99% human/chimp genome similarity? NOT!

[ftacky]

Here is a popular evolutionary myth I looked into a while back:

Since 2003, false claims by evolutionary biologists started cropping up in the popular media stating that the human genome and chimp genome are 99% identical, thus proving evolution. This falsely implied that a COMPLETE genome of both was compared. This is a false claim on so many levels:

1) Genome mapping is only concerned with the protein coding sequences, estimated at between 1-4% of the entire genome. The remainder of the genome, much of which is considered to be "junk DNA" by many in the field, has not been completely mapped to date.

2) What was actually compared between humans and chimps was ONLY the protein-coding sequences - which make up less than 4% of the total genome. The latest studies show it to be as low as 1% of the total genome.

3) The comparison studies used mathematical algorythms rather than a direct genome-to-genome comparison which is considered too laborious at this time of technology.

4) The algorythms have been constantly improved and tweaked since the initial studies to more accurately reflect a real comparison - by including indels for example. The 99% has slowly decreased in value. The 99% was initially downgraded to 98%, then 96%, then 85%, and the most current studies show 70% similarity. Do you see the trend?

5) The initial studies back in 2003 also claimed that the genome of humans and bananas had a 50% similarity. This credulously implied that we, as humans, were 50% banana! Undoubtedly, this 50% number is also too high. Nonetheless, evolutionary biologists with PhDs were quick to jump on the bandwagon and started telling the public that we were actually one-half of a banana! So much for academic honesty.

Nonetheless, the question remains: Why should humans have any genomic similarity with bananas and chimps, even small similarities? This is why:

1) If we have no genomic similarity with bananas, we cannot assimilate (digest and absorb) bananas. We must have at least SOME genomic similarity with the things we eat, otherwise we would starve.

2) All life on Earth is based on the same carbon/nitrogen/water-based system so we should expect some similarity. This should only make sense to any biologist.

3) Even the Director of the Human Genome project has admitted:
"...we were a bit dismissive about that 98.5% of it and said that a lot of it was kind of a junk. I don't think people are using the word "Junk" any more when they are talking about the genome, because the more we study, the more functions we find in that "filler" - which is not a "filler" at all."
Francis Collins, Director, National Human Genome Research Institute

4) Some sections of human/chimp DNA are similar and some sections are very very different. So it all depends on which section you are comparing:
"One interesting observation is that the sequence divergence between chimp and human is quite large, in excess of 20% for a few regions. Some of the larger gaps are broken by regions within them that align with appropriate segments of the other species' DNA sequence but only have distant similarity. These observations suggest that complex processes, presumably involving repeated sequences and possible conversion events, may occur that will require detailed study to understand.

4a) DNA sample sizes used for human/chimp DNA comparisons was very small in comparison to the total genome size:
"In the first place, the sample of 779 kilobase pairs is small, and the variation between the different BACs is large."

(Ref: Divergence between samples of chimpanzee and human DNA sequences is 5%, counting indels, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)

Note: the sample of 779 kilobase pairs is indeed small compared to the total genome which is estimated at 3 billion base pairs. In other words, out of the 3,000,000,000 base pairs which they could have compared, they only compared 779, 000 base pairs or 779, 000/3,000,000,000 = 0.00026 or 0.026%. And we call that a comparison?

This whole situation should cause one to wonder about the ethics of evolutionary teachings by those who make exaggerated claims and misinform the public. This only goes to show:

"Let God be true, and every man a liar." (Romans 3:4)

 

[sfs]

Here is a popular evolutionary myth I looked into a while back:

Since 2003, false claims by evolutionary biologists started cropping up in the popular media stating that the human genome and chimp genome are 99% identical, thus proving evolution. This falsely implied that a COMPLETE genome of both was compared. This is a false claim on so many levels:

1) Genome mapping is only concerned with the protein coding sequences, estimated at between 1-4% of the entire genome. The remainder of the genome, much of which is considered to be "junk DNA" by many in the field, has not been completely mapped to date.

Genome sequencing is the sequencing of entire genomes, not only of protein coding sequence. A draft of the complete human genome(*) was published in 2001. The complete chimpanzee genome was published in 2005.

(*) Technically, the complete euchromatic genome (2.85 billion bases out of the total of 3 billion), but that's pretty much what people mean when they say "complete genome".

2) What was actually compared between humans and chimps was ONLY the protein-coding sequences - which make up less than 4% of the total genome.

