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Recent Comments
Peter, could the next test distinguish a code’s resistance to harmful mutations from the probability of evolving it?
In your expansion scenario, previously uninformative codon positions acquire specificity while established assignments are retained. The question is how those steps occur through changes in decoding, including any temporary ambiguity.
Could a finite population model test whether early Stop signals make the predicted Stop/cysteine arrangement more likely across these expansion paths, allowing genetic drift and uncertainty in amino acid availability?
I would compare how often that arrangement emerges and where expansion stalls, using the same transition rules with and without the proposed catastrophic mutation costs.
That would test whether the mechanism helps generate the pattern, beyond making the reconstructed pattern comparatively low in mutation cost. Which expansion step would you expect to be most restrictive?