World’s simplest animals as different from each other as humans and mice

_{Denyse O'Leary

September 25, 2018

Genomics, speciation}

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The world’s simplest animal is trichoplax adhaerens. It is so simple that researchers wisely decided to forego the venerable Biological Species Concept that depends on an animal’s form (tricoplax doesn’t have much of a form) and just use genetics. But when evolutionary biologist Michael Eitel sequenced the genomes of several thousand of them, he was in for a surprise:

A quarter of the genes were in the wrong spot or written backward. Instructions for similar proteins were spelled nearly 30 percent differently on average, and in some cases as much as 80 percent. The Hong Kong variety was missing 4 percent of its distant cousin’s genes and had its own share of genes unique to itself. Overall, the Hong Kong placozoan genome was about as different from that of T. adhaerens as human DNA is from mouse DNA. “It was really striking,” Eitel said. “They look the same, and we look completely different from mice.”

So where do all those genetic changes manifest, if not in the animals’ flabby appearance?

“Even though the placozoan itself looks like a little ball of glue, it probably has cells that are doing some pretty sophisticated things,” said Holly Bik, a marine biologist at the University of California, Riverside, who studies tiny marine roundworms known as nematodes, which can also be cryptic.Charlie Wood, “World’s Simplest Animal Reveals Hidden Diversity” at Quanta

Paper. (open access)

Genetically, humans and mice have more in common than the Hong Kong placozoan and the T. adhaerens placozoan because humans and mice are both mammals. But the genetic distance between the placazoans is greater than between “most vertebrate orders.”

One can take from this the lesson that the genome is very plastic. One thinks of the strenuous efforts of Darwinian biologists to demonstrate speciation according to their concepts (Darwin’s finches come to mind). And it’s probably all for nothing (except ensuring that school textbooks continue to misrepresent the history of life).

