New research: The Y chromosomes of the Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) and humans are ”horrendously different from each other”

The assumed genetic closeness of humans and chimps has for long been interpreted as a proof of Darwinian evolution. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.




Joel Kontinen

The Y chromosomes of the Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) and humans are ”horrendously different from each other”. This is how David Page, a researcher at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, puts the results of the recent sequencing of the chimp genome.

Page and his colleagues published the results of the differences between human and chimp Y chromosomes online in Nature on January 13.

From an evolutionary perspective, the results were astonishing. They make the Darwinian explanations of the genetic similarities between humans and chimps sound somewhat outdated. According to Nature News, ”Page's team found that the chimp Y chromosome has only two-thirds as many distinct genes or gene families as the human Y chromosome and only 47% as many protein-coding elements as humans.”

It seems that the chimps have been exceedingly careless.

However, ”even more striking than the gene loss is the rearrangement of large portions of the chromosome. More than 30% of the chimp Y chromosome lacks an alignable counterpart on the human Y chromosome, and vice versa.”

Natural history museums and biology textbooks have often advertised the genetic closeness of humans and chimps. Popular literature puts the difference at 1-2 per cent. However, the figures are based on a deliberate choice of the parts of the genome that were compared.

The new research will probably give rise to an assortment of explanations. Researchers are already saying that in contrast to humans, chimps must have evolved exceedingly fast.

The differences might have a much more logical explanation, however, viz. the genomes have always been very different. In other words, the Genesis model of after its kind is still a very robust explanation.

Source:

Buchen, Lizzie. 2010. The fickle Y chromosome. Chimp genome reveals rapid rate of change. Nature News (13 January)
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100113/full/463149a.html

”Backward Evolution”: Humans Are Becoming Less Fit

Charles Darwin assumed that natural selection would make humans fitter. New research shows he was wrong. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.




Joel Kontinen


Our generation has, on average, 100-200 more mutations than our parents have and they have as much more than their parents. There is a simple yet not altogether welcome explanation for this: Each time DNA is passed from one generation to the next, it accumulates more mutations.

Most mutations are deleterious. Mutations are genetic copying mistakes but according to Darwinian evolution they should increase the fitness of species over millions of years. Evolutionists assume that natural selection chooses the mutations that are to be passed on to the next generation.

However, evolution is going in the wrong direction.

John Sanford, a professor at Cornell University, lectured on the topic recently at the Darwin Was Wrong Conference. Sanford, who is a geneticist, said that Darwinists had underestimated the amount of harmful mutations since they had not included ”junk DNA” in their calculations. They had thus overlooked 90 per cent of all mutations.

Professor Sanford is not the only one who says that humans are becoming less fit. Recently, research reported by Nature News supported his conclusions. As the researchers sequenced the Y chromosome, they were able to measure the human mutation rate and came up with the numbers Sanford gave in his lecture.

Two Finnish creationists, Pekka Reinikainen, a medical doctor, and Pauli Ojala, who is a biochemist, have also suggested that instead of evolution we are actually seeing devolution, i.e. instead of becoming fitter, humans are deteriorating.

In contrast to what some apologists for evolution have been saying, time is not the hero in this story. Given the high mutation rate, millions of years of earth history would have meant certain extinction for humankind.

Sources:

Dolgin, Elie. 2009. Human mutation rate revealed. Nature News (27 August). http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090827/full/news.2009.864.html

Sanford, John. 2009. Darwin Was Wrong about Natural Selection. Lecture at the Darwin Was Wrong Conference in Costa Mesa, California. (14 November)