Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Jumping’ Genes!: A quarter of cow DNA came from reptiles?

Share
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Flipboard
Print
Email

From Ed Yong at The Atlantic:

This jumping gene seems to have entered the cow genome from the unlikeliest of sources: snakes and lizards.

Retrotransposons typically jump around within a single genome, but sometimes they can travel further afield. Through means that scientists still don’t fully understand, they can leave the DNA of one species and enter that of another. And so it is with BovB. No one knows the animal in which it originated. But from that mystery source, it has jumped into the DNA of snakes and cows, elephants and butterflies, ants and rhinos.

No one knows how BovB travels between species, but Ivancevic and Adelson suspect that it might spread via blood-sucking parasites. They have found strong similarities between the BovB versions in leeches and zebrafish, bedbugs and snakes, ticks and lizards. By biting different hosts, parasites might help jumping genes to vault over the species barrier.

“It’s mind-boggling to think about how just a few [jumps] have fundamentally altered the course of our evolution,” says Chuong. Evolutionary biologists like to wonder what would happen if we replayed the tape of life—if we went back to some earlier point in history and let evolution run its course again. Would history repeat itself? Chuong thinks not. These jumps are so unpredictable, but so potentially important when they happen, that it’s hard to imagine the events unfolding twice. More.

If jumping genes can be this prevalent, evolution is about to become way more complex than the storied Tree of Life hammered into kids at school.

See also: No coherent “narrative” for transposable elements (jumping genes)?

and

Jumping genes make the tree of life a bush

and

Life continues to ignore what evolution experts say

Comments
Peer @ #2, Thanks for sharing your paper "The ‘VIGE-first hypothesis" VIGE = Variation Inducing Genetic Elements I've only scanned your paper. As time permits, will dive in. I found more material on Front-Loading as well. I'm curious if you have time, how you see current research and findings unfolding in these areas? From a "front-loading" perspective? And genetic elements "designed to generate variation."DATCG
October 17, 2017
October
10
Oct
17
17
2017
10:24 PM
10
10
24
PM
PDT
Or it is just DNA sequences being used in multiple creatures by a common designer. Apart from similarity do we have any evidence of horizontal gene transfer from reptiles to mammals?aarceng
October 17, 2017
October
10
Oct
17
17
2017
08:09 PM
8
08
09
PM
PDT
Ivancevic and Adelson suspect that it might spread via blood-sucking parasites ...
So, there is a suspicion which might be true. Why do they suggest that this comes close to full understanding? Does a suspicion which might be true even come close to rudimentary understanding? Why do they suggest, as so often, that they are almost there? Why write:
Through means that scientists still don’t fully understand ..
What is the word "fully" doing there? What is its function?Origenes
October 17, 2017
October
10
Oct
17
17
2017
05:52 AM
5
05
52
AM
PDT
Peer at 3, either way, it's not the Darwin-in-the-schools lobby's version. See the See the End of Science rent-a-riot for some sense of that.News
October 17, 2017
October
10
Oct
17
17
2017
04:19 AM
4
04
19
AM
PDT
The old saw "These jumps are so unpredictable, but so potentially important when they happen, that it’s hard to imagine the events unfolding twice." is wrong. Jumps are not unpredictable, and their integration is site specific due to site-specific endonuclease. Once transposed, they are subject to non-random mutations. https://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j27_3/j27_3_105-112.pdfPeer
October 17, 2017
October
10
Oct
17
17
2017
03:53 AM
3
03
53
AM
PDT
Only a quarter?rvb8
October 16, 2017
October
10
Oct
16
16
2017
03:38 PM
3
03
38
PM
PDT

Leave a Reply