Mutation and evolution

Tag: mutation

  • Updates to Mutation, Randomness and Evolution

    Most recent update: 3 November, 2023, initial version. See the change-log at the bottom for details. This is an ongoing list of updates and corrections to Mutation, Randomness and Evolution, including typographic errors, as well as substantive errors and updates to knowledge. Typos and glitches The following mistakes (given in…

  • What on earth is “mutationism”? Some possible answers

    The term “mutationism” appeared in the early 20th century in regard to the views of early geneticists such as de Vries, Bateson, Punnett, and Morgan (e.g., Poulton, 1909 or McCabe 1912). These leading thinkers did not use “mutationism” to describe their own diverse views.[1] Perhaps they thought of themselves as…

  • Understanding the Mutational Landscape Model

    This post started out as a wonky rant about why a particular high-profile study of laboratory adaptation was mis-framed as though it were a validation of the mutational landscape model of Orr and Gillespie (see Orr, 2003), when in fact the specific innovations of that theory were either rejected, or not tested critically.…

  • The range of rates for different genetic types of mutations

    To understand the potential role of mutation in evolution, it is important to understand the enormous range of rates for different types of mutations. If one ignores this, and thinks of “the mutation rate” as a single number, or if one divides mutation into point mutations with a characteristic rate, and other mutations…

  • The shift to mutationism is documented in our language

    Last year Sahotra Sarkar published a paper that got me thinking.  His piece entitled “The Genomic Challenge to Adaptationism” focused on the writings of Lynch & Koonin, arguing that molecular studies continue to present a major challenge to the received view of evolution, by suggesting that “non-adaptive processes dominate genome architecture evolution”. The idea that molecular…

  • The revolt of the clay: an initial progress report

    A “chance” encounter Earlier this month I was contacted by a reporter writing a piece on the role of chance in evolution.   I responded that I didn’t work on that topic, but if he was interested in predictable non-randomness due to biases in variation, then I would be happy to…

  • Conceptual frameworks and the problem of variation

    Conceptual frameworks guide our thinking Our efforts to understand the world depend on conceptual frameworks and are guided by metaphors.  We have lots of them.  I suspect that most are applied without awareness.  If I am approaching a messy problem for the first time, I might begin with the idea that there are various “factors”…

  • Evolution: A View from the 21st Century (book review)

    Last year I read James Shapiro’s Evolution: A View from the 21st Century (2013, FT Press) along with 2 other recent books, Nei’s Mutation-Driven Evolution and Koonin’s The Logic of Chance.  All 3 fall into the category of recent books by seasoned researchers whose primary focus is molecular, and who argue that…