See also: A physicist looks at biology’s problem of “speciation” in humans

Comments

To be fair, I just came across a Darwinist that understands DNA is what it's cracked up to be - see "Life's Ratchet" by Peter Hoffmann. http://nonlin.org/dna-not-essence-of-life/ ...yet somehow he still manages to draw the wrong conclusions.Nonlin.org_{September 26, 2018
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R J Sawyer:
The species concept itself does not “depend” on form.
Classification does
Using form alone you couldn’t distinguish between a male and female angler fish.
So what? They are the same speciesET_{September 26, 2018
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The world’s simplest animal is trichoplax adhaerens. It is so simple that researchers wisely decided to forego the venerable Biological Species Concept that depends on an animal’s form (tricoplax doesn’t have much of a form) and just use genetics.
Just a correction. The species concept itself does not "depend" on form. Using form alone you couldn't distinguish between a male and female angler fish. For many bacteria, you cannot distinguish different species using form alone. Sometimes chemical interactions are needed. Form (shape, size, dimensions, etc.) are often used as a convenient tool to shoehorn an unidentified (by the individual examining it) organism into a classification. They use published identification keys. But these keys are only tools. If there is a discrepancy between the key and the genetics, the genetics rules.R J Sawyer_{September 26, 2018
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And as Dr. Stephen Meyer stated in the following video, 'you can mutate DNA indefinitely. 80 million years, 100 million years, til the cows come home. It doesn’t matter, because in the best case you are just going to find a new protein some place out there in that vast combinatorial sequence space. You are not, by mutating DNA alone, going to generate higher order structures that are necessary to building a body plan.'
‘Now one more problem as far as the generation of information. It turns out that you don’t only need information to build genes and proteins, it turns out to build Body-Plans you need higher levels of information; Higher order assembly instructions. DNA codes for the building of proteins, but proteins must be arranged into distinctive circuitry to form distinctive cell types. Cell types have to be arranged into tissues. Tissues have to be arranged into organs. Organs and tissues must be specifically arranged to generate whole new Body-Plans, distinctive arrangements of those body parts. We now know that DNA alone is not responsible for those higher orders of organization. DNA codes for proteins, but by itself it does not insure that proteins, cell types, tissues, organs, will all be arranged in the body-plan. And what that means is that the Body-Plan morphogenesis, as it is called, depends upon information that is not encoded on DNA. Which means you can mutate DNA indefinitely. 80 million years, 100 million years, til the cows come home. It doesn’t matter, because in the best case you are just going to find a new protein some place out there in that vast combinatorial sequence space. You are not, by mutating DNA alone, going to generate higher order structures that are necessary to building a body plan. So what we can conclude from that is that the neo-Darwinian mechanism is grossly inadequate to explain the origin of information necessary to build new genes and proteins, and it is also grossly inadequate to explain the origination of novel biological form.’ - Stephen Meyer - Functional Proteins and Information for Body Plans – video – 5:55 minute mark https://youtu.be/hs4y4XLGQ-Y?t=354
Moreover, the failure of the reductive materialism of Neo-Darwinian evolution to be able to explain the basic form of any particular organism occurs at a very low level. Much lower than DNA itself. In the following article entitled 'Quantum physics problem proved unsolvable', which studied the derivation of macroscopic properties from a complete microscopic description, the researchers remark that even a perfect and complete description of the microscopic properties of a material is not enough to predict its macroscopic behaviour.,,, The researchers further commented that their findings challenge the reductionists' point of view, as the insurmountable difficulty lies precisely in the derivation of macroscopic properties from a microscopic description."
Quantum physics problem proved unsolvable: Gödel and Turing enter quantum physics - December 9, 2015 Excerpt: A mathematical problem underlying fundamental questions in particle and quantum physics is provably unsolvable,,, It is the first major problem in physics for which such a fundamental limitation could be proven. The findings are important because they show that even a perfect and complete description of the microscopic properties of a material is not enough to predict its macroscopic behaviour.,,, "We knew about the possibility of problems that are undecidable in principle since the works of Turing and Gödel in the 1930s," added Co-author Professor Michael Wolf from Technical University of Munich. "So far, however, this only concerned the very abstract corners of theoretical computer science and mathematical logic. No one had seriously contemplated this as a possibility right in the heart of theoretical physics before. But our results change this picture. From a more philosophical perspective, they also challenge the reductionists' point of view, as the insurmountable difficulty lies precisely in the derivation of macroscopic properties from a microscopic description." http://phys.org/news/2015-12-quantum-physics-problem-unsolvable-godel.html
