According to my googling, geneticist Jeff Tomkins has been mentioned before in this website once, by Cordova in 2015. Nobody cared back then. Now here is a recent interview with him https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxk1dZrnBR8 (it’s audio rather than video)
In this interview, Dr. Tomkins states that the claim of 98% similarity between humans and chimpanzees is only based on certain “regions of DNA”, i.e. some sequences, not the whole genome. Further specific claims:
- The similarity between humans and chimps, taking the whole genome into account, would be rather 70% or two thirds
- For evolution (of humans and chimps from a common ancestor) to be true, 98% similarity (across the whole genome) would be required, given the rate of mutation
To those who know better: Are these two claims true? Certainly evolutionary biologists would not be so sloppy as to declare 98% similarity of something without proper justification!
Further, at 15m20 mark, Dr. Tomkins says that genes operate in “networks and subnetworks,” apparently so that the whole genome is as if an integral system or organism by itself. This would imply that the genome would be able to evolve/change not by mutation and natural selection, but as predetermined by the inherent nature of the genome.
At 22m50 mark, Dr. Tomkins says, “Every time an unusual creature has its genome sequenced, we are finding unique sets of genes for these creatures.” Apart from the evidently unscientific term “creature,” I am interested in specific examples. Dr. Tomkins mentions “orphan genes” of shrimps, oysters and insects in that section.
How do evolutionary biologists assess Dr. Tomkins’ performance in this interview and his credentials in general?
They should know that it is not science because of persuasive ,scientific arguments like someone somehow did something at sometime for some reason?
Silly evolutionists.
Exactly! Why keep breaking bacteria for the next 31 years with the results already known today?
Make the chimp evolve a little… the question is, can it evolve beyond a chimp and without breaking or blunting gene functions? 🤔
All it takes is a book by someone vaguely congenial to your viewpoint and you’ll parrot their message like an instant convert. No apparent critical faculties. It’s quite sad really.
Predict the next 31 years of results please. Which genes will be broken, how will they be broken, which genes will NOT be broken, will there be NO other changes but breaking?
Go on, do it.
Let’s not kid ourselves. J-mac has not even read Behe’s book. I doubt he even has any plans of acquiring it. It is being advertised as a pro-ID book and that is all J-mac needs. He now believes the conclusions of the book with a strength of conviction that borders on psychotic.
Are you suggesting that an ID closet proponent should make accurate evolutionary predictions evolutionists can’t make themselves? That’s cute…
All I’m predicting is that Overtime Long-Term Evolution Experiment is not going to make bacteria to evolve into something else other than bacteria and it will continue to break of blunt gene functions… It will not cause the bacteria to evolve a new genetic code either…
Moreover, even if Lenski would design the experiment any way he wants, it would not make me to alter my predictions… I know that for a fact because of many things, including the law of conservation of quantum information…
It’s pretty remarkable, huh? 😁
Don’t confuse psychosis with confidence in evolutionary inabilities…😉
YOU are the one claiming to know what the next 31 years of results of the LTEE will be like.
I see that you’re now flailing wildly to retract that claim. Okay.
Erik? Erik?
Let’s highlight two comments.
Very interesting analogy, but I do not get how you can conclude that comparing “individual segments” (apparently words in this case) is illegitimate. By word-comparison you would get close to 100% similarity only when you ignore the meanings and functions of words and word order (syntax). The purpose of such comparison would be a probability-conclusion that the books represent the same language, and they do.
But when you take into account the functions of words and syntax, you would not get much similarity. The aim of the comparison in this case would be that, even though the works represent the same language, they are not the same work, not even really “similar”.
Moreover, you curiously slip between “similar” and “identical” with ease. These are conceptually not the same thing. Given the way biological organisms work, “similar” and “identical” are conceptually not even close. “Similar” would mean it *looks* or *seems* close – just that. It is still not clear in this thread how biologists determine that two organisms/species in fact *are* close, as opposed to *look similar.*
Spot on. I would only add that claiming that the results of “similarity” have any bearing on proximity along evolutionary lines remains to be proven separately, based on what genes are and what they do and if there is any correlation between functions of genes and their statistical similarity.
