This just in: We are 99.5% gorilla …

_{Denyse O'Leary

March 7, 2012

Genetics, Human evolution, News}

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Well, we must be. From “What Have We Got in Common With a Gorilla? Insight Into Human Evolution from Gorilla Genome Sequence” (ScienceDaily, Mar. 7, 2012), we learn,

Researchers have just completed the genome sequence for the gorilla — the last genus of the living great apes to have its genome decoded. While confirming that our closest relative is the chimpanzee, the team show that much of the human genome more closely resembles the gorilla than it does the chimpanzee genome.

Before we were 99% chimpanzee, so … Hey, wait a minute … Don’t sign anything …

Comments

But the DNA evidence makes the evolutionary history of these species clear and there’s nothing “interpretive” about that.
If and only if DNA was destiny, but we know it isn'tJoe_{March 8, 2012
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wd400, that's the whole problem with Darwinian thinking, no matter what the genetic evidence says it will never uproot Darwin's tree of life in your imagination. Unfortunately for you, others no so committed to a dogmatic point of view, see the genetic evidence now 'pouring out' very differently:
Why Darwin was wrong about the (genetic) tree of life: - 21 January 2009 "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
I would like to point out that this, 'annihilation' of Darwin's genetic tree of life, article came out on the very day that Dr. Hillis, a self-proclaimed 'world leading expert' on the genetic tree of life, testified before the Texas State Board Of Education that the genetic tree of life overwhelmingly confirmed gradual Darwinian evolution. One could almost argue it was 'Intelligently Designed' for him to exposed as a fraud on that particular day of his testimony instead of just any other day of the year. Here is another article, written by a leading researcher in the world mind you, that states the true pattern found for life, from comparative genetic evidence:
A New Model for Evolution: A Rhizome - Didier Raoult - May 2010 Excerpt: Thus we cannot currently identify a single common ancestor for the gene repertoire of any organism.,,, Overall, it is now thought that there are no two genes that have a similar history along the phylogenic tree.,,,Therefore the representation of the evolutionary pathway as a tree leading to a single common ancestor on the basis of the analysis of one or more genes provides an incorrect representation of the stability and hierarchy of evolution. Finally, genome analyses have revealed that a very high proportion of genes are likely to be newly created,,, and that some genes are only found in one organism (named ORFans). These genes do not belong to any phylogenic tree and represent new genetic creations. http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2010/05/new-model-for-evolution-rhizome.html
Since evolutionists continually misrepresent the true state of the evidence for molecular sequences, here are several more comments and articles, by leading experts, on the incongruence of molecular sequences to Darwin's theory: https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1S5wXsukzkauD5YQLkQYuIMGL25I4fJrOUzJhONvBXe4 As well, completely contrary to evolutionary thought, this following article and video shows that the 'same exact genes' in different species have actually been shown to produce 'completely different' body structures:
A Primer on the Tree of Life (Part 4) Excerpt: "In sharks, for example, the gut develops from cells in the roof of the embryonic cavity. In lampreys, the gut develops from cells on the floor of the cavity. And in frogs, the gut develops from cells from both the roof and the floor of the embryonic cavity. This discovery—that homologous structures can be produced by different developmental pathways—contradicts what we would expect to find if all vertebrates share a common ancestor. - Explore Evolution http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/05/a_primer_on_the_tree_of_life_p_3.html#more
bornagain77_{March 8, 2012
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But the DNA evidence makes the evolutionary history of these species clear and there’s nothing “interpretive” about that.
No, the DNA does not make the evolutionary history clear. The DNA comparisons of similarities show that there are similarities. Period. That is all. Everything beyond that about an alleged evolutionary history is entirely interpretive. This is particularly the case in light of the following known facts (among others): - There is no known detail -- not even the slightest inkling -- of what particular changes in DNA sequences would do in the alleged ancestral organism (let's call it a "chimp" just for simplicity's sake). - It is not clear that the DNA changes would in fact make a chimp into a human. There is no sound theory for explaining how it is that the small amount of difference (if we take the Darwinist storyline at its word that there is 97+% of similarity) in the DNA can have such profound effects in the ultimate organism. - It is known that there is a whole other level (multiple levels, actually) of information above DNA that controls how DNA is expressed. Indeed, researchers have already demonstrated that similar genes in humans and other primates can have very different expression. No. Running comparative DNA tests to determine similarities will tell us only about DNA similarities. Everything beyond that is a speculative storyline.Eric Anderson_{March 8, 2012
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Of related note: Here is a professor of paleoanthropology openly admitting that genuine problems exist in the Darwinian story of human origins.,, All I can say is that he must be tenured!
