Is There Enough Time For Humans to Have Evolved From Apes? Dr. Ann Gauger Answers

_{Denyse O'Leary

November 5, 2012

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What do you mean by verified? They are very straight forward equations, grounded on very simple observations.wd400_{November 7, 2012
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wd400:
If your position requires you to deny basic math then I think you need to take a long look at your position
Except I do NOT dny basic math and you don't have any basic math that supports your claims. So again I ask- who has verified the equations wrt to humans or any other sexually reproducing populations? My bet, the SAFE bet, is no one has.Joe_{November 7, 2012
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Oh Boy, Peter, It's the substitution rate * 2 because both species have evolved apart from a common ancestor. Substituions in either linegae will create a difference between the two. If you are really asking "why are their still monkeys" google can help you. Joe, If your position requires you to deny basic math then I think you need to take a long look at your position (c.f. all those idiots slagging off Nate Silver for the last few weeks) Mung, I don't understand the question. Evolution is an unavoidable consequence of finite populations and mutations.wd400_{November 7, 2012
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wd400, The figures you give in #26, that's if there is no evolution going on?Mung_{November 7, 2012
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And the fact remains that no one knows if any amount of mutational accumulation can account for all the physiological and anatomical DIFFERENCES observed between chimps and humans. We have no idea what makes a chimp a chimp nor what makes a human a human.Joe_{November 7, 2012
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Whoa, wait a minute- how does that translate into 56 million FIXED differences? wd400:
Entry level population genetics. For neutrally evolving variants the individual mutation rate is equal to the substitution rate.
Except no one has ever verified that the equations are correct.
You’re ust wrong on the “no one knows” business.
Nope, I am quite correct. No one has ever done a complete side-by-side comparison. No one.
The ~1.1% figure is for regions that align and describes single nucleotide differences (arising from point mutations).
That is incorrect as it only applies to some regions, not all. Also there are reports that including indels there is a 5% difference and possibly even more. IOW, wd400, you have no evidence to support any of your claims, as usual.Joe_{November 7, 2012
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"If we want to know how many differnces we expect to see between “species A” and “species B” 6.5 million years after they diverge we need to know the rate of substitution (fixation of mutations) in each lineage (and double it, since both are evolving)." Can someone better explain this to me please "(and double it, since both are evolving."? Why would you double it for both species? Would one species not evolve at a rate independant of the other? Also, and this may sound a little daft, but why would one species evolve (into us), when living amongst them, exposed to the same environmental pressures, another species simply stays almost unchanged (chimpanzee)? After all people and chimpanzees can still be found living side by side. Just a thought.PeterJ_{November 6, 2012
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Guys, People are getting a bit side tracked here. If we want to know how many differnces we expect to see between "species A" and "species B" 6.5 million years after they diverge we need to know the rate of substitution (fixation of mutations) in each lineage (and double it, since both are evolving). It turns, the neutral expectation is that population substitution rate is equal to the individual mutation rate. This make sense when you think about it, as the probability of a new mutation fixing is the inverse of the (effective) population size (one gene will ancestor of all others) and the rate at which they come into the population is the mutation rate per individual * population size. Do the math and you end up with the substituion rate equal to individual mutation rate ( and not effected by population size). What gauger is doing is pre-specifying changes and saying they are (under particular assumptions) unlikely. Which is extreme question-begging, since no one pre-specified anything. As for chromosomal rearrangements, well, we need to account for precisely one, and given the number of people walking around with Robertsonian translocations today I don't think that will be a challenge.wd400_{November 6, 2012
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wd400 @ #20 In reference to your figures, I think Eric A made some key points:
Eric: “And having a certain number of mutations occur over the course of generations is very different from having those mutations fixed in the population, which is what I think Ann was talking about in the short video segment.”
This exactly right. I'm surprised you missed that as I thought she made that quite clear. So, tell us, are you claiming that all 56 million of these mutations were beneficial and were therefore fixed in the population? That sounds outrageous to me and I find it hard to believe that any scientist would dare to put forth such an idea as even remotely possible.
Eric: And, "The ~1.1% figure is for regions that align and describes single nucleotide differences (arising from point mutations)."