The following video goes over many more lines of evidence that show that biological form will forever be beyond the grasp of Darwinian explanations:
Darwinism vs Biological Form - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyNzNPgjM4w
Moreover, to state what should be glaringly obvious by now, since neo-Darwinian explanations are grossly inadequate for explaining how any particular organism might achieve its basic form, then neo-Darwinian speculations for how one type of organism might transform into another type of organism are based on pure fantasy and have no discernible experimental basis in reality. Whereas, on the other hand, Theism, especially with these recent breakthroughs in quantum biology,,,
Darwinian Materialism vs Quantum Biology - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHdD2Am1g5Y
,,,is found to be very well supported in its claim that God has formed each of us, i.e. each of our eternal 'souls', in our mother’s womb. Verses:
Jeremiah 1:5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” Psalm 139:13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. James 2:26 As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead. Matthew 16:26 For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?
bornagain77_{September 25, 2018
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First Decoded Marsupial Genome Reveals "Junk DNA" Surprise - 2007 Excerpt: In particular, the study highlights the genetic differences between marsupials such as opossums and kangaroos and placental mammals like humans, mice, and dogs. ,,, The researchers were surprised to find that placental and marsupial mammals have largely the same set of genes for making proteins. Instead, much of the difference lies in the controls that turn genes on and off. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/05/070510-opossum-dna.html
There are many more examples of Darwinists being 'surprised' at finding genetic similarity where it ought not be:
Shark and human proteins “stunningly similar”; shark closer to human than to zebrafish – December 9, 2013 Excerpt: “We were very surprised to find, that for many categories of proteins, sharks share more similarities with humans than zebrafish,” Stanhope said. “Although sharks and bony fishes are not closely related, they are nonetheless both fish … while mammals have very different anatomies and physiologies. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/shark-and-human-proteins-stunningly-similar-shark-closer-to-human-than-to-zebrafish/ Frogs and humans are kissing cousins - 2010 Excerpt: What's the difference between a frog, a chicken, a mouse and a human? Not as much as you'd think, according to an analysis of the first sequenced amphibian genome. The genome of the western clawed frog, Xenopus tropicalis, has now been analysed by an international consortium of scientists from 24 institutions, and joins a list of sequenced model organisms including the mouse, zebrafish, nematode and fruit fly. What's most surprising, researchers say, is how closely the amphibian's genome resembles that of the mouse and the human, with large swathes of frog DNA on several chromosomes having genes arranged in the same order as in these mammals. The results of the analysis are published in Science this week1. "There are megabases of sequence where gene order has changed very little,,,” http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100429/full/news.2010.211.html etc.. etc.. etc..
In fact, in spite of what Darwinists falsely presuppose, multiple studies of genetic similarity/dissimilarity have all contradicted their belief in common ancestry:
Logged Out - Scientists Can't Find Darwin's "Tree of Life" Anywhere in Nature by Casey Luskin - Winter 2013 Excerpt: the (fossil) record shows that major groups of animals appeared abruptly, without direct evolutionary precursors. Because biogeography and fossils have failed to bolster common descent, many evolutionary scientists have turned to molecules—the nucleotide and amino acid sequences of genes and proteins—to establish a phylogenetic tree of life showing the evolutionary relationships between all living organisms.,,, Many papers have noted the prevalence of contradictory molecule-based phylogenetic trees. For instance: • A 1998 paper in Genome Research observed that "different proteins generate different phylogenetic tree[s]."6 • A 2009 paper in Trends in Ecology and Evolution acknowledged that "evolutionary trees from different genes often have conflicting branching patterns."7 • A 2013 paper in Trends in Genetics reported that "the more we learn about genomes the less tree-like we find their evolutionary history to be."8 Perhaps the most candid discussion of the problem came in a 2009 review article in New Scientist titled "Why Darwin Was Wrong about the Tree of Life."9 The author quoted researcher Eric Bapteste explaining that "the holy grail was to build a tree of life," but "today that project lies in tatters, torn to pieces by an onslaught of negative evidence." According to the article, "many biologists now