Pikaia interviews Bernard Wood - pt. 1/2 - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mbHt_gHKOI
In Part 2 he is frank in admitting the problems that genetic comparisons are presenting to the 'simple' story of human evolution.
Pikaia interviews Bernard Wood - pt. 2/2 - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXLG7MbsGIk
Dr. Fazale Rana commented, after watching the preceding video, that it almost seemed like Dr. Wood took a page out of his 'Who Was Adam'? book; Related notes:
Hugh Ross : Who was Adam? part 1 of 11 - audio http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mo8T1_PArJY Icon Of Evolution - Ape To Man - The Ultimate Deception - Jonathan Wells - video http://vimeo.com/19080087
Here is a paper which, though technical, shows that the modern genetic evidence we now have actually supports Adam and Eve. Moreover, the evidence it presents from the latest genetic research is completely inexplicable to neo-Darwinism, i.e. neo-Darwinism, once again, completely falls apart upon rigid scrutiny; (and although I don’t agree with the extreme 6000 year Young Earth model used as a starting presumption in the paper for deriving the graphs, the model, none-the-less, can be amended quite comfortably to a longer time period. Which I, personally, think provides a much more ‘comfortable’ fit to the overall body of evidence)
The Non-Mythical Adam and Eve! - Refuting errors by Francis Collins and BioLogos http://creation.com/historical-adam-biologos
CMI has a excellent video of the preceding paper by Dr. Carter, that makes the technical aspects of the paper much easier to understand;
The Non Mythical Adam and Eve (Dr Robert Carter) - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ftwf0owpzQ
Moreover this genetic evidence for 'Adam and Eve', elucidated by Dr. Carter, is corroborated by several other lines of genetic evidence:
Human Evolution? - The Compelling Genetic Evidence For Adam and Eve Dr. Fazale Rana - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4284482
bornagain77_{March 8, 2012
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BA, Kanagaroos aren't on the "line" leading to humans (the focus on that one narrow line in the primate tree it itself a silly mistake many people make) That article is talking about conservation of gene order (not gene sequence) which is turns out it strong among mammals. Still no upending of trees required.wd400_{March 8, 2012
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wd400 you state:
But the DNA evidence makes the evolutionary history of these species clear and there’s nothing “interpretive” about that.
Okie Dokie wd400 you seem to have all this evolutionary relationship stuff figured out from genetic sequences and I guess you are also certain this proves that man evolved from apes by neo-Darwinian means, but I have one nagging question right off the top of my head since genetic similarity carries such weight,,, exactly where do we stick kangaroos in the line leading up to humans???