Good point. So what we want to know to get a less biased picture of the differences, is what the figure is when you include regions that do not align and that include more than just single nucleotide differences.
wd400: "Again, the date is estimates from the observed differences, so it can’t be true that there isn’t enough time for the observed differences to have arrived!"
I’m sorry, I don’t really follow what you are saying here. The date – what date? What does “estimates from the observed differences” mean? Are you trying to us the existence of the observed differences as proof that there was enough time for the differences to evolve? I don’t take evolution as a given so that line of evidence doesn’t work with me. I thought that is what we are debating. If you don’t show us how it is possible for it to happen in the allotted time frame, then how do we know it happened like you claim? You are just assuming it did. How scientific is that?
wd400: "I don’t know how ENCODE contributes to pairwises differences between humans and chimps, but I sure would like to hear you try and explain it."
Sir, are you familiar with how scientists came up with the figure of 98% similarity? Here is a paper that explains the thinking behind scientists and the methods they used to come up with such figures. Here is the beginning excerpt:
A review of the common claim that the human and chimpanzee (chimp) genomes are nearly identical was found to be highly questionable solely by an analysis of the methodology and data outlined in an assortment of key research publications. Reported high DNA sequence similarity estimates are primarily based on pre-screened biological samples and/or data. Data too dissimilar to be conveniently aligned was typically omitted, masked and/or not reported. Furthermore, gap data from final alignments was also often discarded, further inflating final similarity estimates. It is these highly selective data-omission processes, driven by Darwinian dogma, that produce the commonly touted 98% similarity figure for human–chimp DNA comparisons. Based on the analysis of data provided in various publications, including the often cited 2005 chimpanzee genome report, it is safe to conclude that human–chimp genome similarity is not more than ~87% identical, and possibly not higher than 81%. These revised estimates are based on relevant data omitted from the final similarity estimates typically presented.
For details, please read the paper, but the important thing is what they chose to include and not to include in their comparison. creation.com/human-chimp-dna-similarity-re-evaluated Once you understand what they included and did not include in their comparisons, then I’m sure you can imagine the implications for the figures once you include everything including the junk dna that was assumed not to have function and therefore left out of the data that was compared. Here is a response in the Q&A section after the article I just referenced that relates to this:
“There are about 35 million single-letter differences, tens of thousands of rearrangements, many duplications, many deletions, entire gene families missing from one or the other lineage, etc. And, that is after using the human genome as a scaffold upon which to construct that of the chimpanzee. It is very difficult indeed to create all those differences between the respective species in the time evolutionists give to our supposed common ancestor (commonly seen today as greater than 6 million years ago), and it will become even more different when they reconstruct a chimpanzee genome without using the human genome as a guide.”
So I'm curious as to what you think about why certain things were included in the comparison data and why others were not. Does this show bias or is it just good science? Here is even more information. Britten's study is mentioned in the above article. It came up with a difference of 5% between the two genomes and even this is absoluty huge because even just 5% represents 150 million DNA base pair differences! Surely this is way beyond the power of evolution in 6 million years?!
The Britten study looked at 779 kilobase pairs to carefully examine differences between chimpanzees and humans. He found that 1.4% of the bases had been substituted, which was in agreement with previous studies (98.6% similarity). However, he found a much larger number of indels. Most of these were only 1 to 4 nucleotides in length, although there were a few that were > 1000 base pairs long. Surprisingly, the indels added an additional 3.4 % of base pairs that were different. While previous studies have focused on base substitutions, they have missed perhaps the greatest contribution to the genetic differences between chimps and humans. Missing nucleotides from one or the other appear to account for more than twice the number of substituted nucleotides. Although the number of substitutions is about ten times higher than the number of indels, the number of nucleotides involved in indels is greater. These indels were reported to be equally represented in the chimp and human sequences. Therefore, the insertions or deletions were not occurring only in the chimp or only in the human and could also be interpreted as intrinsic differences. http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/tj/v17/n1/dna
tjguy_{November 6, 2012
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I'm sorry. I was unclear. I meant to copy the post that I was referring to. I'll try again. Kantian Naturalist, do you agree with post number 12 by wd400? Do you agree with his figures? Here they are for easy reference:
Back of an envelope 6.5 million years is 450 000 15yr generations 65 mutations * 450 000 gens * 2 lineages = 56 million fixed differences 56 million positions in a 3.2 billion base genome is ~ 1.7% divergence (actually greater than the observed difference). Gauger is just playing the silly “over specify the target” game creationists of all ilks enjoy. It’s true that waiting for co-ordinated mutations in a very small specified region would take a long time if the first didn’t have a selective advantage. That might be a problem if you thought humanity was the goal of evolution and only very narrowly defined pathways could lead to us. But that’s not evolutionary biology’s position, so it doesn’t really matter.