For example, Cordova brought the analogy of two books. If any two books are in the same language, they would contain the same vocabulary – a similarity of 100% or near. However, they may be very different texts, the one work of art and the other work of crap, which can only be figured out by considering features far beyond the power of statistics. And, all along, no amount of “similarity” means books breed themselves or each other by themselves. How books come about and what relation they have is something to be determined separately; it is not within the realm of statistical “similarity”, not even when it is statistical identity.
Erik,
Sal’s analogy doesn’t capture an important point. The ‘similarity’ in genomes has more the character of multiple editions of the same book with some typos, insertions and deletions, which remarkably form a consistent tree-like pattern, as if they resulted from a branching process.
Also, there is no correlation with what genes do – the metric is simply one of genetic distance, applying equally to functional and nonfunctional sequence. The fact that different genes reliably give tree-like topologies converging on the same basic pattern is itself a statistically significant corroboration of the hypothesis that they are connected by ancestry, without any need to ‘separately prove’ that ancestry, in whatever form you imagine that test taking.
Yes, this is an important point. So I wonder why nobody made this point before, if it is important and hopefully even correct.
Edit: See what I found https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbY122CSC5w At 1m48, “We share 99% of our DNA with chimps, if we ignore 18% of their genome and 25% of ours.”
Go back and reread my post.
It’s only when there’s a comment like Salvador’s that we realize not everybody knows or understand what we already consider well-established knowledge.
This emphasis suggests that you neither paid much attention to what was explained in the video, nor read John’s comment carefully enough, even though you quoted it in its entirety.
If, instead of just the words, you also compared the order of the words, then you’d get a better picture about whether the books are much more similar than because they shared words of the same language, right? You can do the same comparing many many books, and come back with background statistics to help you distinguish different editions of the same book from different, “independent,” books.
Those sections aren’t ignored. They aren’t compared because they can’t be compared. The reason? We don’t know where those bits of the genome fit into the overall genome sequence. In many cases, they could fit into multiple open gaps in the genome sequence. Since we don’t know where in the genome they fit in we can’t compare them to another genome.
A better way to put it is that after comparing 85+% of the genomes together they are ~95% similar. We don’t expect the final 15% of the genome to be that different from the rest, so there is no expectation of that ~95% to change much, up or down.
test.
That would be ~99% similar. Unless, again, you want to count a 1000-base indel as 1000 differences. And that would be weird.
I really enjoy speculative science and speculative scientists…Tell us more fairy tails, Dr. Harshman! I hope that providing evidence for your wild speculations is not going to offend your intelligence in any way, shape or form, is it?
J-Mac,
The Chimpanzee Sequencing and Analysis Consortium. Initial sequence of the chimpanzee genome and comparison with the human genome. Nature 2005; 437:69-87.
Bonobos, Not Chimps, Are Humans’ Closest Living Ancestor
https://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/37735/20170501/bonobos-chimps-humans-closest-living-ancestor.htm
“When the Max Planck scientists compared the bonobo genome directly with that of chimps and humans, however, they found that a small bit of our DNA, about 1.6%, is shared with only the bonobo, but not chimpanzees.”
Nice! The 1.6 % difference shared only with humans but not with chimps evolution obviously predicts, now! I love evolutionary science! It’s so unpredictable in its predictions…Who needs comedy clubs?! 😂
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2012/06/bonobos-join-chimps-closest-human-relatives
J-Mac,
Here’s a couple of quotes that you failed to include from that Science press release (my emphases):
“Chimpanzees now have to share the distinction of being our closest living relative in the animal kingdom. An international team of researchers has sequenced the genome of the bonobo for the first time, confirming that it shares the same percentage of its DNA with us as chimps do.”