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
bornagain77_{March 8, 2012
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As I said, interesting stuff. But all the talk of similarity, relatedness, closest relative, etc. is an interpretive gloss put on the DNA comparisons that really doesn’t mean much substantively. Well, no, the magic number of 98.5 or 97% identity doesn't mean much. But the DNA evidence makes the evolutionary history of these species clear and there's nothing "interpretive" about that.wd400_{March 8, 2012
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Apologies, wd400. I was referring to this version of the report:
Another surprising result is that part of the gorilla genome is at odds with the current structure of the great ape evolutionary tree. For example, instead of gorillas being most similar to chimps and then humans in that portion of the DNA, the branches flip to humans being most similar to gorillas and then chimps.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/03/120306-gorilla-genome-apes-humans-evolution-science/ Yes, yes, the authors go on to assure us that this doesn't upset the "overall view of evolution" whatever that may mean. But they do acknowledge "It means within each branch [i.e., primate branch] things can happen. We can't just conform to a simple tree on a gene-by-gene basis." As I said, interesting stuff. But all the talk of similarity, relatedness, closest relative, etc. is an interpretive gloss put on the DNA comparisons that really doesn't mean much substantively.Eric Anderson_{March 8, 2012
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Eric- 1- I have been asking and have been told that I basically have no right to ask for such a thing- that is there isn't a complete side-by-each comparison of the two genomes However, and I believe bornagain77 has linked to it in the recent past,there is Genome-Wide DNA Alignment Similarity (Identity) for 40,000 Chimpanzee DNA Sequences Queried against the Human Genome is 86–89% 2- Given that most proteins are for every day stuff- maintenance and survival- I would expect all animals to have some level of similarity Also having a knuckle-walker evolving into an upright biped may have the feasibilty of a computer virus evolving into an app. We just don't know if changes to a genome can account for all the other changes that are required.Joe_{March 8, 2012
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Guys, did you read the article? Most human sequences are more closely related to chimp sequences (we already knew that), some are more closely related to Gorilla sequences (we actually already knew that too, the headline is the percentage showing this pattern). That's down to incomplete lineage sorting, a very well chracterised phenomenon that can make gene trees diverge from species trees, but certainly isn't going to "upend the primate tree of life".wd400_{March 8, 2012
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Two things: 1. Does anyone know whether a chimp/human comparison has been done actually lining up the whole of DNA? I realize this would be a challenge, but it seems a lab with high performance computers should have the compute capability to do it. What I'm driving at is that many, perhaps most, of the comparisons have been done (i) using only part of the DNA, (ii) not taking into account larger positional context. By (ii) I mean that if we find sequence x in one place in chimp DNA and sequence x in another place in human DNA it has historically been considered that the two sequences "match up" and are counted as being part of the similarity. While this idea makes some sense and cannot be dismissed out of hand, it is based on the old and incorrect idea that the genome is simply transcribed 1 for 1 and that the only important thing is the nucleotide sequence. We now know that not only is the sequence important, but that the positioning of the sequence within the larger DNA, the surrounding material, the 3-d structure of the molecule, proximity to certain triggering signals, etc. all influence if, how, and when the particular sequence is expressed. Thus, having an identical sequence x show up in two different contexts does not necessarily mean they are identical. It is somewhat analogous to taking War and Peace and Doctor Zhivago and arguing that because most of the words that show up in the one book also show up in the other, the books are, say, 90% identical. Like a book, DNA is not just a collection of independent sequences. The placement, order and context are important. Anyway, just wondering if there have been any studies that analyze the whole of chimp and human DNA as aligned, not just comparing selected sequences to see if similar sequences are to be found. 2. There is certainly more I have to learn about the specific chimp-human comparisons, but my understanding is that there are some interesting, indeed striking, similarities in some cases, whether in specific sequences or in larger DNA structures. I think we need to be careful not to dismiss this evidence too quickly. Indeed, we should probably acknowledge that in some cases these similarities are consistent with the idea of descent with modification. I fully agree that the source of the modification is where ID comes into play and that the idea of mutations and natural variations turning a monkey into a man (so to speak) is preposterous. That said, some of the genetic similarities are interesting and deserve thoughful consideration. Yes, it could be that we are looking at design re-used. Yes, it could be that descent occurred, but was guided. But these are also speculations. The fact is that some similarities are there and they are interesting. Perhaps at this point that is all we can say: they are interesting.Eric Anderson_{March 8, 2012
