Discussion Responses PCB4674
After posting answers to their assigned misconception, they should read the responses of their group members who answered each of the other misconceptions, and post responses to each addressing the following points: Do you feel like you at some point in your life held the misconception? If so, why? If not, what is it about each particular misconception that you think causes so many people struggle? Do you still have remaining questions about any of the three statements?
Instructions:
After posting answers to their assigned misconception, they should read the responses of their group members who answered each of the other misconceptions, and post responses to each addressing the following points: Do you feel like you at some point in your life held the misconception? If so, why? If not, what is it about each particular misconception that you think causes so many people struggle?Do you still have remaining questions about any of the three statements?
1)
Danielle Guyer.
I am responding to the second article.
I admit that, I too, have fallen victim of the misconception that dominant traits would statistically be more common in a population. All you have to do is draw up a couple Punnett squares and you’ll realize that dominant traits trump recessive traits in overall percentage displayed by offspring. But applying what I actually know about life, I should know better than to have this false opinion. I know plenty of people with blue eyes even though that is recessive. If dominant traits were really that controlling, wouldn’t blue eyes and red hair be extinct traits after thousands of years of reproduction and evolution? Or at least much less prevalent? But that isn’t the case. My dad and I have hazel eyes. My mom and my brother have blue eyes. Certainly some traits are more common in specific populations, geographical regions, and ethnicities but there is so much diversity in our global population that neither dominant nor recessive traits have the monopoly on prevalence.
2)
Townsend Porcher
I’m responding to the third article (because I’ve always wondered myself how it is that mutations can “create information”).
So first of all, the misconception “mutations can only destroy information, not create it” is a difficult one to address, because we must first specify what “creating” and “destroying” information even really means. Of course, what often comes to mind when we discuss mutations in a medical context is the impairment of a protein due to a mutation that disfigures the protein’s shape, like sickle cell anemia. This kind of mutation would be commonly thought of as a “destruction of information.” But if we look at the mutation objectively, it’s really just changing information. It’s probably true that individuals with sickle cell anemia have a selective disadvantage, but this doesn’t indicate the “destruction of information” any more than a reversal from sickle-shaped red blood cell to a normal red blood cell is a “destruction of information.” Although I can’t think of one off the top of my head, it’s conceivable that there could be a context in which having a sickle-shaped red blood cell could be considered “advantageous.” (Actually, now thinking about it, I know that people with sickle cell anemia get malaria less often.)
Over time, genes are activated, deactived, duplicated, and modified, and deleted, at random, and this process over an unimaginable time gives us the diversity of species we have today. In the short-term, it’s easy to see look at the innumerable possible point mutations that can so easily cause genetic disorders, but we also have to look at the big picture. To reference an example in the article, the duplication of Hox genes many times in the phylogeny of animals has brought about more complex body plans. This is an observable example of a series of mutations that has very clearly contributed to the diversity of organisms in the world today.
