Well damnit! Here I thought FCiB was actually going to start a rather deep topic about DNA mechanics, just for the sake what is scientifically known about DNA, then by 3rd post, we get this "detour" into an "intelligent design" discussion (essentially making it the textbook God vs. Science FCiB topic of the week). Maybe this icon is fitting to end this post? ==>
Check out that Times article on the Y chromosome. It's really frikkin' cool. I got to hear the lead investigator give a talk at UW a couple months ago. It was some fascinating, old-fashioned "you find cool stuff when you look" science.
The mystery is how men still exist. Every chromosome in humans is one of a pair, and they keep each other in good condition by occasionally swapping identical bits back and forth during meiosis - a process called homolgous recombination. This ensures that if anything bad happens to one copy of a chromosome (say, a big bit gets deleted) it can be repaired by its partner before it gets inherited.
But the Y has no partner. And it's been shrinking ever since it came into being. It used to be the size of an X chromosome (it used to be an X chromosome), but now it has only 10% as many genes and is much smaller than the X. A few scientists calculated (tongue-in-cheek) that at this rate, the Y would cease to exist in about 10 million years.
It turns out that, ingeneously, the Y recombines with itself. All of its critical genes are contained within giant palindromes of DNA. About a dozen palindromes altogether. The sequences within the two arms of each palindrome is 99.99+% identical - which means they must be evolving together, constantly swapping sequence back and forth. The arms of the palindromes bend back on themselves to recombine, just like partner chromosomes can. The Y recombines with itself, and keeps itself from disappering entirely.
This also solved a puzzle from the genome project - why was the Y chromosome so hard to sequence? We only just got the first good draft of it, a couple years after the rest of the genome. Palindromes are darn hard to sequence because it can be hard to tell which part of the palindrome you're looking at. It's like having two 99.99+% identical jigsaw puzzles mixed together. It's hard to tell which peice goes with which puzzle, and there's a dozen "puzzles" (palindromes) on the chromosome that each have to be sorted out. So it's really hard to assemble bits of sequence into an entire chromosome. Mystery solved.
Fellowship. You lack even the most basic understanding of logic.
I flip a coin. According to probability, each toss has a 50% chance of being "heads". Therefore if you flip a coin 100 times, you should see at least 50 "heads"? Wrong.
#1 just to be clear you are quoting Jonathan Marks.
Quote:
Because DNA is a linear array of those four bases A,G,C, and T only four possibilities exist at any specific point in a DNA sequence. The laws of chance tell us that two random sequences from species that have no ancestry in common will match at about one in every four sites. Thus even two unrelated DNA sequences will be 25 percent identical, not 0 percent identical.
"Jonathan Marks"
The point is not to debate if indeed two unrelated sequences share 25% identical DNA or 0% DNA. It is given it is 25% in the above case. I do not dispute that. Again that is a given.
If you feel I have the the one in four ratio all wrong please explain how you come to that conclusion.
This articulates what I am asking in this thread in another set of wording:
Quote:
The standpoint of science is widely held to be superior to all rivals. Especially by scientists. But once again, it is useful to acknowledge that there may be more than one scientific standpoint, and that the meaning of any particular scientific pronouncement may not be self-evident. And thus in the 1990s, we routinely heard that we are just 1 or 2% different from chimpanzees genetically, and therefore ._._. what?
If you will remember I was asking about lumping stats out to the general public.
If you run a random number generator on that and you will get very close to 50% as the sample grows. But each toss can go either way.
also, there are organisms that code for one or two more ammino acids than the main 20 types.
I'm just a dumb white boy, but doesn't that make evolution even harder to expain?
Just to be a little snide -- but any small molecule that contains an amine group and a carboxylic acid is an amino acid. Any number of antibiotics that are derived from bacteria or fungi likely contain those very ammino acids. Its really not that suprising particularly since these antibiotics are not coded for in the genome (ie there isnt a codon set for their use -- the antibiotics are synthesized by non-ribosomal proteins). This may come at a suprise to ena and some others on this thread, but within the last decade the amber stop codon tRNA (the least used stop codon) has been modified to allow the use of man made amino acids in synthetic or partially synthetic proteins. It just goes to show that biology is very floppy in its function...