Simply and totally false.

3) The comparison studies used mathematical algorythms rather than a direct genome-to-genome comparison which is considered too laborious at this time of technology.

I have no idea what this even means. Yeah, you have to use algorithms to line up the parts of the two genomes -- that's how you do a direct genome-to-genome comparison.

4) The algorythms have been constantly improved and tweaked since the initial studies to more accurately reflect a real comparison - by including indels for example. The 99% has slowly decreased in value. The 99% was initially downgraded to 98%, then 96%, then 85%, and the most current studies show 70% similarity. Do you see the trend?

The 2005 chimpanzee genome paper(*) reported the single-base substitution rate to be 1.23%, and also reported, "Insertion and deletion (indel) events are fewer in number than single-nucleotide substitutions, but result in 1.5% of the euchromatic sequence in each species being lineage-specific." Neither of those numbers has changed significantly since then. (Then lower numbers you're quoting are either lies or gross incompetence from creationists, depending on how charitable one wants to be.)

(*) Of which I was one of many authors.

5) The initial studies back in 2003 also claimed that the genome of humans and bananas had a 50% similarity. This credulously implied that we, as humans, were 50% banana! Undoubtedly, this 50% number is also too high. Nonetheless, evolutionary biologists with PhDs were quick to jump on the bandwagon and started telling the public that we were actually one-half of a banana! So much for academic honesty.

I also have no idea what scientific finding this is supposed to represent, but it doesn't sound like anything I've ever heard from a geneticist.

1) If we have no genomic similarity with bananas, we cannot assimilate (digest and absorb) bananas. We must have at least SOME genomic similarity with the things we eat, otherwise we would starve.

This is wrong.

3) Even the Director of the Human Genome project has admitted:
"...we were a bit dismissive about that 98.5% of it and said that a lot of it was kind of a junk. I don't think people are using the word "Junk" any more when they are talking about the genome, because the more we study, the more functions we find in that "filler" - which is not a "filler" at all."
Francis Collins, Director, National Human Genome Research Institute

Different subject than the human-chimpanzee comparison. (On this subject, as it happens, Collins is wrong. We are indeed still finding functional elements in noncoding DNA, but there's still very good reason to think that ~90% has no function -- and we still refer to it as junk DNA.)

4) Some sections of human/chimp DNA are similar and some sections are very very different. So it all depends on which section you are comparing:
"One interesting observation is that the sequence divergence between chimp and human is quite large, in excess of 20% for a few regions. Some of the larger gaps are broken by regions within them that align with appropriate segments of the other species' DNA sequence but only have distant similarity. These observations suggest that complex processes, presumably involving repeated sequences and possible conversion events, may occur that will require detailed study to understand.

Why are you quoting a 2002 study when the entire genomes were compared in 2005? That's more than a decade ago. (Also, the title of this paper shows that your claim above about indels -- that they were ignored until well after 2003 -- was wrong. The title of this 2002 paper is "Divergence between samples of chimpanzee and human DNA sequences is 5%, counting indels". Also kind of points out the falsehood of your claim that the estimated similarity has been dropping from 99% since 2003.)

4a) DNA sample sizes used for human/chimp DNA comparisons was very small in comparison to the total genome size:
"In the first place, the sample of 779 kilobase pairs is small, and the variation between the different BACs is large."

(Ref: Divergence between samples of chimpanzee and human DNA sequences is 5%, counting indels, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)

Note: the sample of 779 kilobase pairs is indeed small compared to the total genome which is estimated at 3 billion base pairs. In other words, out of the 3,000,000,000 base pairs which they could have compared, they only compared 779, 000 base pairs or 779, 000/3,000,000,000 = 0.00026 or 0.026%. And we call that a comparison?

See above, about what's really been compared.

This whole situation should cause one to wonder about the ethics of evolutionary teachings by those who make exaggerated claims and misinform the public.

So what should we say about the ethics of somebody who would make exaggerated claims and misinform the public?

 

[ftacky]

Below is PROOF that the entire genomes of chimps and humans were NOT compared as previously and falsely claimed. Only 88% of the chimp genome and 75% of the human genome was compared - and the rest of the two genomes did not align properly and were NOT comparable a.k.a 'dissimilar', 'different':

We must define the word "complete". To me, "complete" means comparing the "compete" human genome with the "complete" chimp genome. This was not done.