I saw no corrections/clarifications coming from you so I'm assuming you do. Am I right?tjguy_{November 6, 2012
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KN, do you agree with wd400's post? Just curious. I didn't see any rebuttal or correction from you so I'm assuming you agree. Am I right? tjtjguy_{November 6, 2012
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Joe, wd400 and I were just talking about aggregate mutation numbers over the 6M+- years. You are of course correct, that this does not address any of the other issues, including getting those mutations fixed in the population. ----- wd400:
The ~1.1% figure is for regions that align and describes single nucleotide differences (arising from point mutations).
So I take it that it wasn't so outrageous for Ann Gauger to be talking about point mutations after all? Maybe it wasn't just a creationist talking point. :) And having a certain number of mutations occur over the course of generations is very different from having those mutations fixed in the population, which is what I think Ann was talking about in the short video segment.
There are, of course, stuctural differences too. They are subject to the same evolutionary forces, and since you need less of them to explain the observed differences (each makes a big difference) that don’t pose a problem.
Well, given that really big changes (chromosome duplication, deletion, etc.) almost invariably cause death (or in less severe cases things like Down's, Klinefelter's, etc.), there doesn't seem to be a lot of evidence for the idea that big changes "don't pose a problem." On the other hand, if all you mean to say is that deleting or fusing or duplicating a huge chunk of DNA makes the math easier to get to the human-chimp % difference, then sure. But there is precious little evidence to believe that such changes would not be a problem in actual biology -- indeed, what evidence we do have seems to point strongly in the opposite direction.Eric Anderson_{November 6, 2012
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Joe, Whoa, wait a minute- how does that translate into 56 million FIXED differences? Entry level population genetics. For neutrally evolving variants the individual mutation rate is equal to the substitution rate. You're ust wrong on the "no one knows" business. The ~1.1% figure is for regions that align and describes single nucleotide differences (arising from point mutations). There are, of course, stuctural differences too. They are subject to the same evolutionary forces, and since you need less of them to explain the observed differences (each makes a big difference) that don't pose a problem. TJGuy, Again, the date is estimates from the observed differences, so it can't be true that there isn't enough time for the observed differences to have arrived! I don't know how ENCODE contributes to pairwises differences between humans and chimps, but I sure would like to hear you try and explain itwd400_{November 6, 2012
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Joe, the problem is not with the math, but with the envelope.Mung_{November 6, 2012
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wd400:
Well, since the time is mainly estimated from the mutations you might want to try again… Back of an envelope 6.5 million years is 450 000 15yr generations 65 mutations * 450 000 gens * 2 lineages = 56 million fixed differences 56 million positions in a 3.2 billion base genome is ~ 1.7% divergence (actually greater than the observed difference).
