Where Did Sea Anemones Get Human Genes?
| August 27, 2007 | Posted by dacook under Intelligent Design |
Another surprise for Darwinists has been found in the genome of the lowly, primitive sea anemone.
In an article published in Science and summarized here
we discover that:
The newly decoded DNA of a few-centimeter-tall sea anemone looks surprisingly similar to our own, a team led by Nicholas Putnam and Daniel Rokhsar from the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek, California, reports on page 86. This implies that even very ancient genomes were quite complex and contained most of the genes necessary to build today’s most sophisticated multicellular creatures.
The work is truly stunning for its deep evolutionary implications,” says Billie Swalla, an evolutionary developmental biologist at the University of Washington, Seattle.
Ill say it is. Just how the heck is the Darwinian paradigm going to explain this? Advanced genetic programs installed before there was any chance of natural selection acting on them. Yikes! Another finding in the real world not predicted by, or even possible within, the Darwiniam paradigm. Another surprise for Darwinists.
Sooner or later they’ve GOT to start questioning underlying assumptions. (Naive, ain’t I?)
One of the big surprises of the anemone genome, says Swalla, is the discovery of blocks of DNA that have the same complement of genes as in the human genome. Individual genes may have swapped places, but often they have remained linked together despite hundreds of millions of years of evolution along separate paths, Putnam, Rokhsar, and their colleagues report.
To repeat the obvious question, where the heck did these codes come from?
Moreover, the anemone genes look vertebratelike. They often are full of noncoding regions called introns, which are much less common in nematodes and fruit flies than in vertebrates. And more than 80% of the anemone introns are in the same places in humans, suggesting that they probably existed in the common ancestor.
Inrons again. Funny how these sections of “junk DNA” keep turning up, conserved over hundred of millions of years, with no physical expression of them for natural selection to work on.
Finnerty and his graduate student James Sullivan also looked in the anemone genome for 283 human genes involved in a wide range of diseases. They will report in the July issue of Genome that they found 226. Moreover, in a few cases, such as the breast cancer gene BRCA2, the anemone’s version is more similar to the human’s than to the fruit fly’s or to the nematode’s.
I didn’t even know anemones had breasts. 
As a bottom line for the implications of this research, this line bears repeating:
This implies that even very ancient genomes were quite complex and contained most of the genes necessary to build today’s most sophisticated multicellular creatures.
I need not add (but will anyway, for anyone who needs it spelled out) that Darwinism has NO explanation for where these complex genes came from. How can you have a program to build complex multicellular creatures before there are any such creatures for natural selection to work on? How can you select mutations and build gene programs before there is expression of the genes? Hmmmm?
We see complex programs available and installed BEFORE any expression that could be acted on by natural selection.
As the genius in Princess Bride liked to say; “Inconceivable!”
At least if you’re a Darwinist.
(Acknowledgment to Brig Klyce’s website for pointing out this very interesting article.)
37 Responses to Where Did Sea Anemones Get Human Genes?
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It seems likely that insertions, duplications, etc. (I’m sure you know the list) resulted in them being formed through random mutations, natural selection, etc. (I’m sure you know the list)
What’s the justification for calling gene duplications, insertions- you know the list- random?
If you are going to say the source of the change is a point mutation you could say it is random.
But just because we don’t know why or how these other genetic movements occur does not mean they are random.
For all we know these are “built-in responses to environmental cues” ala Dr Spetener’s non-random evolutionary hypothesis.
And if you are going to use genetic similarity as evidence for common ancestry you had better be prepared to explain the physiological and anatomical differences observed.
Similarities can be explained by processes other than descent with modification.
Intronic sequences can effect the splicing of exons (leading to different protein isoforms). Furthermore, introns can become exons and vice versa. “Junk†DNA is not junk.
Meaning that the genome is more intricate and specified than once thought. That blind watchmaker is getting squeezed out of the picture with every experiment.
Charles:
But then, I still don’t really understand front-loading, at least as to why folks think it’s needed.
It’s not “needed”. But how could we tell if there was an intervention short of direct observation?
Why think that the designer would intervene only at one point?
Intervention only occurs after something starts. Front loading doesn’t require any intervention just a first cause.
dacook:
“You seem to be under the impression that 1. the common ancestor was unicellular which it wasn’t.
Where did I say that, and what difference does it make?”
You do state “How can you have a program to build complex multicellular creatures before there are any such creatures for natural selection to work on?” Of course, there wasn’t a pre-existing program. It seems likely that the transition was gradual. We certainly see organisms today that can go from unicellular to multicellular. It certainly did not have to happen all at once.
“What sort of primitive common ancestor would you like to postulate that expresses “most of the genes necessary to build today’s sophisticated multicellular creatures?—
Why must ancient mean primitive? I don’t see why the common ancestor couldn’t be a “sophisticated multicellular creature.” There is nothing to indicate it wasn’t. Indeed, terms like primitive and sophisticated must be used very cautiously.
“Where is the record of this ancient marvel, with sophisticated features NOT PRESENT in its descendants UNTIL the emergence of humans and other advanced organisms?”
According to whom? They may be lost in some descendants and present in others. Why is that hard to believe?
“according to the Darwinian paradigm of gradually increasing complexity there is, in fact, no reason to believe that they existed or reasonably could have existed.”
That’s not a ‘Darwinian paradigm’! Noting in evolutionary theory predicts increasing complexity.
Joseph:
“What’s the justification for calling gene duplications, insertions- you know the list- random?”
True enough, and I never did.
“And if you are going to use genetic similarity as evidence for common ancestry you had better be prepared to explain the physiological and anatomical differences observed”
As we know, small changes in the genome can cause very significant phenotypic changes. Likewise, you can be phenotypically similar without being genetically so (Grand and simple example being the rise of placental mammals mimicking the rise of the marsupial – phenotypically similar in some respects, very different in others but those similarites and differences make sense when looking at the genomes) Obviously it is safest to use all facets, though not everything havs to be treated equally.
“Meaning that the genome is more intricate and specified than once thought. That blind watchmaker is getting squeezed out of the picture with every experiment.”
I guess that is your opinion, though I don’t see it born out by that facts in this case. Personally, I disagree.
Innerbling asked about Abbie Smith’s response to Behe on Panda’s Thumb. For those who are interested, I blogged a response to Abbie Smith, here. As I hereconclude:
Some of you might also find Ms. Smith’s personal blog interesting where she says, “I. Hate. Missionaries. Hate. Them.” (Source, emphasis in original) I’m not necessarily much of a Jerry Falwell fan myself, but some of you might find it interesting that Smith states, “Falwell is an a**. His family is a bunch of little a**ho**s. Im glad Falwells dead, and I wish he took his poor little family with him.” Smith goes on to state that she is, “Fantasizing about them all driving off a cliff…” (Source)
It must very scary for Ms. Smith, with all her hatred of religuos people, that in all of natures she cannont find a single observeable instance of evolution beyond the edge outlined by Behe. If Darwinist evolution really were possible we should be surrounded by millions of observeable examples in rapidly reproducing organisms such as bacteria, plasmodiums, or viruses. Instead, we have nothing. She is sadly reduced to trotting out vpu in HIV as the Golden example of her faith.
#36 Casey, thanks for your last response, which is (such as all the other you have written) very clear end precise. Concerning the kind of language used by the other side I begin to supect that it is not a matter of discussion anymore but of behavior analysis.