Re: Cell division creationism

odin wrote:

>>>Mutations will of course occur in cells, but there isn't much of a
>>>natural selective mechanism for "beneficial" mutations to be selected
>>>out, hence little to no evolution.
>>
>>Who says there isn't much of a mechanism?
>
>
> There is not much of a selection process, and what there is does not last
> long enough.

You realize that this is not at all what the original poster was talking
about, right? You have explained why somatic lines can't evolve much;
they don't have much time before extinction. Lack of selection is
another thing entirely.

And the soma/germ distinction isn't so strong in many groups as it is in
vertebrates. In some groups, somatic mutations can be quite important in
evolution.

> A cell in a critter is already fairly optimized for working in
> its cellular environmnet. That environment does not change much over the
> course of a soma line. If it did change much, the critter would go tits up
> right then and there, and that would be the end of that soma line. Extiction
> has a way of bugerring up an evolutionary sequence. Selection process
> accelerates change when the environment changes a lot. Germ lines survive
> and deal with long term dramatic change. Evolution of a germ line has to
> deal with a changing environment over many generations, and it happens
> slowly enough that the mutation rate can keep up the required innovation. If
> it changes faster than that, then the germ line goes extinct, as it has for
> the vast majority of species that ever existed. But a lucky sub set made it
> through the gauntlet, and we enjoy thier company today in what ever thier
> most recent gemome happens to ne. A mutation in a lung cell never gets
> passed on to your offspring, so that soma line evolution ends in a very
> short term. A germ cell gets another crack at it every generation.
>
>

.

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