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:::: Your comment about HIV begs the question of what [[types of evolution|evolution really is]]. I would dispute that the gaining resistance to medication ''is'' evolution, as it involves no new genetic [[information]].
:::: Your comment about HIV begs the question of what [[types of evolution|evolution really is]]. I would dispute that the gaining resistance to medication ''is'' evolution, as it involves no new genetic [[information]].
:::: [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 03:02, 9 May 2007 (EDT)
:::: [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 03:02, 9 May 2007 (EDT)
:::::Good morning Philip. The categorization is one sided, that is the issue. Only those involved with creation sciences (meaning a select few Christian scientists) use the terminology. It is not accepted within the scientific community as a whole.
:::::Germ Theory was promoted by Pasteur but not started by him. Consider that the time that Pasteur was working on testing his hypothesis that the Origin of the species was out by ~10 years. Further developments within germ theory were developed from evolution based mechanisms. Pasteur's major contribution was showing that spontaneous generation as it related to fully developed higher organisms was untrue.
:::::Actually resistance to medication by Viruses has been shown in vetro to occur by mutations within the genome of the virus. HIV being a retrovirus replicates and mutates its genome far faster than bacteria and other viruses so you have many generations in a very short period of time, an hour or less. Because of this you can see the stages of mutation towards the medication and how the virus is able to adapt to the environmental stresses. Those that do not develop the mutations that allow for some adaptability to the medication's ability to block the virus from attaching to the cell do not replicate. This is why the HIV meds that are most successful today are targeting the reverstranscriptase of the virus to reduce its ability to mutate. HIV is a pretty simple virus as such it does not have many of the genetic correction mechanisms you find in other organisms, not to mention that RNA is more unstable than DNA and is prone to mistranscription. This is why there are so many different strains of HIV in the world, basically for each infection the virus mutates in that organism and acquirers different resistances to be passed on to a newly infected individual. This is one of the ways we can trace an infection back an originator within so many degrees.
:::::Evolution does not always involve new information as much as it involves a change in information. If you are using the new information frame of mind when dealing with evolution then you would have to say that a human's genome should be one of the largest in the animal kingdom (more evolved). This is shown to be untrue as there are insects with larger genomes. Think of the lottery when dealing with gene expression. The loci can change on chromosomes and allow for different reading frames for transcription. A slight mutation can totally change the entire transcription as well, sickle cells are caused by a single codon change during translation that changes the hemoglobin protein. If the mutation is carried to successive generations it is considered evolution. (Please remember that evolution makes no claims that it is positive or negative just that the accumulation of mutation can cause differences in organisms which can lead to speciation.)--[[User:Tims|TimS]] 08:50, 9 May 2007 (EDT)