Douglas_Knight comments on Neuroscience basics for LessWrongians - Less Wrong

84 Post author: ChrisHallquist 26 July 2012 05:10AM

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Comment author: RobertLumley 27 July 2012 08:16:44PM 2 points [-]

But the selection pressure applies to individual base pair mutations

I am confused why you believe this. Evolution need not splice out bases one base at a time. You can easily have replication errors that could splice out tens of thousands of bases at a time.

Comment author: Douglas_Knight 18 September 2012 06:36:08AM 1 point [-]

No, replication is more robust than that. I have never heard of large insertion or deletion in replication, except in highly repetitive regions (and there only dozens of bases, I think).

However, meiotic crossover is sloppy, providing the necessary variation.

Speaking of meiotic crossover, non-coding DNA provides space between coding regions, reducing the likelihood of crossover breaking them.

Comment author: RobertLumley 18 September 2012 02:00:24PM 0 points [-]

Meiotic crossover is what I meant, actually. Generally the polymerase itself wouldn't skip unless the region is highly repetitive, you're right.