On Thu, 6 Apr 2000, John McKenzie wrote:

> Just how much glucose is needed to produce each gram of vit c I have no
> idea. Further how many additional calories/nutrients are needed for the
> systems involved to function would be nothing more than a wild guess
> again. Additionally, if the subject in question was carnivorous then it
> would have no intake of glucose/carbohydrates, so they would have to be
> first made available through gluconeogenesis (sorry if I misspelt it - I
> mean the conversion of amino acids to glucose ) all in all this may not
> translate into a huge parity and may not have significantly influenced
> which genotype was more likely to perpetuate.

Well, without more specific information about the quantities of
energy involved it is difficult to make much of this.  I have to
say that it doesn't sound to me like a lot of energy, or at least
not enough to make it plausible that this mutation was so
advantageous as to become universal in a few generations, or at
all.  It's no secret here that I am skeptical of neodarwinism,
and this is the sort of thing that makes me skeptical.  But in
the absence of more specific information I guess there's no much
more to be said.  And I still don't have any data on whether this
is the *same* mutation in the higher primates (I understand that
some of the lower primates -- lemurs, etc. -- can still make
ascorbate).

Todd Moody
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