[continued from previous message]   
      
   > 3. Let's consider the "God hypothesis"   
   > 4. Other (please elaborate)   
   >   
   > You may choose more than one option.   
   >   
   > [From the subject /David Deamer's book "Assembling Life"/]   
   >   
   > ___   
   >   
   > My question then, is it reasonable, accurate and in good faith to   
   > characterise this as "science doesn't know X therefore God"?   
   >   
   Yes it is.  God-of-the-gaps is just that no matter if the gaps are never   
   going to be filled.  No one expects to figure out how life actually   
   arose on this planet.  The best that we can do without a time machine is   
   figure out the most likely way that life arose, and it could have   
   actually arisen in a much more unlikely way.  The first organic   
   conglomerate that produced the first self replicating molecules might   
   have been created by a random asteroid impact instead of condensing in   
   some crevice somewhere.   
      
   Gaps like what caused the Big Bang may never be filled due to the   
   singularity that we can't get past to see what existed before.  Denton   
   is happy with using this gap because he can never be demonstrated to be   
   wrong.   
      
   I was a genetics major as an undergraduate at Berkeley, and all the   
   geneticists told me that genetics was over and that the future was   
   molecular biology, so I did my PhD in molecular genetics.  During my   
   graduate studies tools for genomic analysis like PCR and microsatellite   
   genetic markers were created, and they had the promise of allowing the   
   unsolved issues in genetics to be answered.  I went back into genetics   
   because the new technology was opening up a new frontier in genetics.   
   There was finally the possibility that things like why the infinite   
   allele model worked so well in quantitative genetics.  Quantitative   
   genetic analysis was well worked out, but we didn't understand why it   
   worked.  I started my first post doc on looking for quantitative trait   
   loci (QTL) in 1992.  I retired in 2024 and we still do not know why the   
   infinite allele model works for quantitative genetic analysis.  We can   
   sequence whole genomes now, but somethings remain a mystery.  You do not   
   see the ID perps claiming that their designer is responsible for the   
   success of the infinite allele model in quantitative genetics.   
      
   My guess for why it works is that due to the fall off in increased   
   accuracy with the inclusion of more past generations of data (about 3   
   past generations are enough to use for things like BLUP (best linear   
   unbiased prediction) is that linkage is the reason for the infinite   
   allele model working so well.  Most of it may be apparent linkage and   
   not actual linkage on the same chromosome.  We have found that an LD   
   (linkage disequalibrium) of only 0.3 within a population is sufficient   
   to use markers spaced along the genome to improve the accuracy of   
   predicting the best breeding values for individuals.  All the alleles   
   segregating in the genome have a minimum linkage of 0.5 (you inherit   
   half of one parent's genome) in the first cross.  Closely linked markers   
   have a linkage close to 1.0.  This means that the whole genome can be   
   considered to have a quantitative genetic value due to hundred or   
   thousands of genetic variants in that genome, and these variants can be   
   inherited together just by chance if they occur in the same individual   
   even if they are not linked.  This would create pseudo haplotypes based   
   on the whole genome, and not just haplotypes of the same chromosomes.   
   In the first cross half the QTL segregate together in any individual.   
   My guess is that this would create close enough to an infinite number of   
   pseudo haplotypes of unlinked QTL.  Half the sires genome is inherited   
   in the first cross, 25% in the next cross, but if we are talking genome   
   equivalents (and things that sire is homozygous for) then all the   
   homozygous alleles (1 genome equivalent) is inherited among the progeny   
   of the first cross, half a genome equivalent in the second cross and 25%   
   in the third cross.  Statistically these pseudo haplotypes could persist   
   for multiple generations.  Each individual starts with a new set of   
   pseudo haplotypes that add to the haplotypes due to actual linkage, so   
   you never see all the "alleles" possible in a single generation.  There   
   would be pretty much an infinite number of them.   
      
   Ron Okimoto   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
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