“When the Max Planck scientists compared the bonobo genome directly with that of chimps and humans, however, they found that a small bit of our DNA, about 1.6%, is shared with only the bonobo, but not chimpanzees. And we share about the same amount of our DNA with only chimps, but not bonobos.”
So yes, this is exactly what evolution predicts: as bonobos and chimps are more closely related to each other than they are to humans, chimps and bonobos are equidistant from humans in terms of relatedness and therefore genetic differences.
evograd,
Welcome aboard!
I took the liberty of replacing your bold <b> tags with <strong> tags so they will work for the 20% of us who use Firefox (and work for IE, not that anyone uses IE…).
I hope this is okay by you.
You never cease to amaze. That’s nonsensical in two ways, not just one. I leave the details as an exercise for you.
Can you figure out the explanation? And have you looked to see how much DNA we share with chimps but not with bonobos?
Oh, I see that Evograd has already offered you some hints, so it should be easy.
So, you and Evodrug disagree with the paper that bonobos, and not chimps, are humans’ closest living relatives? What exactly evolution predicts then? Nonsense I guess…😉
Let’s not forget that humans share 50% of genes with the banana, which evolution also predicts…😂
Is that a banana in your pocket or you just happy to see me?
Junk DNA’ defines differences between humans and chimps
DNA sequences for human and chimpanzees are nearly identical, despite vast phenotypical differences between the two species. Researchers have determined that the insertion and deletion of large pieces of DNA near genes are highly variable between humans and chimpanzees and may account for these major differences.
“…”Our findings are generally consistent with the notion that the morphological and behavioral differences between humans and chimpanzees are predominately due to differences in the regulation of genes rather than to differences in the sequence of the genes themselves,” said McDonald.
All of this evolution also predicts… obviously…🤣
I hope Larry Moran is still planning to write his 90% junk DNA book…😉
There is no such paper. What you have there is the headline on a very poor garbling of the actual paper from some crappy “science” web site. You are so far out of your league that every word you type is embarrassing, or should be if you had enough knowledge to realize it.
Crappy science? Crappy website? Crappy writer?
I thought you science people were to be trusted? What happened?
This is the crappy science writer you mean:
Who should we trust? Omagain swears if you let the science people run things, only the truth will prevail.
Futuyma!
Way outside my field, but I was under the impression that chimps and bonobos split from a common ancestor, AFTER humans split from that ancestor. This is analogous to you having a son, who has two children (your grandchildren). The question being addressed here is equivalent to debating which of these two grandchildren is most closely related to you. It should be fairly clear that they are equally related to you (and equally related to any other children you may have had). Doing some sort of DNA comparison to determine the “closer” grandchild is a category error. And of course those two grandchildren are going to be more closely related to one another than to anyone else (notably their parents).
You’ll have to be more specific.
Although here is your counterexample. This is a 50 page argument against several positions being advanced in, essentially, Futuyma (3rd ed) Chap 21. Indeed, it’s an argument against population genetics, at least as applied to the boundary between sexual and asexual reproduction. At which point (having troubled to read neither) you’ll presumably play the ‘evolutionists can’t agree on anything’ card.
Phoodoo,
This is a perfect example of what I call the evolutionary blindness or confirmation bias…
Due to their bias evolutionists ALWAYS assume that evolution is true, and then they look for ways to try to find a way around any inconvenient evidence to prove their beliefs…
The monkey ancestor is a perfect example how their blindness gets exposed:
The article I quoted says that chimp genome and human genome are almost identical, and that the huge difference observed between two species can’t be explained by the sequence of the genes, and therefore they looked and found huge differences in the regulatory network of the genes…
But here is the catch: all the regulatory network of those genes is found in the so-called junk DNA which evolutionists point to as proof of evolution…
So, the circus of contradictions continues and if you let it be, “the truth”, as they see it and as evolution predicts, will prevail…
“Science” at its best…
J-Mac,
This is categorically untrue, in both parts. If a sequence is regulatory, it’s not junk. And junk DNA is not held to be ‘proof of evolution’.