argue that the tree concept is obsolete and needs to be discarded.",,, Syvanen succinctly summarized the problem: "We've just annihilated the tree of life. It's not a tree any more, it's a different topology entirely. What would Darwin have made of that?" ,,, "battles between molecules and morphology are being fought across the entire tree of life," leaving readers with a stark assessment: "Evolutionary trees constructed by studying biological molecules often don't resemble those drawn up from morphology."10,,, A 2012 paper noted that "phylogenetic conflict is common, and [is] frequently the norm rather than the exception," since "incongruence between phylogenies derived from morphological versus molecular analyses, and between trees based on different subsets of molecular sequences has become pervasive as datasets have expanded rapidly in both characters and species."12,,, http://www.salvomag.com/new/articles/salvo27/logged-out.php Sweeping gene survey reveals new facets of evolution – May 28, 2018 Excerpt: Darwin perplexed,,, And yet—another unexpected finding from the study—species have very clear genetic boundaries, and there’s nothing much in between. “If individuals are stars, then species are galaxies,” said Thaler. “They are compact clusters in the vastness of empty sequence space.” The absence of “in-between” species is something that also perplexed Darwin, he said. https://phys.org/news/2018-05-gene-survey-reveals-facets-evolution.html The Dependency Graph of Life: A Conversation with Dr. Winston Ewert – JonathanM – video (2018) https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=13&v=9vGgCKUw1fs Dr. Winston Ewert of the Evolutionary Informatics Lab proposes an alternative model to common descent to explain the hierarchical classification of life (via genetic evidence). Based on his paper published in Bio-Complexity, available here: The Dependency Graph of Life Winston Ewert - 2018 http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/article/view/BIO-C.2018.3 etc.. etc..
Moreover, Darwinists simply have no evidence that mutations to DNA can produce morphological novelty, as Jonathan Wells states in the following article, Studies using saturation mutagenesis in the embryos of fruit flies, roundworms, zebrafish and mice also provide evidence against the idea that DNA specifies the basic form of an organism. Biologists can mutate (and indeed have mutated) a fruit fly embryo in every possible way, and they have invariably observed only three possible outcomes: a normal fruit fly, a defective fruit fly, or a dead fruit fly.
Jonathan Wells: Far from being all-powerful, DNA does not wholly determine biological form - March 31, 2014 Excerpt: Studies using saturation mutagenesis in the embryos of fruit flies, roundworms, zebrafish and mice also provide evidence against the idea that DNA specifies the basic form of an organism. Biologists can mutate (and indeed have mutated) a fruit fly embryo in every possible way, and they have invariably observed only three possible outcomes: a normal fruit fly, a defective fruit fly, or a dead fruit fly. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/jonathan-wells-far-from-being-all-powerful-dna-does-not-wholly-determine-biological-form/ Response to John Wise - October 2010 Excerpt: But there are solid empirical grounds for arguing that changes in DNA alone cannot produce new organs or body plans. A technique called “saturation mutagenesis”1,2 has been used to produce every possible developmental mutation in fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster),3,4,5 roundworms (Caenorhabditis elegans),6,7 and zebrafish (Danio rerio),8,9,10 and the same technique is now being applied to mice (Mus musculus).11,12. None of the evidence from these and numerous other studies of developmental mutations supports the neo-Darwinian dogma that DNA mutations can lead to new organs or body plans–,,, (As Jonathan Wells states),,, We can modify the DNA of a fruit fly embryo in any way we want, and there are only three possible outcomes: A normal fruit fly; A defective fruit fly; or A dead fruit fly. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/10/response_to_john_wise038811.html
bornagain77_{September 25, 2018
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As to this quote from the article:
"the Hong Kong placozoan genome was about as different from that of T. adhaerens as human DNA is from mouse DNA. “It was really striking,” Eitel said. “They look the same, and we look completely different from mice.”
This finding is yet another falsification of the Darwinian belief that "your DNA contains all the instructions for making you human"
Genetic Similarities of Mice and Men - April 20, 2012 Excerpt: your DNA contains all the instructions for making you human.,,, Chimpanzees, our closest living animal cousins share 98% of our human genes, meaning that for 98% of our genes, there is a similar gene in the chimpanzee genome. Even mammals that look quite different from us share a large percentage of our genes; small and furry mice share 92% our genes. https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-and-you/genetics-101/genetic-similarities-of-mice-and-men/
As well, having the same morphology despite having genetic differences as great "as human DNA is from mouse DNA" also directly undermines Dr. Swamidass's recent argument for common descent, i.e. "[W]hy is it hard to believe chimpanzees and humans are related (1.5% codons different), when we readily accept mice and rats are related (15% different)??"