Whoa, wait a minute- how does that translate into 56 million FIXED differences? Also no one knows just how genetically different we are from chimps wd400- no one has ever done a complete side-by-side comparison of the two genomes. Ya see wd400, when scientists were seeing how similar the two genomes were they used DNA sequences that were similar. That is how they came up with the 1.x% difference. So, no, your math does not work.Joe_{November 6, 2012
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This is an excellent question that needs further development! I think that especially with the differences between chimps and humans that are sure to come out in the "junk DNA" section of our genome which the evolutionists had conveniently not included in their calculation of a 98% similarity figure, it will become more and more clear that this is indeed an impossibility. So even if they are right that the figure is really 98%, just a 2% difference is still insurmountably huge because of the vast amount of information that is encoded in our DNA. (my opinion) But, again, when you include the differences that the ENCODE project has brought to light, I think we will find the differences are far more than just 2%. The 98% figure served evolutionists well for a while, but I think that figure is going to fall as more research is done.tjguy_{November 6, 2012
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Creationism is served well by sharp women like this. We need more. She's right on about the impossibility of genes evolving in cohesion to make glorious biology. it's against common sense or better sense of careful thinkers. I don't agree that the fossil record is indicative of any evidence for or against evolution. its just snapshots of a critter at a moment. its only geology that says there is connections and not biological research. ID people need to learn from YEC people on this point. It's illogical to base assertions or criticisms of biology on data from none biological evidence. The fossil record is not a BIOLOGICAL record of creatures changing even if it did indicate this. It's only a line of reasoning from geological presumptions that connects data points into a relationship.Robert Byers_{November 5, 2012
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Thanks, wd400. Brain cramp on the math -- I was using the wrong timeframe. My bad. I need a new envelope. :) As you say, of course the basic number of differences lines up, because the stated date for the common ancestor depends on the assumption that the lineages did come from a common ancestor. (Although the % of difference between humans and chimps has arguably been regularly understated; but leaving that question aside for a separate interesting discussion.) ----- I disagree, however, with your assessment of Gauger's point as a silly creationist game. She is not saying that other mutation events (copies, splices, deletions, neutral changes, etc.) don't occur. Just pointing out that for the simplest area where we have some decent observed data, it isn't getting us anywhere. Of course, one could assume, that biology isn't constrained by narrow pathways and that selective advantage is regularly and powerfully present, but those are huge assumptions -- required for the storyline, rather than an objective assessment of what we actually see happening.Eric Anderson_{November 5, 2012
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I’ve seen mud.
ok. Did you measure the information content? I hear if you fling enough mud you can get 500 bits of Shannon Information rather easily.Mung_{November 5, 2012
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How long do we have to wait for the required material conditions of recorded information transfer to arise? I've seen mud.Upright BiPed_{November 5, 2012
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I can imagine Max Planck and Wolfgang Pauli smiling wrily at each other: Planck, for his remark about science progressing one funeral at a time - but, since their day, surely at a far slower rate than he could have imagined possible in his most disillusioned moments; and Pauli, for his astonishment that the biologists had made no probability computations whatsoever. And perhaps atheists, Crick and Watson, in 'the other place', wondering if they really had been so much brighter than their confreres, as Watson had sneered.Axel_{November 5, 2012
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I did just a simple back-of-the-envelope calculation, and it looks to me like you can’t even explain the number of mutations in the time available Well, since the time is mainly estimated from the mutations you might want to try again... Back of an envelope 6.5 million years is 450 000 15yr generations 65 mutations * 450 000 gens * 2 lineages = 56 million fixed differences 56 million positions in a 3.2 billion base genome is ~ 1.7% divergence (actually greater than the observed difference). Gauger is just playing the silly "over specify the target" game creationists of all ilks enjoy. It's true that waiting for co-ordinated mutations in a very small specified region would take a long time if the first didn't have a selective advantage. That might be a problem if you thought humanity was the goal of evolution and only very narrowly defined pathways could lead to us. But that's not evolutionary biology's position, so it doesn't really matter.wd400_{November 5, 2012
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KN, I love your statement. It just needs a little tweak: "There’s no reason I can think of for why it’s plausible to think that minor, biochemically realistic changes in regulatory genes that coordinate the development of pelvis and brain, under the selective pressures that make those mutations advantageous in those ancestral environments, account for the proliferation of hominids." There, that's better. Your point about point mutations is well taken. However, Gauger was making a point about likelihood of a change plus getting the change fixed in a population. Other kinds of mutations are also subject to these issues. Whatever merit there may be to control mechanism mutations (and there may be merit), you still have to argue for an absurdly low number of mutations to even get close to the available time allotment. And that is ignoring the fact that there also happen to be tens of millions of base-pair differences between chimps and humans, which must have come from somewhere after all . . . Of course the willingness to believe unproven things was a hallmark of Darwin's. He often argued for his theory in the following vein: "We can imagine that [fill in the blank] . . ." So you're in good company.Eric Anderson_{November 5, 2012
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Based upon the behavior evidenced over at TSZ, I think a better question is, has there been enough time for apes to have evolved from humans.Mung_{November 5, 2012
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Kantian naturalist, "It suggests that she's largely ignorant of developmental biology" Well, Ann Gauger received a PhD in developmental biology from the University of Washington, so I think its more likely that your understanding of developmental biology is wrong rather than hers.kuartus_{November 5, 2012
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Kantian naturalist, "It suggests that she's largely ignorant of developmental biology" Well, Ann Gauger received a PhD in developmental biology from the University of Washington, so I think its more likely that your understanding developmental biology is wrong rather than hers.kuartus_{November 5, 2012
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as to: "The question is whether it’s plausible that some mutations in regulatory genes, plus selective pressures, could have accounted for the evolution of australopithecines from some population of Miocene apes, of early Homo from australopithecines, of Homo sapiens from early Homo species — within about six or seven million years."