Just to be a little snide -- but any small molecule that contains an amine group and a carboxylic acid is an amino acid. Any number of antibiotics that are derived from bacteria or fungi likely contain those very ammino acids. Its really not that suprising particularly since these antibiotics are not coded for in the genome (ie there isnt a codon set for their use -- the antibiotics are synthesized by non-ribosomal proteins). This may come at a suprise to ena and some others on this thread, but within the last decade the amber stop codon tRNA (the least used stop codon) has been modified to allow the use of man made amino acids in synthetic or partially synthetic proteins. It just goes to show that biology is very floppy in its function...
Yes, but it makes evolution harder to explain, since these organisms use a "different code."
Yes, but it makes evolution harder to explain, since these organisms use a "different code."
*hand hits head* no they dont, not in any real sense. there is pressure to maintain the same code because of genetic exchange that occurs between all microbes and almost all microbes and higher animals. there is no reason to believe that the codes would a priori be the same.
What about Mitocondria? They have their own genes as well? What's the deal with that?
</unrelated question>
yeah they do, but they are also to a certain degree dependent on their host cell (btw chloroplast also have their own DNA). it is suspected (with evidence drawn from pathogenic bacteria that live within host cells) that at some point the DNA-containing organelles were fully independent of the host, and this relationship became more symbiotic.
It is interesting to see that yet again fellowship corrupts science to make it fit into his religious agenda.
Rather dishonest of him, I would say.
Marks says ...
"... the genetic similarity of humans to apes ..."
So he doesn't have a problem with that.
He also says ...
"... Yet the fact that our DNA is more than 25% similar to a dandelion's does not imply that we are over one-quarter dandelion ..."
Fellowships post would suggest something is wrong here, yet nothing is wrong.
It would seem Marks book is a reply to "rabid tree huggers" who want chimps to have the same rights as humans.
From that introduction, it also seems to be a reply to people like fellowship. People who pick and choose bits from science to dishonestly further their cause - "chimp rights" or creationist.
It also seems to be a reality check. Just because fellowships jumper is red, and that ball is red, doesn't mean the jumper is a ball.
It is interesting to see that yet again fellowship corrupts science to make it fit into his religious agenda.
Rather dishonest of him, I would say.
I guess we can't have people running around "corrupting science"---especially the rock-solid bedrock of unwavering, testable evidence that is at the bottom of evolution.
I guess we can't have people running around "corrupting science"---especially the rock-solid bedrock of unwavering, testable evidence that is at the bottom of evolution.
Heavens no!
I have no problem with scientists making discoveries that blow evolution out of the water. If it happens, it happens. I do have a problem with nitwits cutting and pasting snippets of articles written by real scientists and twisting the words to try to prove that we are half bananas. That same guy said that we aren't 1/4 dandelion so the idiotic conclusion that fellows came up with, based on the same scientist's article, that we are half banana is just utterly retarded.
It only demonstrates once again that real science cannot take place when people start with the conclusion and warp the universe around them in an attempt to make it fit. It's bullshit and I'm tired of it.
Oh, xenu...you give fellows too much credit with your logic examples. It's more like this:
I think DNA is probably a bad area---it's pretty easy to get lost in a lot of esoteric details, it would probably behoove most of us to all go get a copy of "DNA for Dummies".
Comments
(just as long as no one asks about the fossil record we should be ok fine.)
Speaking of the human Y chromosome check out the following:
Y chromosome
Back to DNA...
Check out that Times article on the Y chromosome. It's really frikkin' cool. I got to hear the lead investigator give a talk at UW a couple months ago. It was some fascinating, old-fashioned "you find cool stuff when you look" science.
