Abstract

Genome size varies considerably among organisms due to differences in the amplification, deletion, and divergence of various kinds of repetitive sequences, including the transposable elements, which constitute a large fraction of the genome. However, while the changes in genome size observed at a wide taxonomic level have been thoroughly investigated, we still know little about the process involved in closely related species. We estimated genome sizes and the reverse transcriptase–related sequence (RTRS) content in the nine species of the Drosophila melanogaster species subgroup. We showed that the species differ with regard to their genome size and that the RTRS content is correlated with genome size for all species except Drosophila orena. The genome of D. orena, which is 1.6-fold as big as that of D. melanogaster, has in fact not undergone any major increase in its RTRS content.

Natural selection alone cannot explain the observed organisms that contain 3 billion DNA largely functional base pairs. To increase the length of the DNA requires mutation. Mutation is nearly always neutral or damaging. In the rare cases when mutation has been favourable, it has not involved any significant increases to the length of the DNA. Thus the whole theory of evolution shouldn't even be given the label of "theory" its merely a hypothosesis based on projecting a few minor observed mutations and absolutely ASSUMING that these mutations occurred in major favorable mutational jumps in DNA length when nothing like that has ever been observed.

Evolutionists also believe in miraculous processes.

1) The spontaeous creation of matter from nothing.
2) The spontaneous creation of DNA, the smallest observed is over 500000 base pairs long, how did it get there?
3) Favourable increases in the DNA length from less than 1 million base pairs to organisms of over 150 billion base pairs.

It takes an extreme faith to believe in all these processes that are never observed in reality. As unbelieveable as the thought of an eternal loving all-powerful being is, the alternatives are also unbelieveable. If you take a perfectly scientific approach, I believe the balance of evidence points to a creator, that is how little actual evidence there is for beneficial DNA lengthening on which the whole concept of evolving is based.

According to evolution, DNA has lengthened in some organisms.

Some organisms have stayed the same length and yet evolved within their gene pool without the requirement for mutation. I do not dispute this type of evolving. This could explain the variety of dogs, I'm sure that you can get a lot of varieties and even new species from evolving within a species' gene pool.

The alternative that an organism of about 32000 useful functional genes containing about 3 billion base pairs spontaneously appeared is statistically impossible and also a completely different theory to evolution which assumes an evolving and increasing complexity over time. To explain some modern organisms, evolution requires significant beneficial increases to the genome length which have never been observed in nature. It is thus merely an interesting idea, no more scientific than that.

When you have a child, that child has the same DNA size and structure as yourself. The genes are a combination of both parents, yet the DNA has the same human genetic structure. No matter what you eat, you can have no effect or change on the DNA of your child.

1) It is only mutations , mainly through insertions or duplications of sections of DNA, that increase the size of the DNA.
2) These mutations have to be beneficial to become naturally selected and dominant in a population
3) This has not yet been observed yet, its just an idea.

If the whole population starts eating fatty foods, there will be signs after a few generations of a change to the "allele frequency" of the population. ie the gene combinations within the human population that involve a metabolism that handles the fatty foods better will start to show in an increased proportion of the population through natural selection, but this involves a few generations.

I do see evolution as the explanation for the appearance of modern life-forms. This is how the word is used, and I understand your frustration with the narrow meaning, however this is really what the creation/evolution debate is about. Where did advanced life-forms come from, were they always there, or evolved from bacteria. (technically our common ancestor between humans/bacteria).

fortunately I have strong religious beliefs that give me an advantage when looking at these facts. hahahaha stirring!

Massagetrade, I hope you look back a few pages and reread some of his posts. He is being weaselly in the extreme.

The goal posts have moved several times in this thread and each time evidence is presented to disprove a vague assertion it is then moved slightly.

This wouldn't be a problem if you didn't move the goal posts and instead took some time to really read without bias what modern evolutionary biology really knows . . .

Howzityoume, I want to apologize, I reread through your originally posts, and I did not find goal posts shifting, so please excuse my last post. I see we have had some trouble in understanding some of the term usages, and I see that your skepticism is valid if even grounded in irrationality (ie, that creation makes sense where evolution does not)

I don't really understand the negativity that you and Metal seem to have towards H. Have you guys actually tried to talk to other kinds of creationists?

