Article on chimp and human dna

[cubeus19]

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/201 ... -evolution


Right now some are saying this is some of the best evidence for darwinian evolution yet. I wonder what you all think.

[Ivellious]

Nothing in this article is technically new information. The chromosome 2 bit of information is a tremendous and fascinating example of how genetic research has added so much to the list of evidence for evolution. A creationist could argue that such blatant relatedness between humans and other primates is simply there because "God said so," but even most religious people out there have trouble finding ways to debunk the evidence. Like the guy listed in the article, who pretty much just makes stuff up and hopes the general public doesn't actually fact-check his statements.

[Gman]

Many say that the chimps blueprint is 99% identical to ours. Humans are much more identical to a chimp than a rat, that is true. It sounds close, only 1%, but you also have to remember that our genome is 3 billion base pairs long. So one 1% of 3 billion we are still talking about millions of letters that are different. It’s still a big difference...

[jlay]

If there is really only 1% difference in human and chimp, then I am definately going to protect that 1% of my DNA.
That's a pretty important 1% in my estimation. If that gets damaged, you'll be swinging from branches and throwing poo at the neighbors.

Maybe we should start lobbying for Chimp rights. Or how about a human-chimp marriage movement?

[PaulSacramento]

That humans and Chimps share so much simply means that the basic building blocks are common.

[Byblos]

If there is really only 1% difference in human and chimp, then I am definately going to protect that 1% of my DNA.
That's a pretty important 1% in my estimation. If that gets damaged, you'll be swinging from branches and throwing poo at the neighbors.

Maybe we should start lobbying for Chimp rights. Or how about a human-chimp marriage movement?

Kidding aside though, do you have any resources that explain the similarities such as the chromosomal fusion, ERV insertions, etc, from a progressive creationist or YEC perspective?

[Morny]

If there is really only 1% difference in human and chimp, then I am definately going to protect that 1% of my DNA.
That's a pretty important 1% in my estimation. If that gets damaged, you'll be swinging from branches and throwing poo at the neighbors.

Maybe we should start lobbying for Chimp rights. Or how about a human-chimp marriage movement?

Kidding aside though, do you have any resources that explain the similarities such as the chromosomal fusion, ERV insertions, etc, from a progressive creationist or YEC perspective?

I'm not sure what you're asking. In the OP's motherjones.com link is a video from Kenneth Miller (a devout Christian), who describes for lay people what the human-ape chromosome fusion evidence is.

[RickD]

If there is really only 1% difference in human and chimp, then I am definately going to protect that 1% of my DNA.
That's a pretty important 1% in my estimation. If that gets damaged, you'll be swinging from branches and throwing poo at the neighbors.

Maybe we should start lobbying for Chimp rights. Or how about a human-chimp marriage movement?

Kidding aside though, do you have any resources that explain the similarities such as the chromosomal fusion, ERV insertions, etc, from a progressive creationist or YEC perspective?

I'm not sure what you're asking. In the OP's motherjones.com link is a video from Kenneth Miller (a devout Christian), who describes for lay people what the human-ape chromosome fusion evidence is.

Miller is an evolutionist. Byblos is looking for a progressive creationist or young earth creationist perspective.

[RickD]

Byblos wrote:
Kidding aside though, do you have any resources that explain the similarities such as the chromosomal fusion, ERV insertions, etc, from a progressive creationist or YEC perspective?

Byblos,

It's not very in depth, but it's something:
http://www.reasons.org/articles/chromos ... -evolution

[Morny]

Miller is an evolutionist. Byblos is looking for a progressive creationist or young earth creationist perspective.

Ah, interesting approach, viz., ignore a Christian biology scientist -- sort of a rose-colored glasses approach to learning.

I learn vastly more from people with whom I disagree, than from those who agree with me.

[RickD]

Miller is an evolutionist. Byblos is looking for a progressive creationist or young earth creationist perspective.

Ah, interesting approach, viz., ignore a Christian biology scientist -- sort of a rose-colored glasses approach to learning.

I learn vastly more from people with whom I disagree, than from those who agree with me.

Morny,

The author of the link I posted is Fuz Rana. He's a Christian biochemist.

[Gman]

Maybe we should start lobbying for Chimp rights. Or how about a human-chimp marriage movement?

Wouldn't surprise me.. And if you opposed it, you could be send to jail for hate speech..

[Byblos]

Byblos wrote:
Kidding aside though, do you have any resources that explain the similarities such as the chromosomal fusion, ERV insertions, etc, from a progressive creationist or YEC perspective?

