Art
Posts: 69
Joined: Dec. 2002
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| Quote (dvunkannon @ July 27 2008,22:11) | | Quote (Tracy P. Hamilton @ July 27 2008,22:24) | | Quote | A Simpleton Gene Origination Calculation
PaV
In this month’s Nature Genetics, there is an article by Zhou, et. al., dealing with the generation of new genes in Drosophila melanogaster—the fruit fly. While only having access to the abstract, I nonetheless was struck by one of their findings: the rate of new functional gene generation. As finding number 6 in the abstract, the authors write: “the rate of the origin of new functional genes is estimated to be 5 to 11 genes per million years in the D. melanogaster subgroup.”
Noting that Drosophila melanogaster has 14,000 genes (a very low gene number), the simply calculation is this: 14,000 genes/8 new functional genes per million years= 1.75 billiion years for the formation of the fly genome. This, of course, assumes that somehow the fly is ‘alive, and reproducing’ the entire 1.75 billion years—-this, without the aid of a full-blown genome. If we apply this to the monkey/human difference which, IIRC, is about a 1000 genes, then using this same rate, it would take 200 million years for man to have evolved from the monkey. This published rate for new functional gene generation cannot be good news for Darwinists. |
That would be lovely, but the 1000 gene difference between man and chimpanzee is not new genes for the most part. |
It would be even lovelier if the number was close to 1000. Instead, it seems to be closer to 154.
Additional bonus tard for free: PaV thinks the rate of uptake of new genes is constant at the fly's rate. That might work in baraminology, where a fly has always been a fly. So PaV has shown that according to baraminology, it has been 1.75 billion years since Noah's Ark and the Great Flood. Of course, if flies spent most of their developmental history as single celled creatures with faster changes to their genomes, then the rate isn't constant and PaV's calculation fails.
ID prediction: the first comments to this post will hail the calulation as a breakthrough, there will be a brief period of riducule by DS which will not be preserved by the fossil record, and subsequent comments will ignore it in favor of analogies to Expelled. |
1. As indicated above, PaV totally screws up the matter of differences between humans and chimps.
2. The paper PaV cites is talking only about what Paul Nelson calls ORFans. Most Drosophila genes arose via duplication and rearrangement of existing genes and exons, not by de novo creation of totally new genes. Duplication etc. are frequent enough to easily account for the totality of the Drosophila proteome.
3. The paper PaV discusses is actually very damaging to the ID case. I've explained it here and here.
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