Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Remember when the genome map was supposed to prove we were just apes?

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Or sea slugs?

Like, humans had 100, 000 genes, which proved we were a big-brained ape, then 30, 000, a bit more than a worm. Oh but wait, the fern has 250,000 genes and someone who has never kept a fern can be confident that they’re mostly junk. Now, ten years on, here’s the kind of thing we hear:

Since the human genome was sequenced, we know more about our own history, and the lines between us and other species have blurred, Cole-Turner said. A comparison with the Neanderthal genome revealed that Neanderthals likely mated with our ancestors, since between 1 percent and 4 percent of some modern humans’ DNA came from Neanderthals. Even the genome from the first amphibian to be sequenced, the African clawed frog, showed surprising similarities to the human genome. “

[ … ]

“Now that we have the sequence for the whole genome, including the 98 percent (considered junk), we find that at least half of it is functional. It is even difficult nowadays to say what a gene is,” said Robert Plomin, a research professor at the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London.

[ … ]

“It’s not chaos. It is tractable. We can understand all the nuts and bolts of a living system; there are just so many moving parts it’s just hard to describe,” he said.

– Wynn Parry, MSNBC News, 2/3/2011

I wonder what the next just-a-“spin” will be? Any guesses?

Comments
Collin though you were somewhat joking, using the neo-Darwinists line of reasoning for genetic similarity supporting common ancestry, you actually could support sticking kangaroos in the ape-man lineage somewhere; Kangaroo genes close to humans Excerpt: Australia's kangaroos are genetically similar to humans,,, "There are a few differences, we have a few more of this, a few less of that, but they are the same genes and a lot of them are in the same order," ,,,"We thought they'd be completely scrambled, but they're not. There is great chunks of the human genome which is sitting right there in the kangaroo genome," http://www.reuters.com/article/science%20News/idUSTRE4AH1P020081118 but then again Casey Luskin just did a podcast showing how marsupial embryonic development severely compromises the genetic argument for common ancestry from a completely different angle: Marsupial Embryos Challenge Common Ancestry - audio podcast http://intelligentdesign.podomatic.com/entry/2011-02-09T16_33_21-08_00 further note: Eighty percent of proteins are different between humans and chimpanzees; Gene; Volume 346, 14 February 2005: The early genome comparison by DNA hybridization techniques suggested a nucleotide difference of 1-2%. Recently, direct nucleotide sequencing confirmed this estimate. These findings generated the common belief that the human is extremely close to the chimpanzee at the genetic level. However, if one looks at proteins, which are mainly responsible for phenotypic differences, the picture is quite different, and about 80% of proteins are different between the two species. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15716009bornagain77
February 10, 2011
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I think we descended from kangaroos. Or maybe the platypus.Collin
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I really find the 'genetic similarity argument' of neo-Darwinists weak and misleading,,, These notes are of related interest: ORFan Genes Challenge Common Descent - Paul Nelson - video - short version http://www.vimeo.com/17135166 Analysis of Singleton ORFans in Fully Sequenced Microbial Genomes - Naomi Siew and Daniel Fischer - 2003 Excerpt: Because there is no obvious evolutionary mechanism to account for the origin of single-member families, one might accept the explanation of their origin as extreme divergence. However, even if all ORFans correspond to highly divergent members of known families, a number of puzzling questions arise. For example, how have their sequences diverged to such an extent that no similar sequences are detected today? If evolution works through descent with modification, then why is it that no similar sequences are found in other organisms? Why is it that we do not find today any of the necessary “intermediate sequences” that must have given rise to these ORFans? http://www.cs.bgu.ac.il/~dfischer/orfanprot.pdf Age doesn't matter: New genes are as essential as ancient ones - December 2010 Excerpt: "A new gene is as essential as any other gene; the importance of a gene is independent of its age," said Manyuan Long, PhD, Professor of Ecology & Evolution and senior author of the paper. "New genes are no longer just vinegar, they are now equally likely to be butter and bread. We were shocked." http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/12/101216142523.htm Human Gene Count Tumbles Again – 2008 Excerpt: These orphans looked like proteins because of their open reading frames, but were not found in either the mouse or dog genomes.,,, Alternatively, the genes could have been more ancient creations — present in a common mammalian ancestor — that were lost in mouse and dog lineages yet retained in humans. If either of these possibilities were true, then the orphan genes should appear in other primate genomes, in addition to our own. To explore this, the researchers compared the orphan sequences to the DNA of two primate cousins, chimpanzees and macaques. After careful genomic comparisons, the orphan genes were found to be true to their name — they were absent from both