Nature (2005): Initial sequence of the chimpanzee genome and comparison with the human genome
"Here we present a draft genome sequence of the common chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes). Through comparison with the human genome, we have generated a LARGELY COMPLETE CATALOGUE OF GENETIC DIFFERENCES that have accumulated since the human and chimpanzee species diverged from our common ancestor..."

Note: A COMPLETE catalogue of ALL differences? This is a lie. The comparison was done AFTER they removed significant differences between the two genomes - differences so significant that they could not be aligned side-by-side in the first place or where there was too much 'overlap'. This, in turn, guarantees a high degree of similarity - this is misleading at best and dishonest at worst.

"Thus, by restricting our analysis to high-quality bases, the nucleotide-level accuracy of the WGS assembly is essentially equal to that of ‘finished’ sequence."
"“Best reciprocal nucleotide-level alignments of the chimpanzee and human genomes cover ~2.4 gigabases (Gb) of high-quality sequence”
"The combined alignments were chained and only best reciprocal alignments were retained for further analysis."

Note: they admit only using 'best-fit' sections of DNA for their analysis - aka cherry-picking the data to get the 'best' result, thus artificially increasing similarity between the two DNA sections. This, in turn, artificially increases overall similarity between chimps and humans.

Here is a brief explanation the article gives on how the chimp and human DNA sequences were 'screened' PRIOR to comparison (ref: Found under 'Supplemental Notes' of article):
"All alignments in the >90% and >60% categories were examined if the chimp scaffold spanned more than 1.5 times its counterpart in the human genome. When the offending supercontig only subsumed other supercontigs less than 1.5 kb, they were retained. For those that would completely overlap large contigs, the alignments were manually reviewed to determine if the alignment should be broken.
At this point scaffolds spanning a total of 2.85 Gb were anchored to the human genome sequence (excluding those in the random bins). All scaffolds that were completely overlapped by another scaffold based on the human position were then removed. Also removed were the smaller of two neighboring contigs when there was an overlap of 60% (based on human) between neighboring scaffolds. The total anchored sequence after these steps dropped to 2.74 Gb (2.41 Gb of actual contig length), or 88% of the total chimpanzee sequence."

Note: After artificially 'chopping and fitting' when attempting to align the chimp DNA and human DNA, only 2.41 Gb or 88% of the total chimp genome survived the process to be compared with the human genome. However, the human genome is approximately 3.1 to 3.2 Gb.

Assuming they were matching up the same number of Gb (2.41Gb) in each genome, then 2.41Gb / 3.2 Gb = .75 or roughly 75% of the human genome was used for comparison along with 88% of chimp genome.

Although the total Gb of each genome is slightly different in various studies, this shows that a COMPLETE comparison between the two genomes was not done. Unless we accept that 75% and 88% (human and chimp genome respectively) represent "completeness". Each of us will have to decide what we consider to be 'complete' for ourselves.

Think of it this way: If your boss says you will be 'completely' paid 75% of what you actually earn, will you be disappointed?

Bottom line: This heavily biased methodology brings us to the 99% similarity between humans and chimps. nice... It would be much more accurate to align both DNA side by side INCLUDING the 'gaps' and 'misalignments' to see the real difference.

Verse for the day: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. (John 3).
This verse tells us that we are about as inclined to search for God and a criminal is inclined to search for the nearest police department. In our natural state, nobody will seek God. If we ever find ourselves seeking God, it is because God is motivating us to do so. And when that happens, if we are wise, we will ride that tide as long as possible until we find God.

Last edited: Today at 7:29 PM

 

[ftacky]

Then we have the problem of CONTAMINATION:

(ref: Abundant Human DNA Contamination Identified in Non-Primate Genome Databases, PLOS-ONE, 2011):

"Using a primate specific SINE, AluY, we screened 2,749 non-primate public databases from NCBI, Ensembl, JGI, and UCSC and have found 492 to be contaminated with human sequence. These represent species ranging from bacteria (B. cereus) to plants (Z. mays) to fish (D. rerio) with examples found from most phyla. The identification of such extensive contamination of human sequence across databases and sequence types warrants caution among the sequencing community in future sequencing efforts, such as human re-sequencing."

"The danger in the propagation of errors in scientific discourse has been demonstrated in cases of both scientific fraud as well as incorrectly described or referenced experiments in reviews."

