Wesley R. Elsberry
Posts: 4991
Joined: May 2002
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Daniel Smith:
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We're not just talking about similarities here Wesley.
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Your original claim is easily proven false given just that information, though.
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Also, in some areas at least, there are actually more differences between sponges and Trichoplax than there are between humans and Trichoplax.
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Your claim was that nobody within evolutionary science had an expectation that Trichoplax might have genetics with particular features: transcription factors and signalling pathways. The fact that zoologists have long considered placazoans to have affinity with the Porifera is directly counter to your claim. Your further disputation based on divergence from Porifera is not responsive. Your claim was false, and you seem to have quite some difficulty in admitting it. No matter; anyone with a reasonable level of discernment is quite capable of taking that point from the exchange.
And even if one skips over the falsity of the original claim, the mutated claim, that genomic similarities to the human genome was an unexpected surprise, is also false. From the white paper arguing for sequencing the Trichoplax genome:
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Functional studies of human genes of anonymous function: Genes of unknown function comprise a considerable fraction of the human genome. Any such gene that is specific to metazoans (i.e., absent in yeast), but lost in the ecdysozoan lineage (absent in Caenorhabditis and Drosophila) must now be investigated in a higher, typically vertebrate, animal model. As the simplest animal, the Trichoplax genome is expected to share a large fraction of genes common to humans but lacking in non-animal genomes. While the genome sequence of yeast and other lower eukaryotes will continue to provide key insights into the function of many human proteins and processes, these systems will have limited value as compared to Trichoplax for animal-specific gene investigations.
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Emphasis added.
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"You can't teach an old dogma new tricks." - Dorothy Parker
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