@ Tom Marking:

I was using the earlier rate (and a generation time of 20 years which I left out as it was possible to deduce): 500*20/0.01= 10^6.

@ Robert:

Because if creation is true, evolution isn’t, and that’s the biggest threat there is to athiestic evolutionism.

False choice. Evolution being wrong wouldn’t make creationism right, as is your basis for the above reasoning. There were other alternatives, for example Lamarckism.

But even if creationism “is true”, you haven’t explained what it is (because you rely on false choice), so both could then be a fact.

That speeded-up video is amazing.

Program to compute statistics for DNA point mutations
Total number of point mutations to run = 10000
Initial number of amino acids = 100
Initial number of nucleotides = 303
Mutations with no change in amino acid sequence: 24.5%
Mutations with one change in amino acid sequence: 70.4%
Mutations with truncated amino acid sequence: 4.1%
Mutations with extended amino acid sequence: 0.9%
Average number of amino acids truncated = 49.6
Average number of amino acids extended = 23.0

Consecutive mutations in the same gene
Total number of consecutive mutation runs = 1000
Avg # of consec. mutations for length to change = 19.4

So just looking at point mutations in a DNA strand of length 303 (codes for a protein of length 100 amino acids) we see that about one fourth of them don’t cause any phenotype changes at all. About 4 percent of them cause the protein to be truncated (on average it is cut in half) which is a catastrophic change. About 1 percent of them result in the protein being lengthened (this is the answer to the creationist question of where does new information come from).

Considering consecutive mutations in the same gene, by the time you get 19 of them you can expect the protein to be either truncated or extended. So in terms of the E. coli experiment what these results mean is we expect about 1.3 non-selectable mutations for every 1 that is selectable. Thus, if the citrate digestibility trait took 3 selectable mutations to occur then the total number of mutations should be about 4.

I meant I didn’t mean to assert that it was in PZ’s article, which is why I put that suggestion on a separate line, instead of in the same paragraph.