"Ten NCBI genome assemblies were found to contain human sequence (10.64%)...Over one quarter (28.5% of 42) of UCSC's assemblies were found to contain human sequence."

"The level of contamination found in these databases is significant and worrisome. Trace archive databases are often used in cross species analyses when whole genome sequences are not available or in the analyses of unassembled regions of genomes. With the advent of whole genome re-sequencing and other deep sequencing applications, assemblies are heavily relied upon for data mapping and analyses."
(ref: Abundant Human DNA Contamination Identified in Non-Primate Genome Databases, PLOS-ONE, 2011)

Bottom Line: We have to start screening chimp DNA databases for human contamination to see if some genome similarity is due to contamination or not.

 

[ftacky]

The differences between humans and chimps is slowly being acknowledged by scientists:

(ref: Mapping Human Genetic Ancestry, Oxford Journals, 2007):

"For about 23% of our genome, we share no immediate genetic ancestry with our closest living relative, the chimpanzee. This encompasses genes and exons to the same extent as intergenic regions."
"Thus, in two-thirds of the cases, a genealogy results in which humans and chimpanzees are not each other's closest genetic relatives. The corresponding genealogies are incongruent with the species tree."


Differences between Human and Chimpanzee Genome are Bigger than Thought (ref: Dept. of Experimental and Health Sciences, upf.edu, 2009)

"During the last decade it was commonly accepted that humans and our closest living relatives, chimpanzees, only differed by 1.24 % in our DNA sequences. This discovery shows that this figure is absolutely incorrect and, what is more, may be ten times higher. Nature magazine is to publish this important scientific discovery in a special issue on the occasion of the two hundredth anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth....big DNA fragments repeated many times along the genome that were difficult to distinguish until recently. As a result of this difficulty, these fragments were ignored and parts of the genome easier to individualise were studied, leading to a partial view of it.

 

[ftacky]

The aspect of Alternative Splicing (AS) of our DNA is the area of our genetics most likely to show the big differences with chimps but has been barely studied, much less compared to chimps.

Why is this important? Because this process can cause a similar gene to make a completely different protein. In other words, just because a particular gene is similar at the 'superficial' DNA level in both chimp and human, that doesn't mean much if the protein it produces is different.

(ref: Global analysis of alternative splicing differences between humans and chimpanzees, Genes and Development 2007)

"Alternative splicing is a powerful mechanism affording extensive proteomic and regulatory diversity from a limited repertoire of genes. However, the extent to which alternative splicing has contributed to the evolution of primate species-specific characteristics HAS NOT BEEN PREVIOUSLY ASSESSED. Using comparative genomics and quantitative microarray profiling, we performed the first global analysis of alternative splicing differences between humans and chimpanzees. Surprisingly, 6%–8% of profiled orthologous exons display pronounced splicing level differences in the corresponding tissues from the two species."

Note: The 6-8% does not represent a complete analysis of ALL exons for ALL genes of humans and chimps but only those they chose to study.


(ref: Alternative isoform regulation in human tissue transcriptomes. Nature. 2008)

"Through alternative processing of pre-messenger RNAs, individual mammalian genes often produce multiple mRNA and protein isoforms that may have related, distinct oreven opposing functions."


(ref: Deep learning of the tissue-regulated splicing code, Bioinformatics 2014)

"Alternative splicing (AS) is a process whereby the exons of a primary transcript may be connected in different ways during pre-mRNA splicing. This enables the same gene to give rise to splicing isoforms containing different combinations of exons, and as a result different protein products, contributing to the cellular diversity of an organism (Wang and Burge, 2008). Furthermore, AS is regulated during development and is often tissue dependent, so a single gene can have multiple tissue-specific functions. The importance of AS lies in the evidence that at least 95% of human multi-exon genes are alternatively spliced and that the frequency of AS increases with species complexity."

Bottom Line: A huge number of protein coding DNA in humans is affected by AS. This aspect of our DNA has not been compared with chimps. Even so, we have been told we are 99% similar.

This misleading comparison is like: Someone says they are giving you a genetic map of the similarities between chimps and humans. However, what they aren't telling you is that there are numerous 'underground' pathways which are not mapped. These 'underground' pathways are what makes the real difference, not the superficial 'street-level' map they have given us.

Verse for the day: 2 Thess. 2: They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.

