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New Analyses Bolster Central Tenets of Evolution Theory
Washington Post ^ | September 26, 2005 | Rick Weiss and David Brown

Posted on 09/26/2005 3:27:53 AM PDT by Crackingham

When scientists announced last month they had determined the exact order of all 3 billion bits of genetic code that go into making a chimpanzee, it was no surprise that the sequence was more than 96 percent identical to the human genome. Charles Darwin had deduced more than a century ago that chimps were among humans' closest cousins. But decoding chimpanzees' DNA allowed scientists to do more than just refine their estimates of how similar humans and chimps are. It let them put the very theory of evolution to some tough new tests.

If Darwin was right, for example, then scientists should be able to perform a neat trick. Using a mathematical formula that emerges from evolutionary theory, they should be able to predict the number of harmful mutations in chimpanzee DNA by knowing the number of mutations in a different species' DNA and the two animals' population sizes.

"That's a very specific prediction," said Eric Lander, a geneticist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and a leader in the chimp project.

Sure enough, when Lander and his colleagues tallied the harmful mutations in the chimp genome, the number fit perfectly into the range that evolutionary theory had predicted.

SNIP

Evolution's repeated power to predict the unexpected goes a long way toward explaining why so many scientists are practically apoplectic over the recent decision by a Pennsylvania school board to treat evolution as an unproven hypothesis, on par with "alternative" explanations such as Intelligent Design (ID), the proposition that life as we know it could not have arisen without the helping hand of some mysterious intelligent force.

SNIP

"What makes evolution a scientific explanation is that it makes testable predictions," Lander said. "You only believe theories when they make non-obvious predictions that are confirmed by scientific evidence."

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; News/Current Events; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: anothercrevothread; crevorepublic; enoughalready
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To: JamesP81
[As I said earlier, this thread sucks. Officially.]




In spite of the fact that JamesP81 had a great deal to contribute to that eventuality, At this point I have to agree completely: this thread sucks.
61 posted on 09/26/2005 10:05:14 AM PDT by spinestein (Forget the Golden Rule. Remember the Brazen Rule.)
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To: furball4paws

***I have and I understand it, would you care to elaborate?***

Sorry. It's Nature, not Science. My mistake. Interesting you have it in Science... :)

Nonetheless, I refer you to Cheng et al, Nature: 88 2005.

Here's the full ref and abstract.

_____

Nature. 2005 Sep 1;437(7055):88-93.

A genome-wide comparison of recent chimpanzee and human segmental duplications.

Cheng Z, Ventura M, She X, Khaitovich P, Graves T, Osoegawa K, Church D, DeJong
P, Wilson RK, Paabo S, Rocchi M, Eichler EE.

Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Department of Genome Sciences, University of
Washington School of Medicine, 1705 NE Pacific Street, Seattle, Washington
98195, USA.

We present a global comparison of differences in content of segmental
duplication between human and chimpanzee, and determine that 33% of human
duplications (> 94% sequence identity) are not duplicated in chimpanzee,
including some human disease-causing duplications. Combining experimental and
computational approaches, we estimate a genomic duplication rate of 4-5
megabases per million years since divergence. These changes have resulted in
gene expression differences between the species. In terms of numbers of base
pairs affected, we determine that de novo duplication has contributed most
significantly to differences between the species, followed by deletion of
ancestral duplications. Post-speciation gene conversion accounts for less than
10% of recent segmental duplication. Chimpanzee-specific hyperexpansion (> 100
copies) of particular segments of DNA have resulted in marked quantitative
differences and alterations in the genome landscape between chimpanzee and
human. Almost all of the most extreme differences relate to changes in
chromosome structure, including the emergence of African great ape subterminal
heterochromatin. Nevertheless, base per base, large segmental duplication events
have had a greater impact (2.7%) in altering the genomic landscape of these two
species than single-base-pair substitution (1.2%).


62 posted on 09/26/2005 10:09:53 AM PDT by tallhappy (Juntos Podemos!)
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To: aMorePerfectUnion
Nothing comes from nothing...

Exactly - hence creationism is incorrect.

63 posted on 09/26/2005 10:27:53 AM PDT by Quark2005 (Where's the science?)
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To: tallhappy

I know the article. I have read it and I have read the abstract (I noted your "Science" as irrelevant - I personally know one of the authors). My question to you was concerning your post #44. What is your point?


64 posted on 09/26/2005 10:31:37 AM PDT by furball4paws (One of the last Evil Geniuses, or the first of their return.)
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To: RoadTest
I think they're succumbing to the temptation to arrange the facts to fit their theory.

You've got the time machine in reverse this morning. The prediction was made before the facts were even known to exist in this case. At least we know you don't do science.

65 posted on 09/26/2005 10:32:26 AM PDT by <1/1,000,000th%
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To: Rightwing Conspiratr1
I can create a school or a bank from a similar load of bricks. It's not evidence that the school begat the bank.

But it is evidence that they both descended from 'common ground', so to speak.

66 posted on 09/26/2005 10:37:51 AM PDT by Antonello
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To: furball4paws
What is your point?

Mr.Grumpy is a troll.

67 posted on 09/26/2005 10:44:59 AM PDT by balrog666 (A myth by any other name is still inane.)
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To: furball4paws

The talk origin tract indicattes that repeat elements should always be seen in organisms with a common ancestor. In this case there are duplication events in common ancestors, but not human, The talk origin tract would make one think this contradicts common descent.

It doesn't take in to account there can be deletions such as observed whereby Gorilla, Chimp and Orangutan have elements in common, but not human.

