Has anyone ever heard of "gene depletion"?

Question

A creationist I have been debating (well, not really debating since the argument was one sided) kept saying that Evolution is the cause of gene depletion and that there are many examples in science. Of course there is not but I was wondering if anyone has ever heard of this. I did a search online and found nothing. I know it's not how evolution works but I was just curious.

Answer 1

Well yes he has it half right, Evolution is the mechanism but only on a case basis.   Gene depletion is caused by in-breading of a population causing the genetic differences in that population to become limited.  Therefore all members of that population will look the same and have the same traits.  If the whole population has the same genes then the only differences will be caused by genetic mutation.  In other cases when populations mix then the randomness of the gene pool increases.  

But more importantly if he is agreeing with this then he is not a creationist, but just another religious bible beater speaking out of his @ss.  

Answer 2

This is a complicated issue so forgive me if I run on.  First of all gene depletion is different than allele deletion.  Both are natural parts of evolutionary genetics. allele deletion is actually called "allele fixation" (google it for more detail) that's when a certain trait is eliminated from a gene pool: like if the red hair gene was eventually eliminated.  This sort of thing happens ALL THE TIME in evolution, thousands and thousands of documented cases.  

Gene depletion would be like if the  entire hair gene was deleted from our genome and we didn't grow hair at all any more. Our DNA code would actually become shorter.  

So I assume your creationist friend is saying that evolution only depletes genes and doesn't create new genes, If he is saying this he truly is misguided. If you would like to see how genes are both created and depleted google "unequal crossover". It's a very simple process where one side of the DNA ends up with more of the DNA that the other side.  So in some cases genes that aren't used anyways will get depleted, but in other cases new genes are formed.  New genes are formed by the same process that they are depleted. the cool this about him bringing this subject up is that you can see it in real time. Look in any genetics textbook and it maps it out very explicitly.