[quote=“gbrooks9, post:296, topic:548”]
What is your motivation for this line of discussion?[/quote]
If I may speak for Steve, it’s accuracy.
Possibly, but I suggest that you resolve your own considerable confusion first.
Biologists don’t talk that way. Populations evolve, not “gene pools.”
George, you are utterly, spectacularly wrong on this. While all cells “experience” (a terrible word choice) mutations, NO NEW MUTATIONS ARE REQUIRED FOR EVOLUTION.
None.
Zip.
Nada.
Evolution is changes in allele frequencies over time. We simply don’t need any new alleles (caused by mutations) to get evolution, just heritable variation, which exists and can be objectively measured.
George, please try to understand this: new mutations contribute very little to the quantity of heritable variation (polymorphism) in a population. Before you criticize Steve, you need to get this very, very basic point. Put another way, if God stopped all mutations tomorrow, evolution would chug right along for a very long time.
[quote]And it is passing these changes onto future generations that eventually leads to the speciation of evolution.[/quote]I have no idea what you are saying here. I have never, ever heard the term “speciation of evolution.” Please use standard terms.
I think that you are completely missing Steve’s point, which is that evolution still only happens to populations–but those populations can be populations of organisms or populations of cells within an organism. The latter kind of real-time evolution is the basis for acquired immunity.
[quote]What shall we call it when just a SINGLE individual experiences mutation? Or just a pocket of cells of a single individual experiences mutation?
[/quote]I’d call it life. An average of 3 mutations occur every time a cell replicates its DNA and divides. What you don’t seem to understand is that the vast majority of them are of no evolutionary consequence.
George, can you come to grips with the basic point that selection acts primarily on existing variation and that new mutations contribute very little to this pool of variation, except in rare cases like inbred mice and the variation caused in the acquired immune response?