Tuesday 7 April 2009

genetics - Number of beneficial mutations cataloged?

That would be hard to say because really beneficial mutations become well distributed through the genome. Basically the differences between us and chimpanzees are a catalog of all the beneficial (or completely neutral) mutations since the ~4.7 M years since we diverged from each other.



Separating them from changes which have no special effect would be difficult too, but more to the spirit of your question, its difficult to explain what many mutations do, unless they cause significant changes in something we can observe in the individual (like height, weight, big nasty claws, etc).



For some more specific examples you can look at Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man. Some mutations which are useful sometimes might be related to skin color for instance (really helps when there is a lot of sun about) or lactose tolerance (a variation which is popular amongst europeans who have been drinking dairy milk for thousands of years).

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