It's a classical mistake to conflate change and evolution
Change in organisms is an observed fact and there's no reason to deny something very observable occurring in nature and in human beings, too. A good question is -- WHY change is happening and WHAT it results in. On these questions I'm focusing in this article.
Let's have an example familiar to everyone -- Dog breeding. We know that it's possible to have different dog breeds by so called artifical selection. This means silencing or amplification of certain, desired traits of dogs. Variation potential within canines is huge; during the last 200 years there have been more than 350 different dog breeds as a result of canine breeding. Also differences between traits and characteristics within breeds might be significant as this picture shows us. Both of them, the mighty Danish dog and the tiny Chihuahua have both descended from the Wolf.
But what has happened to canine genome? It's in a catastrophical condition within most breeds, especially those with a long breeding history. It means the more intense the breeding process the more genetic errors can be found in the genome. In other words, the more variation within stronger silencing/amplification of desired traits, the more genetic degradation.Within plants, the variation potential is huge. This is due to polyploidy and efficient epigenetic silencing of temporarily unnecessary DNA strands. A great example is Brassica oleracea. Over hundeds of years farmers have been breeding one plant into dozens of different varieties. These six common vegetables; brussels sprouts, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, kale and kohlrabi are actually the same plant -- the wild mustard plant.
But what has happened to canine genome? It's in a catastrophical condition within most breeds, especially those with a long breeding history. It means the more intense the breeding process the more genetic errors can be found in the genome. In other words, the more variation within stronger silencing/amplification of desired traits, the more genetic degradation.Within plants, the variation potential is huge. This is due to polyploidy and efficient epigenetic silencing of temporarily unnecessary DNA strands. A great example is Brassica oleracea. Over hundeds of years farmers have been breeding one plant into dozens of different varieties. These six common vegetables; brussels sprouts, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, kale and kohlrabi are actually the same plant -- the wild mustard plant.
Epigenetic variation has nothing to do with assumed evolution. Change in organisms is based on epigenetic regulation of pre-existing biological information that often leads to minor genetic errors. In most organisms, loss and corruption of information results in reorganization of genetic information (genetic recombinations). This phenomenon accelerates speciation processes but also deepens genetic degradation making genomes weaker by genetic mutations. This is very observable also in human genome; there are 628,685 disease-related genetic errors but the number of beneficial mutations is close to zero.
Evolution has no mechanism. There is no scientific evidence for the man-made idea that increase in biological information pool could result in growth of structural or functional complexity in organisms. Variation, ecological adaptation, breeding etc. never create anything new. Traits and characteristics can be reshuffled but that's just reorganization of biological information based on environmental stimuli that affects cellular mechanisms such as receptors, signaling molecules and biological databases. Long-term scientific experiments have proved this fact. Don't get lost, my friends.
