[ExI] Tim May and DNA

John Clark johnkclark at gmail.com
Sun Feb 10 22:27:55 UTC 2019


On Sun, Feb 10, 2019 at 4:52 PM William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com>
wrote:

>> Mutation is random but Natural selection is not  John
>
>
> *> Let me jump back in for a sec - I will have more later, but for the
> nonce - just how do we know John's statement is true?  I'll grant that
> mutation by radiation is random.  bill w*
>

Well.... there is some evidence that the mutation rate increases when a
cell is undergoing stress, and not just stress caused by radiation; but
just like all mutations they are far more likely to make things worse not
better. And some places on chromosomes are more fragile than other and are
thus more prone to mutation, but aging that almost always leads to bad
things. Given all that I still think to a first approximation it would be
correct to say mutation is random.

John K Clark


>
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