primate genomes. (The 1,177 ORFan genes in humans are completely unique to our lineage) http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080113161406.htm Why Darwin was wrong about the (genetic) tree of life: - 21 January 2009 Excerpt: Syvanen recently compared 2000 genes that are common to humans, frogs, sea squirts, sea urchins, fruit flies and nematodes. In theory, he should have been able to use the gene sequences to construct an evolutionary tree showing the relationships between the six animals. He failed. The problem was that different genes told contradictory evolutionary stories. This was especially true of sea-squirt genes. Conventionally, sea squirts - also known as tunicates - are lumped together with frogs, humans and other vertebrates in the phylum Chordata, but the genes were sending mixed signals. Some genes did indeed cluster within the chordates, but others indicated that tunicates should be placed with sea urchins, which aren't chordates. "Roughly 50 per cent of its genes have one evolutionary history and 50 per cent another," Syvanen says. ."We've just annihilated the tree of life. It's not a tree any more, it's a different topology entirely," says Syvanen. "What would Darwin have made of that?" http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126921.600-why-darwin-was-wrong-about-the-tree-of-life.html DNA Comparisons between Humans and Chimps - Fazale Rana Excerpt: It is interesting that when evolutionary biologists discuss genetic comparisons between human and chimpanzee genomes, the fact that, again, as much as 25 percent of the two genomes won’t align receives no mention. Instead, the focus is only on the portions of the genome that display a high-degree of similarity. This distorted emphasis makes the case for the evolutionary connection between humans and chimps seem more compelling than it may actually be. http://www.reasons.org/dna-comparisons-between-humans-and-chimps-response-venema-critique-rtb-human-origins-model-part-2 A recent, more accurate, human/chimp genome comparison study, by Richard Buggs in 2008, has found when he rigorously compared the recently completed sequences in the genomes of chimpanzees to the genomes of humans side by side, the similarity between chimps and man fell to slightly below 70%! Why is this study ignored since the ENCODE study has now implicated 100% high level functionality across the entire human genome? Finding compelling evidence that implicates 100% high level functionality across the entire genome clearly shows the similarity is not to be limited to the very biased 'only 1.5% of the genome' studies of evolutionists. Chimpanzee? 10-10-2008 - Dr Richard Buggs - research geneticist at the University of Florida ...Therefore the total similarity of the genomes could be below 70%. http://www.idnet.com.au/files/pdf/Chimpanzee.pdf Moreover, the following 'statistical test' found only a 62% similarity between chimp-human genomes rather than the 95%-98.5% similarity touted by many papers of evolutionists: A simple statistical test for the alleged “99% genetic identity” between humans and chimps - September 2010 Excerpt: The results obtained are statistically valid. The same test was previously run on a sampling of 1,000 random 30-base patterns and the percentages obtained were almost identical with those obtained in the final test, with 10,000 random 30-base patterns. When human and chimp genomes are compared, the X chromosome is the one showing the highest degree of 30BPM similarity (72.37%), while the Y chromosome shows the lowest degree of 30BPM similarity (30.29%). On average the overall 30BPM similarity, when all chromosomes are taken into consideration, is approximately 62%. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/a-simple-statistical-test-for-the-alleged-99-genetic-identity-between-humans-and-chimps/ Moreover, when scientists did a actual Nucleotide by Nucleotide sequence comparison, to find the 'real world' difference between the genomes of chimps and Humans, they found the difference was even more profound than what Dr. Richard Buggs, or the statistical test, had estimated: Do Human and Chimpanzee DNA Indicate an Evolutionary Relationship? Excerpt: the authors found that only 48.6% of the whole human genome matched chimpanzee nucleotide sequences. [Only 4.8% of the human Y chromosome could be matched to chimpanzee sequences.] http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2070 Even this more recent evolution friendly article found the differences in the protein coding genes of the Y chromosome between chimps and Humans to be 'striking': Recent Genetic Research Shows Chimps More Distant From Humans,,, - Jan. 2010 Excerpt: “many of the stark changes between the chimp and human Y chromosomes are due to gene loss in the chimp and gene gain in the human” since “the chimp Y chromosome has only two-thirds as many distinct genes or gene families as the human Y chromosome and only 47% as many protein-coding elements as humans.”,,,, “Even more striking than the gene loss is the rearrangement of large portions of the chromosome. More than 30% of the chimp Y chromosome lacks an alignable counterpart on the human Y chromosome, and vice versa,,," Chimp and human Y chromosomes evolving faster than expected - Jan. 2010 Excerpt: "The results overturned the expectation that the chimp and human Y chromosomes would be highly similar. Instead, they differ remarkably in their structure and gene content.,,, The chimp Y, for example, has lost one third to one half of the human Y chromosome genes. etc... etc..bornagain77
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