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Well put Eric! And yet how many times has the claim been made that the mythical 99% genetic similarity number, that has been kicked around for years, proved beyond any shadow of a doubt that man evolved from apes? Never mind that the number is now known to be fictitious, and never mind that Darwinists have never actually demonstrated that their mechanism, of random variation and natural selection, can 'randomly' generate even a single functional protein, much less have the neo-Darwinists actually demonstrated that their mechanism can transform anything like a monkey into a human. Shoot, as referenced before, the Darwinian mechanism can't even fix a single beneficial mutation into fruit flies after decades of trying! Darwinism is simply given a free pass by neo-Darwinists as far as rigorous proof is concerned. Moreover on many internet sites, such as PT and PZ Myers blog, many neo-Darwinists have become the feces flinging monkeys they claim we came from. A person who honestly questions the claims of Darwinism and demands real proof that what is said can be done by Darwinist actually can be done in the real world is insulted, ridiculed and treated to all sorts of deceptive tactics of rhetoric devised to camouflage the fact that there is no real evidence.bornagain77_{March 8, 2012
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Agreed. I think the evidence points not to common descent, but to a common Designer!tjguy_{March 8, 2012
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Two things: 1. The article suggests that this discovery will upend the primate tree of life and require some reshuffling of positions. But weren't we being told that DNA evidence confirms prior tree of life assignments, rather than requiring changes? 2. More importantly, the whole business of declaring how similar we are to chimpanzes or gorillas or any other creature based on DNA sequencing is intellectually incompetent. DNA is incredible and an astounding example of complex specified information in its own right. But it does not even come close to determining who we are. There is a tremendous amount of information outside of DNA that determines what part of DNA is accessed, when it is accessed, how often it is accessed, what happens to the RNA after the transcription, what happens to proteins after they are built, and on and on. As was mentioned by someone on another thread (ba77?), DNA is a "parts list." Perhaps it is more than that, but, nevertheless, it is an instructive analogy. Claiming that because my DNA is similar to a chimp's DNA I am therefore similar to a chimp is as intellectually obtuse as claiming that my house must be similar to your house because we both got our materials at the Home Depot. And I'm setting aside for a moment the fact that the % claims of similar DNA have historically overstated the numbers, because even if our DNA and chimp DNA were absolutely identical in every nucleotide it would not mean that we are identical. There is a whole overlay of controlling information that is not contained in DNA. You want to know the difference between a chimp and a human? Don't gaze at a printout of nucleotides; go out and do some observations. Go visit a chimp library, or a chimp factory, or a chimp computer software lab . . . Oh, no, wait. Well, then, go read Shakespeare, or listen to Chopin, or look at some of DaVinci's works. Sorry to upset the traditional storyline, but the chimp isn't 99% of the way there, or 95% of the way there, or any other meaningful percent of the way there to being human. Despite all the concerted efforts to prove for the past couple of centuries that we are on some kind of continuum, the fact remains that the separation between us and other creatures is not just one of degree, it is of kind. Any observation of similarity in DNA simply demonstrates that the overall difference isn't in the DNA.Eric Anderson_{March 7, 2012
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Who wants to stake a bet on how long these numbers hold and whether or not they are accurate 10 years from now? I mean, come on, gorillas are even less human like than chimps and we're supposed to believe these numbers are accurate? Not buyin' it.tjguy_{March 7, 2012
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OT:
David Berlinski & Michael Denton: Primary Objections to Neo-Darwinism - podcast http://intelligentdesign.podomatic.com/entry/2012-03-07T16_01_05-08_00
bornagain77_{March 7, 2012
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Hmm, seems they inadvertently left a few notes out of the article: First, it has now been revealed that chimps are not nearly as identical in their DNA sequences to humans as was once thought (and still widely believed);
Chimp chromosome creates puzzles - 2004 Excerpt: However, the researchers were in for a surprise. Because chimps and humans appear broadly similar, some have assumed that most of the differences would occur in the large regions of DNA that do not appear to have any obvious function. But that was not the case. The researchers report in 'Nature' that many of the differences were within genes, the regions of DNA that code for proteins. 83% of the 231 genes compared had differences that affected the amino acid sequence of the protein they encoded. And 20% showed "significant structural changes". In addition, there were nearly 68,000 regions that were either extra or missing between the two sequences, accounting for around 5% of the chromosome.,,, "we have seen a much higher percentage of change than people speculated." The researchers also carried out some experiments to look at when and how strongly the genes are switched on. 20% of the genes showed significant differences in their pattern of activity. http://www.nature.com/news/1998/040524/full/news040524-8.html Study Reports a Whopping "23% of Our Genome" Contradicts Standard Human-Ape Evolutionary Phylogeny - Casey Luskin - June 2011 Excerpt: For about 23% of our genome, we share no immediate genetic ancestry with our closest living relative, the chimpanzee. This encompasses genes and exons to the same extent as intergenic regions. We conclude that about 1/3 of our genes started to evolve as human-specific lineages before the differentiation of human, chimps, and gorillas took place. (of note; 1/3 of our genes is equal to about 7000 genes that we do not share with chimpanzees) http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/06/study_reports_a_whopping_23_of047041.html
moreover, what was once thought to be 98.8% identical gene sequences similarity, for protein coding portion of the genome, is now found to be only 86%-89% identical.
