Creation & EvolutionForum for the discussion of this important topic. This forum is open to non-believers. There is a Christians-only forum in the Christians-only section too.
If everyone is still interested, I would like a reference to the actual loci where ERV's were detected, simply for clarification purposes. I know this argument is a potential gold mine,and so I would prefer to be able to quote the exact chromosome when using this argument. Is it theoretical, or have these actually been detected, and in which species of hominids and primates have they been detected?
i think the references here might be a good place to start.
huh? john why are you bumping this? I'm as confused as a kitten in a dairy barn...
To make it easier to find. I was having a discussion with someone about retroviruses and I can not find that thread, but I found this one. I wanted to do a little bit more research on it.
To make it easier to find. I was having a discussion with someone about retroviruses and I can not find that thread, but I found this one. I wanted to do a little bit more research on it.
What do you want to know about retroviruses? I would be glad to help you.
__________________ Jesus said, "If a blind person leads a blind person, both of them will fall into a hole." Thomas 34
"On blind faith they place reliance, what they need more of is science"- MC Hawking
It's pretty simple. Here's the Cliffs' Notes version.
[list][*]Egg or sperm cell.[*]That cell gets attacked by a virus.[*]Virus injects genetic fingerprint, but botches the hijacking.[*]Cell survives.[*]Cell now contains easily identifiable and unique viral fingerprint in DNA.[*]Cell is fertilized and becomes a new creature. [*]That creature contains easily identifiable and unique viral fingerprint in all of its individual cells.[*]All descendants of said creature are the same.[*]Thus, finding two creatures with identical viral fingerprint in their DNA indicates they're related.[*]Humans and chimps have identical viral fingerprints in all of their cells.
This isnt an attempted refute - rather a question: Its rare for an egg or sperm which is attacked by a virus to survive viable. You then need the resultant organism to survive to adulthood and reproduce. Lets go back in time 2 million years to the common ancestor of chimps and humans. Out of the entire population (say 100,000) the one who chanced to survive a viral attack as a sperm/egg is the one to father all chimps and humans? That sounds exceedingly unlikely.
How common are incidents of egg/sperm surviving and exhibiting an erv? If 1% of the population suffer a virus which leaves them with an erv, then any one of them would make a valid progenor. I suppose thats how natural selection works anyway - the specific genetic code of a breeding pair is carried on through their ancestors. Its just difficult to grasp that an entire species would originate from one pair of creatures.
This isnt an attempted refute - rather a question: Its rare for an egg or sperm which is attacked by a virus to survive viable. You then need the resultant organism to survive to adulthood and reproduce. Lets go back in time 2 million years to the common ancestor of chimps and humans. Out of the entire population (say 100,000) the one who chanced to survive a viral attack as a sperm/egg is the one to father all chimps and humans? That sounds exceedingly unlikely.
well it is not so much father to all chimps and humans, but an ancestor to them all. remember within a breeding population of finite size, eventually you will end up breeding with a relative. this results in a stochastic effect known as "genetic drift" where particular alleles or DNA segments can become more or less prevalent in the population. in this case the DNA segments containing the ERV spread throughout the population. Here is a little challenge for you just to show how easy this is. assume a constant sized breeding population breeding population of 1000, ignore all relations at this point. assume there is no differential reproductive success and each member of the population leaves one replacement in the next generation. how many generations would it take before an individual has to breed with a relative, no matter how distant.
How common are incidents of egg/sperm surviving and exhibiting an erv? If 1% of the population suffer a virus which leaves them with an erv, then any one of them would make a valid progenor. I suppose thats how natural selection works anyway - the specific genetic code of a breeding pair is carried on through their ancestors. Its just difficult to grasp that an entire species would originate from one pair of creatures.
the point though is that there are some six billion locations that an ERV could be placed - literally anywhere within the genome. ok, we can ignore in the middle of genes since that would be crippling, but it doesn't save you much. and then there are a umber of different ways in which the retrovirus could be crippled. the odds of an ERV being inserted in exactly the same place and croppled in exactly the same way in two different gametes that go on to be fertilised and have lots of offsprint is well, quite small.
again, the question of the entire species having a common ancestor is one of genetic drift. it's pretty easy to see once you work through it. if you have any more questions check through that article and feel free to ask.
__________________ MSci MSc ARCS DIC PhD..... yes, I am bragging.
"Thus, each of the three retroviruses studied showed unique integration site preferences, suggesting that virus-specific binding of integration complexes to chromatin features likely guides site selection."
"Thus it appears that each retrovirus studied to date has a unique pattern of integration site selection within the human genome, suggesting that there may be local recognition of chromosomal features unique to each virus."
This shows that common ancestry is not required to explain similar
retroviral insertions between species.
Linear Mode