Byblos,

It's not very in depth, but it's something:
http://www.reasons.org/articles/chromos ... -evolution

Thanks for the link Rick. I'm no biologist but even I could see the flimsiness of the conclusion. It boils down to 'it's highly improbable therefore God did it'. Seriously we need a little more substance than that.

[RickD]

Byblos wrote:
Kidding aside though, do you have any resources that explain the similarities such as the chromosomal fusion, ERV insertions, etc, from a progressive creationist or YEC perspective?

Byblos,

It's not very in depth, but it's something:
http://www.reasons.org/articles/chromos ... -evolution

Thanks for the link Rick. I'm no biologist but even I could see the flimsiness of the conclusion. It boils down to 'it's highly improbable therefore God did it'. Seriously we need a little more substance than that.

I wish I could've found something where Fuz goes into more detail, so I could see what he was talking about. Most of their articles are pretty short. Maybe one of his books goes more in depth.

[bippy123]

Byblos wrote:
Kidding aside though, do you have any resources that explain the similarities such as the chromosomal fusion, ERV insertions, etc, from a progressive creationist or YEC perspective?

Byblos,

It's not very in depth, but it's something:
http://www.reasons.org/articles/chromos ... -evolution

Thanks for the link Rick. I'm no biologist but even I could see the flimsiness of the conclusion. It boils down to 'it's highly improbable therefore God did it'. Seriously we need a little more substance than that.

I wish I could've found something where Fuz goes into more detail, so I could see what he was talking about. Most of their articles are pretty short. Maybe one of his books goes more in depth.

Rick and Byblos here are some resources that go into greater detail as to why Chromosome 2 is exaggerated by kenneth Miller who is a theistic evolutionist (as i once was but now im an ID proponent).

JoeCoder has an excellent writeup to why the Chromosome2 fusion simply doesnt wash as evidence for a relationship between ape and human from the chromosome 2 fusion.

http://www.uncommondescent.com/intellig ... ent-431951

4
JoeCoderAugust 31, 2012 at 12:39 pm

@smiddyone

It’s a bit more complicated than that. Re-using a reply I sent to someone else, if you don’t mind:
————————

First, the ch2 fusion is cherry picking among numerous other genetic scars that show no common ancestry. Evolutionary biologist Richard Sternberg remarked:

“Of all the known ITSs [interstitial telomeric sequences], and there are many in the genomes of chimps and humans, as well as mice and rats and cows…, the 2q13 ITS is the only one that can be associated with an evolutionary breakpoint or fusion. The other ITSs, I hasten to add, do not square up with chromosomal breakpoints in primates. In brief, to hone in on the 2q13 ITS as being typical of what we see in the human and chimp genomes seems almost like cherry-picking data. Most are not DNA scars in the way they have been portrayed.”, Richard Sternberg
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/05/gu ... 20401.html

“I developed software that enables the scanning of whole chromosomes for internal telomere content. … Surprisingly, I discovered that the entire human genome contains many completely intact internal telomere sequences. My preliminary data suggests that the internal regions of human chromosomes are composed of 0.19 to 0.25 percent 100% sequence identity intact telomere sequences. While this may seem to be a very small amount, consider that chromosome 2 (the supposed fusion product) contains over 91,000 (0.23 percent) intact internal telomere sequences. Fewer than 300 of these can be attributed to the so-called fusion site. Chromosome Y was the most internally dense telomere containing chromosome (0.25 percent).”,
http://designed-dna.org/blog/files/d565 ... 8f6-27.php

But telomeric DNA normally consists of thousands of repeats of a 6-base-pair sequence TTAGGG. So if two chromosomes were fused end-to-end, a huge amount of alleged telomeric DNA is missing and/or garbled. Contrary to Fairbank’s “precisely what we would expect”, others have noted that the site appears far more degenerate than expected, which is especially odd, considering that meiotic recombination is suppressed in pericentric DNA, which should cause it to mutate more slowly; meaning that 6m years isn’t enough time to account for what we see.

Despite this, we may very well have once had 48 chromosomes in our past. But if you’re going to make an argument from similarity, why not cite the markers we know we share with apes, such as the ALU elements or common genes, versus one that depends on so many unknowns? Of course, similarity is no more an argument for common design than common descent.

Moreso, fusion events serve as poor taxonomic dividers and don’t necessitate a speciation event. Some species show a very diverse range of karyotypes (number of chromosomes), with little-to-no effect on phenotype (how an organism looks and behaves):

If you do your research you will see that chromosome fusion is a very poor argument for relations between man and ape