Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

To: Mechanicos
As I posted before, the rate of mutation of Human DNA is now understood to be very slow - one letter of DNA in a billion years.

I went and looked at the Nature article you cited. This is what they said:

Geneticists have previously estimated mutation rates by comparing the human genome with the sequences of other primates. On the basis of species-divergence dates gleaned — ironically — from fossil evidence, they concluded that in human DNA, each letter mutates once every billion years. “It’s a suspiciously round number,” says Linda Vigilant, a molecular anthropologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. The suspicion turned out to be justified.

In the past few years, geneticists have been able to watch the molecular clock in action, by sequencing whole genomes from dozens of families5 and comparing mutations in parents and children. These studies show that the clock ticks at perhaps half the rate of previous estimates, says Scally.

What they are saying is that the probability of a PARTICULAR letter mutating in a particular year is one in one billion. What you don't take into account is that the human genome contains more than 3.4 billion base pairs (letters). A one in one billion chance of mutation per letter TIMES 3.4 billion letters means that there are a significant number of mutations per year.
127 posted on 10/08/2012 6:06:02 AM PDT by PapaBear3625 (Charlie Daniels - Payback Time http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWwTJj_nosI)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 125 | View Replies ]


To: PapaBear3625

Why don’t you take into consideration the number of presumed changes that had to occur from inert materials to your present physical self? Even with the most biased-in-your-favor assumption of the amount of DNA changed there has not been enough time from estimated origins of life on this planet to create you.

Further the self-correcting DNA control matrix effectively prevents large scale DNA changes. Taking your implied argument to its logical conclusion we should be seeing significantly changing DNA today all around us. instead, where we see the fastest adapting rate is in single celled organisms like bacteria. And there we see the adaption is using per-existing instructions already written in its DNA activated by the environment of the organism.

Math is why the General Theory has quietly dropped its primordial-ooze-origins-of-life argument argument and now argues life came from space - with no evidence. Darwin’s tree has been cut down - The fossil record does not support the theory. And no way mathematically can the human genome of “3.4 billion base pairs” mutate a sufficient number of times to make “you” at a rate of a billion years per letter when there are only 2 billion years to start with.


128 posted on 10/08/2012 6:36:35 AM PDT by Mechanicos (When did we amend the Constitution for a 2nd Federal Prohibition?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 127 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson