Endogenous retroviruses

PhantomLlama, if Ark Guy is a person then he must have had a huge impact in your life to now classify people as Ark guys. Or is classifying people your way of coping with reality.
I mean *giggles* I make one post and I am instantly classified as particular type of person. You have me sussed already YAY !


Hmm..okay..Data, excuse the questions but this topic is very interesting.

1: So is there validated data that shows that this viral footprint is different between humans and monkeys ?
2: Is there validated data showing the same footprint between humans and the ancestor, and if there is what is the ancestor ?

Nah, he was just famously agressive. I have however come to the conclusion that most creationists (and possibly all forumgoers) can be classified into one of a few types. I am trying to work out exactly what these are.

EDIT: You said you are not creationist in your OP. What do you think of yourself as?

Often one post is enough. In your case, however, your latter posts have not followed the Ark Guy agressive archetype, so I am forced to reconsider my classification in the light that I may have misinterpreted the intent of your original post.


See, this is where you differ. If you were an Ark Guy you would have never have been even remotely civil and would have included at least one attack on Data's personality, mental capacity and/or spirituality.

__________________
Greatest Hovind quote of all time, as voted for by members of CF:
"Teaching the pagan religion of evolutionism is a waste of valuable class time and textbook space. It is also one of the reasons American kids don't test as well in science as kids in other parts of the world."

*smiles* apology accepted PhantomLlama.
We all fall into the trap of categorising, but some set themselves free and then take time to understand more of the person they first classified.
It's human nature to classify.

I suspect the creation/evolution debate is very intense and sometimes fanatical in America.
And 99.99999999999% of the time I never give it a look see because both camps ignore each other and just want to defend their view without really trying to comprehend said opposite view.

What do I think I am........I believe in God and truth. And I do my best to persue both.
I suppose my base concept on this type of issue is this.
Science is the tool we use to comprehend what God has created.

Well, I'll explain it in greater detail. When a virus infects a cell it injects its own RNA into the cell. This RNA rewrites the genetic code of the cell and causes the cell to manufacture more of the virus until it bursts and releases the copies.

What we are referring to is a particular rare occurance of this process. What happens is, a virus attempts to infect a sex cell(sperm or egg). The virus manages to rewrite (or add) a small portion to the cells DNA. Then that particular cell happens to fertilize or be fertilized. That creature then makes it to maturity and has offspring, passing on the viral imprint in that specific part of the DNA strand. Offspring from then on bear that retro-viral imprint (unless that portion is deleted). The chances of this happening in the same place in the genetic code with the same virus of even two individuals is astronomical, nevermind across multiple individuals.

We can therefore reasonably conclude that any individuals with the same retro-viral imprint in the same place are related. It just so happens that the entire human and chimp population share such a mark. There are more as well, there is a heirarchy that reflects our taxamonic structure. Those are two pieces of independently coorborating evidence.

It's different every time it infects someone. Basically, if the virus imprints on you, and the same happens to me, the imprint will be different places on both of us. However, your children will be born with the same imprint as you.

It's probably important to realise there are hundreds of different imprints, all from different ancestors. Data? Sure.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/q...arch&DB=PubMed
Just search for retroviral insertions.

Figuring out exactly what species ancestor it actually was is probably difficult, but that isn't really relevant to the research. We know when the common ancestor lived, and what it came from, and what it changed into, which is all we really need.



This picture for example, shows some imprints for the apes. Every species that diverged after the point has the imprint, but everything that diverged before it happened, doesn't have the imprint. It's just another piece of (and very accurate) evidence that fits in with exactly what we expect from genetic and morphological similarities as per evolution. It can easily be followed in all other species also.

Hmmm..so...oh, have to log off soon but will be back tonight or tomorrow with more questions. YAY !
Thanks for discussion *thumbsup*

For those who have had difficulty in understanding the OP's, I will try and summarize and use analogies where appropriate.

1. A viral genome is inserted into a cell, but the cell is not killed. This is contrary to the normal viral lifecycle. It is a rare occasion when a virus will insert its RNA/DNA and the infected cell doesn't die. An analogy: A person is bitten by a rattlesnake but the venom does not create any reaction in the person who is bitten. Secondly, each viral insertion is random, or nearly random. There are viral insertion hotspots, but this only reduces the chances from 1 in a billion to 1 in 10 million. The chances of two separate viral insertions, by the same virus, occuring at the same spot is very unlikely.

2. The non-lethal viral insertion happens in a germ line cell. This would include eggs or sperm. The cells that make up your functional body, such as organs or muscle, are somatic cells. Germ line cells, in contrast, only serve as reproductive cells. Also, the number of somatic cells outnumber germ line cells by many orders of magnitude. Just guessing, but a ratio of 1:million might be accurate. Therefore, for this to happen in a germ line cell is rare.

3. The infected germ line cell is part of a reproductive event. For instance, out of the million of sperm, 1 or two are infected. One of those sperm end up fertilizing an egg. Again, we are talking about a one in a million chance.

4. This insertion then becomes part of the entire gene pool of a population. This viral insertion must make it from one individual to the entire population over numerous generations. An analogy: Everyone in the world coming into contact with the same dollar bill. This would take time and chance, and not every dollar bill would make it into everyone's hands. Therefore, not every viral insert makes it into the genome of every organism in a population.

Why endogenous retroviral insertions are strong evidence for common descent:

The chances of two populations, not just individuals, of having the same viral insertion in the same exact spot in their DNA sequence is extremely small. Even if two different species were infected by the same virus, the chances of the ineffective virus inserting in the same spot is close to impossible, or highly improbable. Then you have to add in the fact that these ERV's are found throughtout two different populations. Again, this is improbable. However, if your theory is that humans and apes had a common ancestor, and the common ancestor had these viral insertions, then it would be expected that apes and humans would have viral insertions that are identical. This is what we find. The theory of common ancestory explains why a highly improbable event (two different species having the same ERV) is in fact probable.

An analogy: Two students right a 3 billion word thesis. The professor reading the theses finds that they are almost identical. On top of this, the teacher finds that in one paragraph, not only is the wording identical, but the misspellings are identical. Would the teacher conclude that, given the chance of two people misspelling the same word in an identical paragraph is small, the two authors copied off of each other? Or that one author copied off of another? Of course, and for good reason. It is this same reasoning that ERV's support common ancestory between apes and humans.

A creationist could make the argument that God just gave humans and the apes they appear to descend from similar genetic information. It's not very good, but fits.

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"If I don't post here... I'll have to go back to writing 6000 words on an anarchist critique of the political philosophy of John Rawls... So it's either this or beer, and beer costs money." -Zoot

Actually, that argument makes no sense at all.

Why would God insert indentical endogenous retroviruses in various genomes (and esp. in a manner that verifies common descent)? Considering that many creationists argue that things like viruses, mutations, etc didn't show up until post-Fall (and therefore, post-Creation), there is no reason for God to stick endogenous retroviruses in the DNA. Unless God was trying to trick us...

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Creationism has not made a single contribution to agriculture, medicine, conservation, forestry, pathology, or any other applied area of biology. Creationism has yielded no classifications, no biogeographies, no underlying mechanisms, no unifying concepts with which to study organisms or life. - Botanical Society of America's Statement on Evolution

i think this thread should be higher up the board.