Genome-Wide DNA Alignment Similarity (Identity) for 40,000 Chimpanzee DNA Sequences Queried against the Human Genome is 86–89% - Jeffrey P. Tomkins - December 28, 2011 Concluding statement: Depending on the BLASTN parameter combination, average sequence identity for the thirty separate experiments between human and chimp varied between 86 and 89%. The average chimp query sequence length was 740 bases and depending on the BLASTN parameter combination, average alignment length varied between 121 and 191 bases. Excluding data for the number of clones that did not align or the large amount of bases within clones that did not align, an unbiased conservative estimate of genome-wide human-chimp DNA similarity is not more than 86–89% identical. The conservative nature of these estimates is further noted by the fact that the 40,000 sequence chimp sequences that were tested, represent pre-selected homologous sequence already known to align to the human genome. http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/arj/v4/n1/blastin 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. http://www.physorg.com/news182605704.html
Second, neo-Darwinists simply have not 'scientifically' demonstrated their mechanism for their materialistic conjecture:
Waiting Longer for Two Mutations - Michael J. Behe Excerpt: Citing malaria literature sources (White 2004) I had noted that the de novo appearance of chloroquine resistance in Plasmodium falciparum was an event of probability of 1 in 10^20. I then wrote that 'for humans to achieve a mutation like this by chance, we would have to wait 100 million times 10 million years' (1 quadrillion years)(Behe 2007) (because that is the extrapolated time that it would take to produce 10^20 humans). Durrett and Schmidt (2008, p. 1507) retort that my number ‘is 5 million times larger than the calculation we have just given’ using their model (which nonetheless "using their model" gives a prohibitively long waiting time of 216 million years). Their criticism compares apples to oranges. My figure of 10^20 is an empirical statistic from the literature; it is not, as their calculation is, a theoretical estimate from a population genetics model. http://www.discovery.org/a/9461 Experimental Evolution in Fruit Flies (35 years of trying to force fruit flies to evolve in the laboratory fails, spectacularly) - October 2010 Excerpt: "Despite decades of sustained selection in relatively small, sexually reproducing laboratory populations, selection did not lead to the fixation of newly arising unconditionally advantageous alleles.,,, "This research really upends the dominant paradigm about how species evolve," said ecology and evolutionary biology professor Anthony Long, the primary investigator. http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.php/literature/2010/10/07/experimental_evolution_in_fruit_flies Testing Evolution in the Lab With Biologic Institute's Ann Gauger - podcast with link to peer-reviewed paper Excerpt: Dr. Gauger experimentally tested two-step adaptive paths that should have been within easy reach for bacterial populations. Listen in and learn what Dr. Gauger was surprised to find as she discusses the implications of these experiments for Darwinian evolution. Dr. Gauger's paper, "Reductive Evolution Can Prevent Populations from Taking Simple Adaptive Paths to High Fitness,". http://intelligentdesign.podomatic.com/entry/2010-05-10T15_24_13-07_00 “The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain - Michael Behe - December 2010 Excerpt: In its most recent issue The Quarterly Review of Biology has published a review by myself of laboratory evolution experiments of microbes going back four decades.,,, The gist of the paper is that so far the overwhelming number of adaptive (that is, helpful) mutations seen in laboratory evolution experiments are either loss or modification of function. Of course we had already known that the great majority of mutations that have a visible effect on an organism are deleterious. Now, surprisingly, it seems that even the great majority of helpful mutations degrade the genome to a greater or lesser extent.,,, I dub it “The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain.(that is a net 'fitness gain' within a 'stressed' environment i.e. remove the stress from the environment and the parent strain is always more 'fit') http://behe.uncommondescent.com/2010/12/the-first-rule-of-adaptive-evolution/ Where's the substantiating evidence for neo-Darwinism? https://docs.google.com/document/d/1q-PBeQELzT4pkgxB2ZOxGxwv6ynOixfzqzsFlCJ9jrw/edit
bornagain77_{March 7, 2012
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