Dear Dr. Collins, dear other ASA friends,
On Sun, 24 Mar 2002 15:55:51 +0100, I started this thread. I intended it
as a question to you, Dr. Collins, as well as anyone else interested in
answering. Unfortunately, I just sent it to ASA, but failed to add your
address. There have been various answers already, including your answer
to a question which turned up later. But in case you missed my original
formulation, I add its text below:
Is there any _direct_ evidence for common ancestry between humans and
apes?
Of course, there is a lot of evidence for this, particularly in the
field of DNA sequences. For various reasons, I am convinced humans and
apes are biologically related by common ancestry, but I am not aware of
any _direct_ evidence for this.
Although the similarity between corresponding DNA sequences of, say,
human and chimpanzee may be statistically highly significant, common
natural selection may possibly account for this (parallel or convergent
evolution). Therefore, the significance of the evidence for common
ancestry is directly related to the _lack_ of functionality of the
sequences under consideration.
Now, a pseudogene or other unused sequence which has evolved for the
last 6 million or more years in the ancestors of humans and chimps in an
exactly neutral way is, presumably, under no selective pressure. But is
it possible to demonstrate that such a sequence has not been used at any
time in either line of descent for any function, coded or non-coded?
Presumably, any single unused sequence will be too short to give a
sufficient signal-to-noise ratio to provide a definitive answer.
Therefore, large sets of such sequences would have to be tested
together.
Have any such "phylogeny-indicator" sequence sets been documented?
(By the way, the same argument applied here to similar sequences under
common selection is equally applicable to similar cladistic trees of
molecules which are interdependent in each organism. In this case,
independence would have to be demonstrated.)
Peter Ruest
PS: Dick Fischer already sent me the references Bonner et al., PNAS
(1982) 79:4709 (retroviral sequence), and Max, Creation/Evolution (1986)
19:34 (plagiarized errors).
And Tim Ikeda pointed out, quite correctly, that my request for
demonstration of (absolute) non-use was too demanding.
P.R.
-- Dr. Peter Ruest, CH-3148 Lanzenhaeusern, Switzerland <pruest@dplanet.ch> - Biochemistry - Creation and evolution "..the work which God created to evolve it" (Genesis 2:3)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Mar 26 2002 - 05:14:02 EST