Response to Swamidass: Rats, Mice, and Discrepant Molecular Clocks - September 25, 2018 Excerpt: (Dr. Swamidass) wrote: "[W]hy is it hard to believe chimpanzees and humans are related (1.5% codons different), when we readily accept mice and rats are related (15% different)?",,, ,,, also observing that “mice and rats are much more different than chimpanzees and humans.” https://evolutionnews.org/2018/09/response-to-swamidass-rats-mice-and-discrepant-molecular-clocks/
Of note: contrary to popular belief, and what Dr. Swamidass stated, Humans and Chimps are NOT 98.5% genetically similar, but are, in reality, closer to 85% genetically similar:
Geneticist: On (Supposed 99%) Human-Chimp Genome Similarity, There Are “Predictions” Not “Established Fact” - July 31, 2018 Excerpt: To come up with the most accurate current assessment that I could of the similarity of the human and chimpanzee genome, I downloaded from the UCSC genomics website the latest alignments (made using the LASTZ software) between the human and chimpanzee genome assemblies, hg38 and pantro6.,,, The percentage of nucleotides in the human genome that had one-to-one exact matches in the chimpanzee genome was 84.38% In order to assess how improvements in genome assemblies can change these figures, I did the same analyses on the alignment of the older PanTro4 assembly against Hg38 (see discussion post #40).,,, The percentage of nucleotides in the human genome that had one-to-one exact matches in the chimpanzee genome was 82.34%. - Richard Buggs https://evolutionnews.org/2018/07/geneticist-on-human-chimp-genome-similarity-there-are-predictions-not-established-fact/ DNA Variation Widens Human-Chimp Chasm - Jeffrey Tomkins - 2017 Excerpt: In the past several years, new sequencing technologies have become commercially available that provide much longer reads of 10,000 to 215,000 bases.2,3 These new long-read sequencing technologies allow for the more accurate assembly of the human genome, revealing some incredible surprises about human genetic diversity.,,, The results from these new papers using long-read technology have been startling and are shaking up the entire human genomics community. The most surprising finding was that the research demonstrates that large regions of the human genome can be markedly different between any two humans,,, The bottom line is that any two human genomes can be up to 4.5% different from one another, in marked contrast to the previous estimate of 0.01% based solely on single-base changes.5 These newly found large differences in human genomes conflict with the evolutionary idea that humans and chimpanzees are 98.5% similar in their DNA. If humans can be up to 4.5% different from each other, how is it that chimps are supposedly only 1.5% different from humans? The fact of the matter is that the 98.5% similarity figure is based on cherry-picked data designed to bolster evolution. Newly published research by this author clearly shows that chimpanzee DNA overall is, at most, only 85% similar to human.9 http://www.icr.org/article/9939
Moreover, another fact that directly contradicts Dr. Swamidass's argument for common ancestry in general and between chimps and humans in particular, a fact that you will never here from a Darwinist, is the fact that "Human genes are closer to a dolphin’s genes than any land animal"
Dolphin DNA very close to human, - 2010 Excerpt: They’re closer to us than cows, horses, or pigs, despite the fact that they live in the water.,,, “The extent of the genetic similarity came as a real surprise to us,” ,,, “Dolphins are marine mammals that swim in the ocean and it was astonishing to learn that we had more in common with the dolphin than with land mammals,” says geneticist Horst Hameister.,,, “We started looking at these and it became very obvious to us that every human chromosome had a corollary chromosome in the dolphin,” Busbee said. “We’ve found that the dolphin genome and the human genome basically are the same. It’s just that there’s a few chromosomal rearrangements that have changed the way the genetic material is put together.” http://www.reefrelieffounders.com/science/2010/10/21/articlesafari-dolphin-dna-very-close-to-human/ Kolber, J., 2010, Dolphin DNA very close to human, viewed 18th March 2012, Kumar, S., 2010, Human genes closer to dolphin’s than any land animal, Discovery Channel Online, http://biol1020-2012-1.blogspot.com/2012/03/human-and-dolphin-genomes.html Richard Sternberg PhD – podcast – On Human Origins: Is Our Genome Full of Junk DNA? Part 2. (Major Differences in higher level chromosome spatial organization) 5:30 minute mark quote: “Basically the dolphin genome is almost wholly identical to the human genome,, yet no one would argue that bottle-nose dolphins are our sister species”,,, http://www.discovery.org/multimedia/audio/2014/11/on-human-origins-is-our-genome-full-of-junk-dna-pt-2/
This is not just an anomaly with Dolphin DNA. Kangaroo and Human Genomes are also unexpectedly similar genetically.
Kangaroo and Human Genomes (are unexpectedly similar genetically) 1-30-2016 by Paul Giem - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtmG2QzqJEA Kangaroo genes close to humans - 2008 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
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