incorygible
Posts: 374
Joined: Feb. 2006
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| Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,12:31) | Incorygible... | Quote | | Yes, in a truly neutral region of DNA (i.e., a molecular clock), a 500 myo bacterilum is MUCH different than a modern bacterium. |
How do you know this? Are you just guessing? How about in the Cytochrome C? Do you say the same? |
How about you read the definition of a molecular clock in that Nature paper I sent you before accusing me of "guessing" regarding something that is a defining characteristic of the term in question.
But seeing as how you don't even have a rudimentary understanding (less than high school biology) of what you're talking about, that's probably as far as you'll be able to get in that paper.
As to how we know that molecular clocks work, that's old ground that I'm not interested in covering again (especially since you don't even know the basics of common descent well enough to understand it). Please pick up a textbook.
As for the specifics of cytochrome C versus a truly neutral clock, I have my reservations (even though the data seem to match up well with everything else we know, including other clocks). As a coding region, cytochrome CANNOT be truly neutral in selection, but because it is a highly conserved protein it seems to work well enough as one of the first clocks (we have more and better clocks now). In any case, the data it provides are consistent with our theoretical expectations.
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