The mystery is how men still exist. Every chromosome in humans is one of a pair, and they keep each other in good condition by occasionally swapping identical bits back and forth during meiosis - a process called homolgous recombination. This ensures that if anything bad happens to one copy of a chromosome (say, a big bit gets deleted) it can be repaired by its partner before it gets inherited.
But the Y has no partner. And it's been shrinking ever since it came into being. It used to be the size of an X chromosome (it used to be an X chromosome), but now it has only 10% as many genes and is much smaller than the X. A few scientists calculated (tongue-in-cheek) that at this rate, the Y would cease to exist in about 10 million years.
It turns out that, ingeneously, the Y recombines with itself. All of its critical genes are contained within giant palindromes of DNA. About a dozen palindromes altogether. The sequences within the two arms of each palindrome is 99.99+% identical - which means they must be evolving together, constantly swapping sequence back and forth. The arms of the palindromes bend back on themselves to recombine, just like partner chromosomes can. The Y recombines with itself, and keeps itself from disappering entirely.
This also solved a puzzle from the genome project - why was the Y chromosome so hard to sequence? We only just got the first good draft of it, a couple years after the rest of the genome. Palindromes are darn hard to sequence because it can be hard to tell which part of the palindrome you're looking at. It's like having two 99.99+% identical jigsaw puzzles mixed together. It's hard to tell which peice goes with which puzzle, and there's a dozen "puzzles" (palindromes) on the chromosome that each have to be sorted out. So it's really hard to assemble bits of sequence into an entire chromosome. Mystery solved.
Originally posted by tonton
I flip a coin. According to probability, each toss has a 50% chance of being "heads". Therefore if you flip a coin 100 times, you should see at least 50 "heads"? Wrong.
#1 just to be clear you are quoting Jonathan Marks.
Because DNA is a linear array of those four bases A,G,C, and T only four possibilities exist at any specific point in a DNA sequence. The laws of chance tell us that two random sequences from species that have no ancestry in common will match at about one in every four sites. Thus even two unrelated DNA sequences will be 25 percent identical, not 0 percent identical.
"Jonathan Marks"
The point is not to debate if indeed two unrelated sequences share 25% identical DNA or 0% DNA. It is given it is 25% in the above case. I do not dispute that. Again that is a given.
If you feel I have the the one in four ratio all wrong please explain how you come to that conclusion.
Fellowship
My jumper is red.
That ball is red.
My jumper is a ball.
My house is made of brick.
Brick is 'dirt'.
Humans evolved from 'dirt', according to evolutionists.
Therefore my house is human.
That tree has two branches.
I have two arms.
Therefore I am a tree.
</fellowship logic>
Bonus points to anyone who can prove via "fellowship logic", that fellowship is actually a teapot.
Originally posted by tonton
Therefore if you flip a coin 100 times, you should see at least 50 "heads"? Wrong.
If you run a random number generator on that and you will get very close to 50% as the sample grows. But each toss can go either way.
also, there are organisms that code for one or two more ammino acids than the main 20 types.
I'm just a dumb white boy, but doesn't that make evolution even harder to expain?
The standpoint of science is widely held to be superior to all rivals. Especially by scientists. But once again, it is useful to acknowledge that there may be more than one scientific standpoint, and that the meaning of any particular scientific pronouncement may not be self-evident. And thus in the 1990s, we routinely heard that we are just 1 or 2% different from chimpanzees genetically, and therefore ._._. what?
If you will remember I was asking about lumping stats out to the general public.
Link to Jonathan Marks Book and discussion over this very topic about what the stats really mean some in science lump out at the general public
Fellowship
Originally posted by xenu
<fellowship logic>
My jumper is red.
That ball is red.
My jumper is a ball.
My house is made of brick.
Brick is 'dirt'.
Humans evolved from 'dirt', according to evolutionists.
Therefore my house is human.
That tree has two branches.
I have two arms.
Therefore I am a tree.
</fellowship logic>
Bonus points to anyone who can prove via "fellowship logic", that fellowship is actually a teapot.
It is nice that you have me confused with "evolutionists"
Above you are talking about homology.... Yes,, again it is not me but rather evolutionists who argue the logic you list above.
