Elie Gendloff wrote:
> I agree with Bill only more generally.  It seems old-fashioned to
> discuss and argue about evolution theories that were developed before
> molecular biology.  Those discussions and arguments already happened
> before.  Molecular biology asks and answers new questions that the old
> masters could not have asked, and even answer questions that the old
> masters asked.
> 
I would actually argue that the old evolutionary theories are worknig 
fine.  What molecular biology has done is to provide a lot more detail, 
which will certainly change our perceptions of evolution, but I think it 
will be done by building on present theory, rather than overthrowing it.

As an example, I have on my desk a paper from the latest issue of 
Genetics, on detecting selection in non-coding regions of nucleotide 
sequences (Wong & Mielsen Genetics 167: 949-958).  They model sequence 
evolution as having both a neutral and selective component.  Fisher and 
Wright was doing the same thing (albeit on a very different time scale) 
in the 1940s.

Bill's point about duplication creating raw material for selection and 
drift is true.  But this is just a mechanism of mutation, and in that 
sense is perfectly in line with old-fashioned evolutionary biology.  The 
change is that we are able to add much more biological detail (and 
realism) to the simple stories told in olden times.

I would hope that, rather than disparaging classical theory, people 
would take the best of it and use the knowledge gained from moelcular 
biology and build on the theory, or replacing it with something that 
explains the real world better.

As empirical evidence that, in some ways, the old theory is still 
relevant, readers may like to flick through issues of Molecular Ecology, 
and see how many papers report one or more of Wright's F statistics.

> 
> On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 15:34:56 +0000 (UTC), William Morse
>  wrote:
> 
> 
>>We have had lots of good clean fun on this newsgroup debating the 
>>relative contributions of drift and natural selection to evolution. But 
>>as more and more sequence data becomes available, it is becoming clear 
>>that both drifters and niche-pickers have missed the boat. Gene, 
>>chromosome, and perhaps (if the above article is correct) even genome 
>>duplication looms as a big kahuna in evolution, with drift and selection 
>>only working their magic once duplication has created the raw material.
>>
>>
>>Yours,
>>
>>Bill Morse
> 
> 



-- 
Bob O'Hara

Dept. of Mathematics and Statistics
P.O. Box 68 (Gustaf H„llstr”min katu 2b)
FIN-00014 University of Helsinki
Finland

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