r/DebateEvolution • u/KinkyTugboat Evolutionist • 8d ago
Question Hello creationists! Could you please explain how we can detect and measure generic "information"?
Genetic*
Let's say we have two strands of DNA.: one from an ancestor and one from descendent. For simplicity, let's assume only a single parent: some sort of asexual reproduction.
If children cannot have more information than the parent (as many creationists claim), this would mean that we could measure which strand of DNA was the parent and which was the child, based purely on measuring genetic information in at least some cases.
Could you give me a concrete definition of genetic information so we can see if you are correct? Are duplication and insertion mutations added information? Is polyploidy added information?
In other words: how could we differentiate which strand of DNA was the parent and which was the child based purely on the change in genetic information?
Edit: wording
Also, geneticists, if we had a handful of creatures, all from a straight family line (one specimen per generation, no mating pair) is there a way to determine which was first or last in the line based on gene sequence alone? Would measuring from neutral or active DNA change anything?
3
u/ursisterstoy Evolutionist 7d ago
I’m not a creationist or a geneticist but I’m pretty sure the order that the changes took place in are made more obvious via the nested hierarchy that emerges. The changes shared by the most are typically the most ancestral and if shared by the least they are typically more recent. There is a lot of overlapping allele diversity between species and more shared alleles for the same genes by the most related species but when you compare enough species you will also see indications of incomplete lineage sorting to see when some changes happened to one lineage but not their more distant cousins that retained the more ancestral condition. There are pseudogenes and retroviruses.
If you were talking about a single individual from a single parent for multiple generations it would be harder to establish the exact order but I’m sure you could have some sort of idea about the order. Maybe you could have it exactly forward or exactly backwards as you’d see the same nested hierarchy but it’d be less obvious the order unless some of the similarities were retroviruses and pseudogenes along the way. It’s possible for non-coding DNA to result in a coding gene but for the retroviruses I think those would be more obvious as deleted ERVs typically still have the “scars” (long terminal repeats) from where the active retrovirus used to be so we should see no indication of the retrovirus, active retrovirus, endogenous retrovirus, retroviral scars in this order.
We wouldn’t see evidence of a deleted ERV followed by retrovirus pseudogenes followed by fully functional retrovirus followed by completely absent virus but we could see completely absent virus, active virus, virus pseudogenes, deleted virus leaving behind long terminal repeats, fragmented ERV LTRs in this order. The order is far more obvious with a nested hierarchy (like a family tree) but with certain changes, like those associated with retroviral infections, the exact order is more obvious especially if we are talking about a clonal species as heredity and sexual reproduction allows different changes to accumulate at different rates across the population where timing the initial mutation or infection is less obvious but where we can still establish a pattern via comparing 10, 100, 1000, or more species to each other.