In this month’s Nature Genetics, there is an article by Zhou, et. al., dealing with the generation of new genes in Drosophila melanogaster—the fruit fly. While only having access to the abstract, I nonetheless was struck by one of their findings: the rate of new functional gene generation. As finding number 6 in the abstract, the authors write: “the rate of the origin of new functional genes is estimated to be 5 to 11 genes per million years in the D. melanogaster subgroup.”
Noting that Drosophila melanogaster has 14,000 genes (a very low gene number), the simply calculation is this: 14,000 genes/8 new functional genes per million years= 1.75 billiion years for the formation of the fly genome. This, of course, assumes that somehow the fly is ‘alive, and reproducing’ the entire 1.75 billion years—-this, without the aid of a full-blown genome. If we apply this to the monkey/human difference which, IIRC, is about a 1000 genes, then using this same rate, it would take 200 million years for man to have evolved from the monkey. This published rate for new functional gene generation cannot be good news for Darwinists.
Here’s the link to the abstract.