele.
Glenn merely ASSUMED that alleles typically differ by many nucleotides, in
his example, he used six. But he still has refuses to document this key
point of his argument.
>You are missing a very important point also. Not all DNA mutations give rise
>to a change in the protein.
Yes, about thirty percent of the gene nucleotide mutations are silent. But
that is overwhelmed by the rate at which mutations are pouring into the
population. To compensate for this factor we can reduce the mutation rate
by thirty percent, but that's not remotely enough to save Glenn's argument.
Glenn also keeps ignoring the possibility that the alleles of his original
population differed by many nucleotides already. In addition, his model of
population genetics remains silly. His "population" implicitly has a size
of ONE organism. I point out these mistakes, and he just goes on and on --
nothing resolved.
>Not all changes in the protein alter the function of that protein.
The "function" of the protein does not affect how we count of alleles.
Glenn's thesis is about the NUMBER of alleles, not their function. So his
reference to "function" is irrelevant to our debate.
>Your genetic calculation will not work and is based upon a faulty
>view of alleles.
Not true. I correctly used the definition of allele (we've been over this
before). And Glenn persistently *ignores* my calculations.
-- Walter