Genome sizes DO vary in closely related sub populations.


http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/23/1/162.full
Howzityoume, I want to apologize, I reread through your originally posts, and I did not find goal posts shifting, so please excuse my last post. I see we have had some trouble in understanding some of the term usages, and I see that your skepticism is valid if even grounded in irrationality (ie, that creation makes sense where evolution does not)

I think the last linked article if read closely will show how we are researching and attempting to understand how genome size correlates to the overall picture of evolution. Between this article and the previous one you should see that the undertaking is a serious one. What I want you to further consider is that no working explanations can be had in comparing magic (creation) to natural processes. So while you may remain skeptical that we fully understand how speciation and divergence occur at the genetic level (and rightly so), I think it only honest to admit no better theory has ever been presented. It is at this level that proper skeptical acceptance should exist. I do not BELIEVE in evolution, I accept it as the best explanation of the evidence with no contradictions to date.

Evolution answers questions, such as why we share an ERV with some primates, and not others. So many facets of evolution answer questions that no other theory has been able to answer. That in and of itself is what supports evolution and makes any other theory seem hollow for lack of the same ability to make predictions.

I did find many in accuracies in your original posts, but they are the same ones you continue to make, and that is the source of my own personal irritation.



This is just not true. I hope that some of the research I have linked will be convincing to you in that regard. We have empirical support for evolution, including changes in the size of the genome.

This is also just amazingly wrong. Comparing the set of evidence for evolution against the set of evidence for a creator is not even in the same realm of realism. The only way one comes to this conclusion is when the creator is the default, and all other evidence must be compared with a certain outcome pre-established. Science and proper skepticism do not work this way.

I studied as a physicist in college, and I do not believe matter came from nowhere. However where matter came from is unimportant to an evolutionary biologist, so this is a straw man.

DNA's origin is a tricky thing to determine, RNA on the other hand can be shown to form via nothing more than convection currents and naturally occurring organic compounds. This has been done in the lab many times. I posted a link to a video earlier in the thread that presented one of the more widely accepted hypothesis for abiogenesis. However, this again is a straw man. Evolutionary biologists do not need to know the source of the coding system to detail how it changes. Which is what evolution is all about.

On your third point I have submitted two very good links that show genone size does increase, we can map the mechanism by which this occurs, and can use statistical modeling to show how over time you can go from a small genome to a very large one, and how natural selection can pair them down, or allow them to grow dependent on the environment.




Again please see the cited links, or even do as I did and google search genome size, lots of material exists on this topic as it is one of the leading aspects of evolutionary research at the moment.



1, 2 are correct, 3 is not please see the fruit fly studies. If only we could study every human currently alive and sequences every single person's genome independently at birth . . . man we would have an awesome array of data then. Sadly, we cannot, and have not been able to do this, and thus the data is lacking . . . not the theory.

Evolutionary theory has come a long way in a short time, but the reality is that the tools needed to really delve into the genetic components of evolution are in there infancy. If we look at it from the scale of evolution itself, the time period of our growth of understanding is not even a blip on the radar. Evolution occurs on geological time scales, and we have not even been looking for the tiniest of fractions along that scale from the genetic perspective. Genetics is the most complex aspect, and the one that has the least data.

In light of that, it is quite amazing how much we have learned in so short a time.

What we have here is someone who "talks" a combination of both without the scientific background to understand version two but is trying to sell a "version" of the 7,000 year old Earth. Numerous statements are made about "no examples of new beneficial genes", "evolutionists date the geology", "all complex creatures existed at the same time", "the fossil record is wrong and misinterpreted", ad infinitum and ad nauseum. It is not an intellectual discussion of religion or evolution. I don't have a lot of patience with someone to constantly twists facts.

Evolution answers questions, such as why we share an ERV with some primates, and not others. So many facets of evolution answer questions that no other theory has been able to answer. That in and of itself is what supports evolution and makes any other theory seem hollow for lack of the same ability to make predictions.

I do feel I explained this pretty clearly from the start, and so I have been wondering why you guys keep giving me examples of extra beneficial NON-CODING genes to prove your position. This does not explain modern life-forms that require extra coding genes to exist. I have also been wondering why you guys have been giving me examples of changed beneficial coding genes

Just back to this, the fact that we cannot find how nature adds an extra beneficial coding gene

It doesn't PROVE it, its just an observation that adds some evidence to the idea that complex life-forms started out complex.

