Paul Gallagher  wrote in
news:bmilrs$2edo$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org: 

 
> But I still think it's reasonable to ask whether, so to speak, 
> appropriate variation will be available for selection to produce a 
> better adapted phenotype -- which was Representative Trantis' 
> original question, based on Dawkins' "Climbing Mount Improbable." 
> I think this is related to many issues of interest: if the
> widespread assumption of abundant, small and continuous, non-directed 
> variation is wrong, it makes a difference, and it invalidates many
> models of evolutionary change that presume the sufficiency of
> selectionist explanations.

There was an interesting snippet in the November 2003 Discover that 
described research indicating that there are constraints on where mutations 
occur, based on a comparison of the mouse and human genome. Unfortunately 
the article was too short to follow the details of the research, and I have 
not yet seen a reference elsewhere. But I think this speaks to your point 
(and one that Arlin used to make when he was still contributing to the 
newsgroup) that the details of the biochemistry will become more important 
as we refine our models of evolution.

Yours,

Bill Morse
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