Quote:
Originally posted by Hassan i Sabbah
The study of mitochondrial DNA decay depends on the fact that DNA doesn't stay intact. It would be impossible to make this kind of research happen without it. Mitochondrial DNA mutates by generation and so it's useful for dating genetic differences and even speciation.
It's been very useful in the study of human history; it suggests an African origin for our species and that the San people of Southern Africa are the most genetically ancient people on Earth. It can be used to put a date on the emigration of the first people out of Africa and our progress around the planet and it can be used to date the moment our branch separated from our closest living relatives.
Now that I've cleared up your scientific misapprehension, any chance you might answer the question in detail? I note the Chris Cullia ignored it altogether.
The study of mitochondrial DNA decay depends on the fact that DNA doesn't stay intact. It would be impossible to make this kind of research happen without it. Mitochondrial DNA mutates by generation and so it's useful for dating genetic differences and even speciation.
It's been very useful in the study of human history; it suggests an African origin for our species and that the San people of Southern Africa are the most genetically ancient people on Earth. It can be used to put a date on the emigration of the first people out of Africa and our progress around the planet and it can be used to date the moment our branch separated from our closest living relatives.
Now that I've cleared up your scientific misapprehension, any chance you might answer the question in detail? I note the Chris Cullia ignored it altogether.
Hmmm, that's was just my first response. When I start hearing millions of years I think 'millions of years of replication errors -- how did they pull that off? I don't want to argue about this in general because there's too much 'blue sky' there. Apparently they have ancient DNA to look at? I think it's theorizing upon theorizing upon theorizing. On mtDNA specificaly, there are specific assumptions on the mutation rate.
Apparently we are 5,000,000 years away from the chimp(?). How do you get a rate of favorable mutations that won't kill off the chimp line? What really puzzles me is that you cannot have just one mutation, they must come in sets due to the fact that DNA information is layered in how it's uncoded, so that one bit holds the information for this, that, and the other thing -- and very different features of it's host, at that. It just sounds miraculous --- and not just once, but billions of times. Old Earth, Young Earth I just don't see you can make that work, the same random mechanism having success, producing irreducilby complex creature in many cases...Anyway, let's not do this. The previous response was just the first thing that popped in my head.
In our desire to impose form on the world we have lost the capacity to see the form that is there;
and in that lies not liberation but alienation, the cutting off from things as they really are. --...
In our desire to impose form on the world we have lost the capacity to see the form that is there;
and in that lies not liberation but alienation, the cutting off from things as they really are. --...