Fellowship
Originally posted by xenu
<fellowship logic>
My jumper is red.
That ball is red.
My jumper is a ball.
My house is made of brick.
Brick is 'dirt'.
Humans evolved from 'dirt', according to evolutionists.
Therefore my house is human.
That tree has two branches.
I have two arms.
Therefore I am a tree.
</fellowship logic>
Bonus points to anyone who can prove via "fellowship logic", that fellowship is actually a teapot.
A cracked teapot is a cracked pot.
Fellowship is a crackpot.
Fellowship is a teapot.
Originally posted by ena
If you run a random number generator on that and you will get very close to 50% as the sample grows. But each toss can go either way.
also, there are organisms that code for one or two more ammino acids than the main 20 types.
I'm just a dumb white boy, but doesn't that make evolution even harder to expain?
Just to be a little snide -- but any small molecule that contains an amine group and a carboxylic acid is an amino acid. Any number of antibiotics that are derived from bacteria or fungi likely contain those very
Originally posted by billybobsky
Just to be a little snide -- but any small molecule that contains an amine group and a carboxylic acid is an amino acid. Any number of antibiotics that are derived from bacteria or fungi likely contain those very
Yes, but it makes evolution harder to explain, since these organisms use a "different code."
Originally posted by ena
Yes, but it makes evolution harder to explain, since these organisms use a "different code."
*hand hits head* no they dont, not in any real sense. there is pressure to maintain the same code because of genetic exchange that occurs between all microbes and almost all microbes and higher animals. there is no reason to believe that the codes would a priori be the same.
Bobsky:
What about Mitocondria? They have their own genes as well? What's the deal with that?
</unrelated question>
Originally posted by ena
<unrelated question>
Bobsky:
What about Mitocondria? They have their own genes as well? What's the deal with that?
</unrelated question>
yeah they do, but they are also to a certain degree dependent on their host cell (btw chloroplast also have their own DNA). it is suspected (with evidence drawn from pathogenic bacteria that live within host cells) that at some point the DNA-containing organelles were fully independent of the host, and this relationship became more symbiotic.
Rather dishonest of him, I would say.
Marks says ...
"... the genetic similarity of humans to apes ..."
So he doesn't have a problem with that.
He also says ...
"... Yet the fact that our DNA is more than 25% similar to a dandelion's does not imply that we are over one-quarter dandelion ..."
Fellowships post would suggest something is wrong here, yet nothing is wrong.
It would seem Marks book is a reply to "rabid tree huggers" who want chimps to have the same rights as humans.
From that introduction, it also seems to be a reply to people like fellowship. People who pick and choose bits from science to dishonestly further their cause - "chimp rights" or creationist.
It also seems to be a reality check. Just because fellowships jumper is red, and that ball is red, doesn't mean the jumper is a ball.
Originally posted by xenu
It is interesting to see that yet again fellowship corrupts science to make it fit into his religious agenda.
Rather dishonest of him, I would say.
I guess we can't have people running around "corrupting science"---especially the rock-solid bedrock of unwavering, testable evidence that is at the bottom of evolution.
Heavens no!
Originally posted by ena
I guess we can't have people running around "corrupting science"---especially the rock-solid bedrock of unwavering, testable evidence that is at the bottom of evolution.
Heavens no!
I have no problem with scientists making discoveries that blow evolution out of the water. If it happens, it happens. I do have a problem with nitwits cutting and pasting snippets of articles written by real scientists and twisting the words to try to prove that we are half bananas. That same guy said that we aren't 1/4 dandelion so the idiotic conclusion that fellows came up with, based on the same scientist's article, that we are half banana is just utterly retarded.
It only demonstrates once again that real science cannot take place when people start with the conclusion and warp the universe around them in an attempt to make it fit. It's bullshit and I'm tired of it.
Oh, xenu...you give fellows too much credit with your logic examples. It's more like this:
Water is wet;
Giraffes have long necks.
Therefore computers grow on trees.