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To: Right Wing Professor
As I understand it, the 'evolutionary distance' is largely a function of the number of amino acid substitution rate. They then estimate from the correlation line that the Cephalochordates and vertebrates diverged around 690 MY ago. They didn't analyze the Ciona ADH3 (probably didn't have it when they wrote the paper), and so I can't tell you how it would fit in. Note, however, that quoting numbers generated by a canned program without a full understanding of the methods they've used, and the limitations of the results, is notoriously dangerous.

They way andrewc has been gathering these numbers is the same way that evolutionists in numerous articles have been SELECTIVELY gathering numbers to support evolution - by using the blast program on particular genes of different species. So if this method is wrong then you must also state that the evidence put out by evolutionists is false.

This whole comparison of DNA sequences though is completely nonsensical if evolution is true. The comparisons are being made from PRESENT DAY DNA while the assumption is being made that the DNA of some species has not changed in hundreds of millions of years. Clearly, if species can go on for hundreds of millions of years without a single mutation evolution must be false. This is a clear example of evolutionist doubletalk and taking up two opposite sides of a problem.

677 posted on 03/16/2003 10:59:55 AM PST by gore3000
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To: gore3000
They way andrewc has been gathering these numbers is the same way that evolutionists in numerous articles have been SELECTIVELY gathering numbers to support evolution - by using the blast program on particular genes of different species. So if this method is wrong then you must also state that the evidence put out by evolutionists is false.

Andrew C has been examining the raw data in a highly technical field, and in terms of counting genomic changes was doing better than I was. There is nothing wrong with what he's been doing; it just so happens that one of the two human (and ape) proteins he's been looking at is on the y chromosome. Even you, surely, must appreciate that a functional gene for the most fundamental part of the protein synthetic apparatus cannot be on the y chromosome, since women make proteins the same way men do.

723 posted on 03/17/2003 8:46:23 AM PST by Right Wing Professor
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To: gore3000
Clearly, if species can go on for hundreds of millions of years without a single mutation evolution must be false.

No, it just means that on a structure like the ribosome, which is responsible for the synthesis of almost every protein the cell makes, a single mutation has enormous impact, and so the protein is very highly conserved. In contrast, a protein like alcohol dehydrogenase, which in some cases is responsible for the oxidation of a wide variety of alcohol substrates, can undergo mutations which change its specificity without global effects on the organism - particularly if you have multiple copies of the gene.

Essential, universal proteins tend to be highly conserved. Proteins which code for, say, detoxification of external toxins evolve rapidly, as the environment changes.

724 posted on 03/17/2003 8:55:16 AM PST by Right Wing Professor
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