Re: New version of Venter's genome


<shepherdmoon@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1188956330.568797.235250@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hello,

I just read a fascinating article on J. Craig Venter's newest
accomplishment:

In the Genome Race, the Sequel Is Personal
New York Times
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
http://tinyurl.com/36dfre

The article raised two questions in my mind, based on a couple of the
shopworn arguments of some creationists I have debated. Here are the
questions along with my comments and some quotations from the article.

Question 1: How will Venter's new version of the human genome change
human DNA comparisons with chimpanzee DNA?

Several creationists I have debated have presented their calculations
that claim to prove that human DNA is too different from chimpanzee
DNA for the two species to be related by common descent.

Yet the article on Venter states:

"In a paper published today, his research team is announcing that it
has decoded a new version of the human genome that some experts
believe may be better than the consortium's.

Called a full, or diploid genome, it consists of the DNA in both sets
of chromosomes, one from each parent, and it is the normal genome
possessed by almost all the body's cells. And the genome the team has
decoded belongs to just one person: Dr. Venter."

I don't recall the details of the creationist calculations, but their
gist was that by comparing the version of the human genome from 2003
to the chimpanzee version available at that time, the differences were
too great (something like 88% the same versus 98% the same).

Even that percentage doesn't work for them, because, according to them, we
aren't related in any way to apes.

But if the new version of the human genome published by Venter is a
better, more accurate version, then the human-chimpanzee comparisons
from 2003, at least those based on percent difference, need to be done
again.

My prediction is that as the human and chimpanzee genomes become more
accurate, the genomic similarities between the species will become
more obvious, contrary to creationism claims.

He was on The Lehrer News Hour on PBS this evening, and he said that his
results show more variation in the human genome, not less. So I suppose it
might be useful to do a similar study of a single chimpanzee genome and
then compare results. Having said that, he stated that within the next few
years there will be more complete human genomes reconstructed (he mentioned
that Watson's genome has just been completed as well), and so the database
will become huge, and much more precise.

Question 2: How will Venter's new version of the human genome change
assessments of how much variation a genome can tolerate?

Well, I think that can already be answered in part: quite a lot,
apparently. Venter said that comparisons have recently been made in a set
of genes that are identical in several related species (including Homo) and
that variations within those genes apparently did nothing at all. Of
course, this doesn't mean that variation within some other less similar set
of genes would produce the same result.

Another common argument I have heard from creationists is that
evolution is impossible because the genome cannot tolerate the level
of change required by the theory of evolution.

I think that is nonsense, and I think Venter and others have well
demonstrated that not to be the case.

Yet the article on Venter states:

"The new genome, Dr. Venter's team reports, makes clear that the
variation in the genetic programming carried by an individual is much
greater than expected. In at least 44 percent of Dr. Venter's genes,
the copies inherited from his mother differ from those inherited from
his father, according to the analysis published in Tuesday's issue of
PLoS Biology. ...

That doesn't surprise me in the least. It just shows that our genetic
makup is more diverse than we assumed.

'This is the first time that anyone has had an accurate representation
of how much variation there is in a human genome,' said Stephen W.
Scherer of the University of Toronto, a co-author of the study.

Biologists had estimated that two individuals would be identical in
99.9 percent of their DNA, but the true figure now emerges as much
less, around 99.5 percent, Dr. Scherer said."

Naturally, we should not expect that creationists will capitulate at
once in the face of this discovery. But this new research shows that
even in the same person, genes can differ from one copy to the other
without disastrous effects.

Yep. Unless you inherit the ID gene. :)

George

.

Relevant Pages

  • News: New Insights Into The Evolution Of The Human Genome.
    ... New Insights Into The Evolution Of The Human Genome ... The answers provide the first evolutionary history of the duplications ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: evolution and virus in dna
    ... Scientists resuscitate a 5 million-year-old retrovirus ... are reported in Genome Research. ... "Phoenix became frozen in time after it integrated into the human genome ... "Albeit the HERV-K virus has a very low infectivity and does ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: evolution and virus in dna
    ... Scientists resuscitate a 5 million-year-old retrovirus ... are reported in Genome Research. ... "Phoenix became frozen in time after it integrated into the human genome ... "Albeit the HERV-K virus has a very low infectivity and does ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Article: Human genome more variable than previously thought
    ... Surprisingly large segments of DNA found to differ from person to person. ... Nearly six years after the sequence of the human genome was sketched out, ...
    (sci.bio.evolution)
  • Re: The Chimp Genome Challenge
    ... > all over a fairly large amount of time. ... there is no room for the massive amount of genes that have ... > comparisson of the human genome to the chimp genome. ...
    (talk.origins)
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