As more genomes are sequences and analyzed there will be a lot of these sort of ostensible descrepancies.

Articles meant as evangelical polemic, such as cited here, and mindlessly parrotted here by some, present a false picture of molecular evolution's complexity.


68 posted on 09/26/2005 10:50:45 AM PDT by tallhappy (Juntos Podemos!)
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To: RoadTest
To conclude that humans evolved from a common ancestor of chimpanzees because 96 percent of their genes are the same is jumping to conclusions.

But they're not. They're measuring mutations in humans and chimps, which occur according to evolutionary predictions, which conclusively indicate not only common descent, but when, within a relatively short time frame, humans and chimps shared our last common ancestor.

Evolution "scientists" must be part kangaroo!

We're not "part" anything. We did, however, share a common ancestor with kangaroos, probably around 110 million years ago when our placental ancestors branched off.

I think they're succumbing to the temptation to arrange the facts to fit their theory

What's your explanation for why mutation rates in both nuclear and mtDNA exactly fit evolutionary predictions? Do you have an explanation?

69 posted on 09/26/2005 11:17:26 AM PDT by Alter Kaker (Whatever tears one may shed, in the end one always blows one’s nose.-Heine)
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To: PatrickHenry
It's as if your exam paper in school were 96% the same as the guy who was sitting in front of you, including his wrong answers, and including his crazy answers.

Then add in having the same misspellings, grammar errors, and ink smudges and spills in the same places......

70 posted on 09/26/2005 11:18:34 AM PDT by longshadow
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To: tallhappy

"repeat elements should always be seen in organisms with a common ancestor"

Supply a referenced quote for this, please.


71 posted on 09/26/2005 11:20:20 AM PDT by furball4paws (One of the last Evil Geniuses, or the first of their return.)
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To: balrog666

I know. Perhaps some nice chocolaty flavored Exlax.


72 posted on 09/26/2005 11:22:43 AM PDT by furball4paws (One of the last Evil Geniuses, or the first of their return.)
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To: My2Cents
Does it prove that chimps and man have a similar ancestor, that they are different branches off of the same evolutionary trunk, or does it indicate that both chimps and man have the same designer who simply created man as a variation on an existing theme?

It proves common descent -- not that we and chimps had a similar ancestor, but that we share a common ancestor. How do we know this? Well, for one of many reasons, because DNA mutates at a remarkably constant rate. Now some parts of DNA code for things that we select for on a daily basis -- someone born with no arms is less likely to live than someone with two arms, so a mutation that codes for no arms quickly dies out. But most mutations have no effect on an individuals ability to survive, and those survive, and are measurable. By comparing the mutations present in both human and chimp DNA, we can tell just how long it was we branched off (imagine a genetic stop watch) -- and amazingly, the date we get is exactly what we find in the fossil record.

73 posted on 09/26/2005 11:26:55 AM PDT by Alter Kaker (Whatever tears one may shed, in the end one always blows one’s nose.-Heine)
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To: furball4paws

Read the t.o referenced article. Itchyman has parrotted it in the past and linked to it and today Patrick Henry linked to it.



74 posted on 09/26/2005 11:28:18 AM PDT by tallhappy (Juntos Podemos!)
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To: PatrickHenry
There are those who think it happened the other way around.

Indeed, many argue that chimps and bonobos evolved after humans did.

75 posted on 09/26/2005 11:32:12 AM PDT by Alter Kaker (Whatever tears one may shed, in the end one always blows one’s nose.-Heine)
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To: Quark2005

On it's face, your comment is not only silly, but nonsensical. Maybe that's what you meant and my receiving it was limited by the medium.


76 posted on 09/26/2005 11:51:02 AM PDT by aMorePerfectUnion
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To: JamesP81
So, according to you, creationists can't read?

They just haven't demonstrated the ability. When you are on a debate team, you have to be able to argue both sides of a question equally well. If you participate in a discussion, you need to be able to state your opponent's position accurately.

These are elementary qualifications that creationists fail to meet when arguing against evolution.

77 posted on 09/26/2005 11:59:39 AM PDT by js1138 (Great is the power of steady misrepresentation.)
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To: aMorePerfectUnion
On it's face, your comment is not only silly, but nonsensical.

Not really. You made the claim that "nothing can come from nothing". Isn't that exactly what creationism tries to claim occurred? Current cosmological, geological, and biological theories make no such claim.

78 posted on 09/26/2005 12:02:30 PM PDT by Quark2005 (Where's the science?)
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To: Crackingham
I was told for years, (quite dogmatically by evolutionists) that the Chimp and Man were over 98% genetically identical. That was still two percent difference (which makes such an enormous difference in real life); and now to hear Man and Chimp are even more different at 4 percent difference simply verifies the obvious and is not surprising. Should be considered old news in principle to those who already knew the difference.

Man and Chimp were created with enough difference to belong to two different 'kinds' just like God created them.

79 posted on 09/26/2005 12:10:16 PM PDT by Old Landmarks (No fear of man, none!)
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To: Michael_Michaelangelo
Most Published Research Findings May Be False

Who is warping, twisting, and misrepresenting science in their arguments?

Actually, if you read the article, you will see that it pertains to the statistical analysis of epidemiological and medical studies, not science research in general. I made my points when that thread was current on FR. But then again, anti-science sentiments run deep in the creationist camp so anything else that can be warped to their agenda will be warped.

80 posted on 09/26/2005 12:30:41 PM PDT by doc30 (Democrats are to morals what and Etch-A-Sketch is to Art.)
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