Re: Mutant swarms and copying fidelity

From: Bill Spight (bspight@pacbell.net)
Date: Wed 04 May 2005 - 17:00:49 GMT

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    Dear Derek,

    >> The flu virus, HIV, and others seem to mutate much, much more
    >> rapidly than memes,
    >
    >
    > We can't measure the mutation rate in memes. so there is no way to
    > compare them to RNA or DNA.

    Well, lack of precision does not preclude comparison, it just makes it coarse grained. For example, take this quote from Chaucer:

       I warne yow wel, it is no childes pley.

    Eight memes (lexemes), counting 'childes pley' as one, six mutations
    (including short to long 'i' in 'childes') in over more than 600 years. Millions of replications, at least. That's gotta be slower than the flu, no?

    Best,

    Bill

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