This clearly illustrates the blindness of evolution opponents, who cannot be arsed to grasp the subject at even the most basic level.
phoodoo,
Ann Gibbons wrote an article with the (accurate) title “Bonobos Join Chimps as Closest Human Relatives”. She is a journalist.
John was referring to J-Mac’s other article, the one with the inaccurate title “Bonobos, Not Chimps, Are Humans’ Closest Living Ancestor”, which was written by a journalist by the name Naia Carlos.
Can you tell the difference?
Yes we got it the first time, and a counterexample to your brainless invoking of “Futuyma” was given.
What kind of an answer is that? I gave you a clear example of an instance where I disagree with the mainstream view*** as presented by Futuyma, and you just parrot my words a second time as if I hadn’t. Fancy going for 3?
***I wrote the piece I linked, if that wasn’t clear.
The actual scientific literature. Here’s the real paper:
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11128
And here’s another, the one your garbled site actually referenced:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-00548-3
That’s great, just completely ignore what I said…
It’s been known for decades that most of the critical genetic changes that caused the divergence between humans and chimps (and all other species) are to regulatory sequences, not exons of protein-coding genes. This means that most of the important changes occur in non-coding regions. It does not follow from this, however, that large proportion of all non-coding sequences are therefore functional. Not even close. The best available evidence tells us that less than 20% of the human genome is functional, so Moran is right on the money.
That’s exactly right – pay attention J Mac and phoodoo.
Actually, John was referring to the “Nature World News” article by Naia Carlos, not the “Science” article by Ann Gibbons. Gibbons is certainly a distinguished science writer, while Carlos appears to have no such impressive credentials or track record. Regardless, it doesn’t matter what the credentials are if an objective error is made, even it might be subtle. As @Flint said, bonobos and chimps are equally related to humans, one is not more related to humans than the other. This doesn’t preclude one being slightly more similar to humans than the other though. To continue @Flint’s analogy, if you have black hair and one of your son’s children (your grandchildren) also has black hair while the other has ginger hair, this is one characteristic in which one grandchild is more similar to you than the other. They’re both still equally related to you though. In the case of humans, chimps, and bonobos, the headline “Bonobos, Not Chimps, Are Humans’ Closest Living Ancestor” actually means “Bonobos, Not Chimps, Are The Living Apes Most Similar To Humans”. The title of the Washington University press release that the article refers to is even more clear: “Study Finds Bonobos May Be Better Representation of the Last Common Ancestor with Humans than Common Chimpanzees”. The study in question is Diogo et al (2017)
They analysed musculoskeletal characters in the bodies of humans, chimps, and bonobos, and the relevant finding was that chimpanzees are a bit more derived than bonobos – chimps have changed in a few unique ways, leaving humans and bonobos to be more similar. Going back to Flint analogy, imagine that you have black hair, and your son, his wife, and one grandchild have black hair – the other experienced a new mutation causing them to be ginger. They’re the only ginger in their immediate family, as a result of a mutation unique to them. When comparing hair colours, you are more similar to the other grandchild than you are to this ginger grandchild. So, which are you more related to? Both equally of course!
Bonobos are anatomically slightly closer to humans than chimps are, but bonobos and chimp are obviously still more similar to one another than either are to humans.
One of my comments is apparently marked as spam and hidden (this happened immediately after I posted it), and now I can’t report it because the system flags it as a duplicate when I try. Can an admin sort things out? Thanks.
It’s an evolution by pure, blind, underacted processes…Why are you surprised? 😉 You lost faint in your own system of beliefs? 😉
Equally related based on what?
phoodoo,
Equally related based on what the word “related” means in this (genealogical) context.
Based on who had sex, and gave birth.
So no need to look at the genes then right? Because that doesn’t determine relatedness you are saying.
I’m completely unsurprised you didn’t get it. Carry on.