Now according to that theory of sudden appearance, and looking at the matching ERV's between apes and humans we can see a completely different picture. These two primates appeared earth with nearly matching genomes. The ERV's that subsequently inserted into the genome could only match the positions between species when those two species already had the same positions (matching genomes). Statistically when inserting 3000 ERV's into a human, and separately inserting 3000 ERV's into an ape, and only having 22000 gene positions wherein to insert them, this would mean that on average each organism has an insertion every 7th gene. (7,33 to be exact). Thus every 49th gene we should have an ERV position in an ape matching an ERV position in a human, merely through purely RANDOM processes. This would be about 400 matches of ERV positions merely through the high number of ERVs found in both primates. Among those 400 ERV's that are in identical positions, its not inconceivable that 7 of them would be both the same type of ERV and the same position.

Chromosome 2 presents very strong evidence in favour of the common descent of humans and other apes. According to researcher J. W. IJdo, "We conclude that the locus cloned in cosmids c8.1 and c29B is the relic of an ancient telomere-telomere fusion and marks the point at which two ancestral ape chromosomes fused to give rise to human chromosome 2."

I don't think you have read all the posts. The amount of goal post moving is simply unbelievable. When someone twists virtually every post

and professes to understand scientific concepts, that they have never heard of, better than all the scientists who have studied the topic for their careers, there is a serious credibility problem.

No matter the proof and evidence given to make a point, to him it proves his point which is just ridiculous. He says there has never been an example of blah blah blah so you show him one or more examples and he provides A. ridicule B. something swarmy about it not really meaning anything, or C. States that it actually proves his point (which really seems kinda nutty).

I have chatted with a number creationists that basically come from two perspectives. There are the recent Earth group which think the world is about 7,000 years old and really could care less about the theory of evolution other than their version should be taught in school as an "equal" or an "instead". They pretty much believe what they believe and that is that.



There is also the deists who believe the big bang was God's way of making things happen and science is the way he brought things to where they are today. There is therefore no conflict between Religion and science.

There are of course others too but are mainly split into versions of those two camps.

What we have here is someone who "talks" a combination of both without the scientific background to understand version two but is trying to sell a "version" of the 7,000 year old Earth. Numerous statements are made about "no examples of new beneficial genes", "evolutionists date the geology", "all complex creatures existed at the same time", "the fossil record is wrong and misinterpreted", ad infinitum and ad nauseum. It is not an intellectual discussion of religion or evolution. I don't have a lot of patience with someone to constantly twists facts.

Yea see my previous post, I realized my mistakes.

Thanks for the apology. I haven't always used the phrase "extra beneficial non-viral coding genes"

Couple this with the fused chromosome2, and it IS irrefutable evidence of common decent.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1fGkFuHIu0

. .yea you didn't fully read the article. Any gene can be mutated, the more genes, coding or non coding that an organism has allows for the greater number of mutation events. Mutations can activate, or inactivate any gene. Dependent on the environment a very old gene that was once inactive could offer a benefit and get selected positively.

More nonsense. An ERV is a specific bit of genetic code inserted by a specific virus on a specific time in history. Which explains why we do not see the same exact bit of code at the same place, with the same inactivation mutation across different species . . . unless they share common ancetry.

What you have said above, DOES NOT EXPLAIN the ERV we share in common. Random events have probabilities associated with them, what is the probability that we share the same ERV in the same location, and have the EXACT same inactivation mutation? Earlier in the thread you spoke about the incredible odds against a beneficial mutation, inactivation of a viral gene is beneficial, what are the chances of this happening in two separate species at the same time, same place in the sequence, and the same EXACT mutation?

Astronomical.

Couple this with the fused chromosome2, and it IS irrefutable evidence of common decent.

Bushido is correct. Howzit's analysis deals with insertion locations, but does not include the size of the set of unique sequences that could be inserted. The fact that humans and non-humans have the same inserted sequence makes it almost impossible for it to happen any other way than from a single insertion event in a common ancestor.

I believe that Howzit wants definite, irrefutable evidence that this has happened, or specifically, absolutely proven to have happened.

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evo101/IIIE5bNeutraltheory.shtml It does not mean what you think it means . . . this is a theme.

Off topic, but I had to do a double take. Despite my improved understanding of what you really mean, the first meaning I applied to the word pair 'extra beneficial' is "more beneficial than usual".

Oh, language.