More from Ann Gauger on why humans didn’t happen the way Darwin said - July 2012 Excerpt: Each of these new features probably required multiple mutations. Getting a feature that requires six neutral mutations is the limit of what bacteria can produce. For primates (e.g., monkeys, apes and humans) the limit is much more severe. Because of much smaller effective population sizes (an estimated ten thousand for humans instead of a billion for bacteria) and longer generation times (fifteen to twenty years per generation for humans vs. a thousand generations per year for bacteria), it would take a very long time for even a single beneficial mutation to appear and become fixed in a human population. You don’t have to take my word for it. In 2007, Durrett and Schmidt estimated in the journal Genetics that for a single mutation to occur in a nucleotide-binding site and be fixed in a primate lineage would require a waiting time of six million years. The same authors later estimated it would take 216 million years for the binding site to acquire two mutations, if the first mutation was neutral in its effect. Facing Facts But six million years is the entire time allotted for the transition from our last common ancestor with chimps to us according to the standard evolutionary timescale. Two hundred and sixteen million years takes us back to the Triassic, when the very first mammals appeared. One or two mutations simply aren’t sufficient to produce the necessary changes— sixteen anatomical features—in the time available. At most, a new binding site might affect the regulation of one or two genes. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/more-from-ann-gauger-on-why-humans-didnt-happen-the-way-darwin-said/
bornagain77_{November 5, 2012
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To get two humans from two ape-like critters in a few million years shows gullibility of the highest order.
I'm all in favor of criticisms of evolution, but that's not what the theory or the evidence suggest. If one is going to criticize the theory, one should take the time to understand it. The question is whether it's plausible that some mutations in regulatory genes, plus selective pressures, could have accounted for the evolution of australopithecines from some population of Miocene apes, of early Homo from australopithecines, of Homo sapiens from early Homo species -- within about six or seven million years.Kantian Naturalist_{November 5, 2012
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You can look at the oldest fossil of almost anything (bats, sharks, spiders, trilobites, ferns, whatever) and they can clearly be identified as being no different or little different from today's life-forms. And this stability has supposedly lasted hundreds of millions of years in many cases. To get two humans from two ape-like critters in a few million years shows gullibility of the highest order.TimT_{November 5, 2012
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If evolutionary biologists and paleontologists thought that hominid evolution as Gauger believes that they do, she'd be right. But they don't, and she isn't. Particularly, her argument as presented above trades on an equivocation: she takes up Behe's work on point mutations and acts as if all other kinds of mutations are subject to the same constraints. That's just not so. I'm specifically appalled by her insinuation that different mutations would need to be specified independently for different parts of the body. It suggests that she's largely ignorant of developmental biology. There's no reason I can think of for why it's implausible to think that minor, biochemically realistic changes in regulatory genes that coordinate the development of pelvis and brain, under the selective pressures that make those mutations advantageous in those ancestral environments, account for the proliferation of hominids.Kantian Naturalist_{November 5, 2012
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