The Common Ancestry Thread (page 2)

PSacramento

about Pseudogenes:

http://biologos.org/blog/series/signature-in-the-pseudogenes

cantleave

Just read your article Good explanation

Shame more Christians don't read sites like that....

PSacramento

Shame more Christians don't read sites like that....

Believe me, don't I know it !

I was on the fence about evolution untill I found that site, I had questions and thought I was alone in them, that the only option was someone elses view of the bible that stated that evolution was counter to Gods creation OR that there was no God.

WHen I realized that I didn't have to sacrifice my belief, I was able to be open to evolution and even read Dawkins books too !

Which lead me to read Sam Harris and Hitchens and was able to help me understand that the very issues I had with the bible and God were NOT new and that others had them too, which lead me to read the answers to those objections.

And so on and so forth.

Hope the article helps you in this thread.

cantleave

Really appreciated PSac

cofty

The genetic similarity between living things from a human to a chimp, a fish or a cabbage varies according to the closeness of their genealogy. Often the same gene turns up time and again but has been put to a new use in different species. Nature is very good at adapting existing designs to new purposes.

Some genes are so fundamental to life though that they are common to every living thing. These are called ubiquitous genes and one particular example of these provides stunning proof for the common origin of species.

Remember genes are just sequences of DNA made up of words (codons) each three letters (bases) long. There are only four letters in the genetic alphabet (ACG&T) Each word or codon is the recipe for one amino acid. There are 20 different amino acids in living organisms. Amino acids are joined together to make protein molecules. We are made of protein molecules.

Now here is a really important point to get your head round. The important thing about a protein molecule is not the exact sequence of amino acids, it's simply whether or not it performs its function. There are many different possible ways to make the same protein molecule and it will still do the same job.

Take for example a ubiquitous gene called Cytochrome C that performs a vital function in cells of every living thing. It is a recipe for a protein molecule that contains over 100 amino acids. There are LOADS of possible ways to make this protein and it doesnt matter bit which recipe a species uses. There are in fact 10 to the power of 93 different amino acid sequences that would work equally well. Thats more than all the atoms in the known universe!

Scientists have removed this protein from yeast and replaced it with the protein from humans, rats, pigeons and fruit flies and they all worked just fine.

With so many viable options there is no reason at all why any two species should share the same or similar sequences. But they do and in just the way evolution would predict. In fact human and chimp sequences are IDENTCAL! The chance of this happening without shared heredity is about 1 in 10 to the power of 29. Those are massive odds. And the more recently two creatures share a common ancestor the more similar the sequence of this gene.

Phizzy

Thanks Cantleave, I am sure that lurking JW readers of this thread will feel as I did when I first started to face the fact that what I had been taught about the origins of human life, in fact, all life, as a born-in JW, was totally wrong.

Worse, I had to face the fact that I was abysmally ignorant, not well educated as I had been told, by the W.T

Hence I started to read on Evolutionary Theory, and the related sciences, I was fascinated too when I came across the stuff you mention above, there is no theological answer that Creationists can give to all the facts.

I think, if you are humble enough, and willing, to admit your paucity of knowledge, and then go out and get some accurate knowlwdge, you become a much better, well-rounded person. (You've seen my figure, well rounded a ?)

Those who wish to stick to myth, legend and general ignorance, will not listen, but they deserve to stay in their deluded state, and therefore to be exploited by men with no conscience who will control every aspect of their life and thinking.

What a sad existence, compared to the enlightened position of those who really know.

Knowledge is freedom.

jgnat

I was wondering how the Genographic Project was able to tell which mutation came first. This has got to be it.

cofty

Here is something I wrote on another thread about ERVs - it repeats some of what Cantleave has writen above.

Occasionally a virus will infect an animal and get its DNA implanted in its host genome, HIV is an example of such an infection. Most infections are of soma (body) cells and end with the death of the hapless victim. Very occasionally a virus will infect a germ (sex) cell of its host and will then become part of the genome of all of its victims descendants.

These kind of infections, known as "endogenous retroviruses", are very rare and very random. Remember your DNA consists of 3 billion base pairs and is split into 24 pairs of chromosomes. If the same remnant of a virus was found in exactly the same place in the genome of two different people it would be irrefutable evidence that they both inherited it from a common ancestor.

If many such examples were found that exactly matched in two people we know for an absolute certainty that they have shared the same family tree.

Now that the whole human genome has been deciphered many of these examples have been found, every one in exactly the same place proving the common ancestry of every human on earth. However scientists next looked at the genome of the primates and found the very same remnants of ancient virus DNA in exactly the same places.

Not only that but they found a "family tree" of endogenous retroviruses that confirmed exactly the relationships we previously believed to be the case. In other words those species we knew for other reasons to be our closest relatives share more endogenous retroviruses than those more distantly related. We can therefore show exactly when each of these viruses infected our common ancestors.

Here is a diagram of the common ERVs that have been found in Homo sapiens and primates showing how the genetic evidence confirms the tree of life...

cantleave

Love the diagram Cofty...

The Common Ancestry Thread

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