On Wed, 21 Apr 2004 03:34:25 +0000 (UTC), 
Jim Menegay  wrote:
> Guy Hoelzer  wrote in message 
> news:...

[snip]

>> > 9. [snip] Mutation rates cannot increase in
>> > evolution.  [snip]
>> 
>> I have never seen an argument positing that mutation rates cannot 
>> increase in evolution, and this claim seems patently false to me.
> 
> Seems false to me too, but I seem to recall Larry Moran asserting 
> something like this in a dialog with Tyler.  (However, this may be a 
> figment of my imagination - I couldn't find the post that I thought I 
> had remembered.) I hope that Larry weighs in on this issue, to clarify.  
> If he did say something along these lines, it would have been that NS 
> cannot cause a mutation rate increase - I wouldn't think that he would 
> be rash enough to state flatly that evolution could not produce one.

I don't believe that mutation rates change much during the evolution
of a lineage. It doesn't make biochemical (or logical) sense. There 
are a few examples of sub-populations with different mutations rates
and there are certainly regions of the chromosome that have higher
mutation rates than others but this isn't the same thing.



Larry Moran
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