Posted on 08/01/2009 7:57:05 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
From the link you gave:
“Degeneracy of the Amino Acid Code
Examination of the full table of codons enables one to immediately determine whether the “extra” codons are associated with redundancy or dead-end codes (Figure 3). Note that both possibilities occur in the code. There are only a few instances in which one codon codes for one amino acid, such as the codon for tryptophan. Note also that the codon for the amino acid methionine (AUG) acts as the start signal for protein synthesis in an mRNA. Moreover, the genetic code also includes stop codons, which do not code for any amino acid. The stop codons serve as termination signals for translation. When a ribosome reaches a stop codon, translation stops, and the polypeptide is released.”
It seems that amino acids not proteins is the subject here.
I doubt GodGunsGuts understands the rules of evidence. What’s more, I don’t think he’ll ever understand why all this talk of “Suicide Bombers” and “Marxists-Leninists” has absolutely no bearing on the theory of evolution or its validity and adherence to evidence.
My original question was based on information in the linked article.
Are there instances of "related" species using different codings to encode the amino acid sequences for the same protein? Or, despite the existence of codons which permit variability, do "related" species use the same codon sequence for the same proteins?
You know, I have no intention of jumping into this thread this late in the game wrt discussing the actual article, but I will say this:
It's idiot-child poltroons such as yourself who are responsible for degrading the level of discussion on these threads. Stupid, no-brained people like yourself who refuse to discuss criticisms of evolution in their merits, and instead make childish comments like the one above, insulting the hard work put into obtaining an advanced scientific degree all because the individual in question (in this case, Dr. Tompkins) doesn't happen to share your silly little mythology of nature as a hocus-pocus, magic-wand waving magic-trick player. Meanwhile, you probably have a B.S. in accounting or something else that could be earned by partying your way through college on the five-year plan and cramming for your finals, and are therefore completely unqualified to even be discussing the article in any meaningful way. You know, I usually am pretty tolerant on these threads, but might I suggest that if you don't have anything substantive to contribute, that you shut your pie-hole until you do?
Why?
(Apparently that's "needless" to explain too.)
Along that line, it's interesting, and typical, how vague this article is. Aside from the general gee whiz stuff, there is nothing of substance. Literally the only "argument" is a general, arm-waving assertion that design can account for genetic similarities.
Sure it could, but so can common descent.
So the natural thing to do would be to get into the details and seek out specific "test cases" where common design and common descent would make different and incompatible predictions. This is the standard way scientists decide between competing explanations. But creationists never do this with the DNA data. Never. The reason why is, ah, "needless to say". But let's look at a test case any way.
One type would be where patterns of common descent do not conform with, but rather depart markedly from, patterns of function or general typology. In such cases do DNA similarities conform to common descent, as evolution requires, or to function and typology, as common design requires?
A good example are reptiles, crocodiles and birds.
It was concluded on anatomical and fossil evidence, many, many decades before biochemical data were even available (comparative protein sequence data only began to accumulate significantly in the 1960's, and DNA sequence data a decade or two later) that crocodiles are more closely related to birds than to other reptiles.
Birds clearly descended, in one way or another (i.e. whether the currently ascendant Dinosaur origin theory, or the competing theocodont origin theory, is correct), from archosaurs, a.k.a. "ruling reptiles". Since crocodiles are the last surviving archosaurs, they MUST share a more recent common ancestor with birds than they share with any lepidosaur ("non-ruling reptiles" like lizards and such).
OTOH, crocodiles are typologically "reptiles," and birds are clearly an entirely different "type" or group from any reptile, or from reptiles generally. At the same time, birds, with their high metabolic rates and their other numerous and marked adaptations to flight, obviously also depart functionally from crocodiles or any other reptile.
So, if common design is true, then crocodile DNA and proteins and such should be more similar to that of other reptiles than to that of birds. Or, at the very least, it should be more or less equally different and equally similar to both.
If common descent is true, then crocodile DNA and proteins and such should be markedly more similar to that of birds than to that of other reptiles.
So which do you think is the case? I know the answer. Which is how I know why creationists never discuss the details of DNA similarities, and instead stick with the arm-waving.
Granted that the contribution you're responding to was trivial and mean (if less verbosely so than your own reaction). But in org.whodat's defense, there are no "criticisms of evolution" in the article to discuss. The author makes a pretense of disputing evolution, but he's really only waving his arms about.
That later, overwhelmingly.
For instance there are many, many protein sequences in humans and chimpanzees that are identical, and their DNA sequences also identical or very nearly so, even though variations in other species allow for the same protein function. IOW there are loads and loads of gratuitous, completely unnecessary, overkill similarities between closely related species, with equally unnecessary dissimilarities as you go to evolutionary more distant species, all the time with the corresponding proteins equal in function and efficiency.
I was thinking the other way around: does GGG seriously believe that the Tamil Tigers are motivated to any measurable degree by a belief in evolution?
PH D. In what underwater basket weaving???
Ooops. I'm going to have to apologize for calling this question "trivial and mean."
It's beginning to look like a genuine mystery. I can't find anything online, or even at icr.org, describing Tomkins or specifying what his degree is in. I've tried the ICR's Scientists and Faculty page, and their Technical Advisory Board page (both of which seem to be out of date? despite being linked on the current ICR Research page) and Tomkins doesn't appear on either. Nor can I find any other curriculum vitae information anywhere else at icr.org, except this old 1980 article by Henry Morris. It has a more recent page note promising a "list of current ICR scientists" can be found at the icr.org main page, but of course none is there, nor linked there.
Yes, and sometimes yes.
You know these sequences are “gratuitous, completely unnecessary, overkill”, how?
I would be curious to hear of some examples of "related" species which use different codons to generate the same protein. It occurs to me that it should even be possible to find the same protein being coded in different ways, perhaps on different chromosomes, even with one species, or within a single individual. Is that observed?
Because the corresponding protein sequences (and or the underlying DNA sequences) might be, say, 100% identical in humans and chimps (as many are), 1% different between humans and gorillas, 5% different in gibbons, 10% in dogs, 20% in chickens, etc, while the protein does exactly the same thing with exactly the same efficiency in all, such that all would be functionally interchangeable. Thus the fact that the similarities conform to an evolutionary pattern of common descent is gratuitous wrt to functional constraints.
I'm not up with the latest on that, but in any case a lot more than needs to be.
As I noted in my longer message on birds and crocodiles, however, the important thing is to take the comparataive data and find crucial cases where common descent and common design make different predictions. Why do creationists never even attempt to do that?
If you don’t know then how can you say anything about it being, “a lot more than needs to be.”
Or how much is required to produce the differences and similarities chimps and humans have.
Yup. But liberals are so self absorbed that they’re incapable of seeing this though.
Because, to repeat, I know that many proteins are identical in humans and chimps, and yet that nonsequence identical versions of the same proteins perform the same functions just as well in other species.
Alright then, go ahead on fill us in on the good doctor's qualifications and degree. As noted upthread, I can't find anything.
And why doesn't anyone answer my question about why creationists only make the arm-waving assertion that common design can explain similarities, but never offer a detailed analysis as to how design explains specific patterns of similarities and differences in DNA sequences better than common descent, something that evolutionists do all the time?
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