Last edited: Today at 7:19 PM

 

[sfs]

We must define the word "complete". To me, "complete" means comparing the "compete" human genome with the "complete" chimp genome. This was not done.

Before moving on to your next blizzard of misinformation, let's review your accuracy in your first post on the subject. You made the following statements:
1) "Genome mapping is only concerned with the protein coding sequences..."
2) "What was actually compared between humans and chimps was ONLY the protein-coding sequences..."
3) "The algorythms have been constantly improved and tweaked since the initial studies to more accurately reflect a real comparison - by including indels for example..."
4) "The 99% has slowly decreased in value. The 99% was initially downgraded to 98%, then 96%, then 85%, and the most current studies show 70% similarity."
5) "DNA sample sizes used for human/chimp DNA comparisons was very small in comparison to the total genome size..."

Each of those statements is false, and most of them have been false since the first studies you cited were done. They were also the basis of your conclusion in your first post. Would you care to address the false statements you've already made before moving on to a completely new set of reasons for coming to the identical conclusion?

 

[ftacky]

The article statement in post #3 above PROVES beyond all doubt that they DID NOT USE COMPLETE GENOMES of either chimp or human for the comparison.

It says: "All scaffolds that were completely overlapped by another scaffold based on the human position were then removed. Also removed were the smaller of two neighboring contigs when there was an overlap of 60% (based on human) between neighboring scaffolds. The total anchored sequence after these steps dropped to 2.74 Gb (2.41 Gb of actual contig length), or 88% of the total chimpanzee sequence."
(ref: Nature (2005): Initial sequence of the chimpanzee genome and comparison with the human genome).

After artificially discarding sections of both human and chimp DNA that didn't match up, the remaining chimp DNA was 88% of the total chimp genome and an even lower percentage of the human genome - possibly as low as 75% of the total human genome - were compared, NOT 100% of each genome as everybody was led to believe. This biased methodology GUARANTEES that the comparison will yield a very high percentage of similarity but in a very misleading way.

At this point, some people might reason that using 88% of the chimp genome is as good as using 100%. However, when we read articles claiming they compared a "complete" chimp and "complete" human genome, we all have to decide for ourselves if "complete" means 88% or "complete" means 100%.

What do you all think? Does 88% fit your standard definition of "complete"? Or does "complete" imply something closer to 100%?

Ecclesiastes 9:5 "For the living know that they will die ..."

 

[sfs]

ftacky, you started the thread by impugning the integrity of numerous scientists, me among them, based on a series of demonstrably false statements. Deal with the glaring failure of your initial arguments first, and only then will you be in a position to make a new set of arguments. Until then, all you're doing is demonstrating that you don't care whether your accusations are true. (And if you do withdraw your first claims, then I can tell you why most of your new arguments are also wrong.)

 

[Theunissa]

The article statement in post #3 above PROVES beyond all doubt that they DID NOT USE COMPLETE GENOMES of either chimp or human for the comparison.

It says: "All scaffolds that were completely overlapped by another scaffold based on the human position were then removed. Also removed were the smaller of two neighboring contigs when there was an overlap of 60% (based on human) between neighboring scaffolds. The total anchored sequence after these steps dropped to 2.74 Gb (2.41 Gb of actual contig length), or 88% of the total chimpanzee sequence."
(ref: Nature (2005): Initial sequence of the chimpanzee genome and comparison with the human genome).

After artificially discarding sections of both human and chimp DNA that didn't match up, the remaining chimp DNA was 88% of the total chimp genome and an even lower percentage of the human genome - possibly as low as 75% of the total human genome - were compared, NOT 100% of each genome as everybody was led to believe. This biased methodology GUARANTEES that the comparison will yield a very high percentage of similarity but in a very misleading way.

At this point, some people might reason that using 88% of the chimp genome is as good as using 100%. However, when we read articles claiming they compared a "complete" chimp and "complete" human genome, we all have to decide for ourselves if "complete" means 88% or "complete" means 100%.

What do you all think? Does 88% fit your standard definition of "complete"? Or does "complete" imply something closer to 100%?

Ecclesiastes 9:5 "For the living know that they will die ..."

Thank you for your input. It helps to see stuff like this

 

[sfs]

Thank you for your input. It helps to see stuff like this

Why? Everything he wrote was wrong.

 

[sfs]

Okay, since you're confusing someone else with this nonsense, I'd better respond.

We must define the word "complete". To me, "complete" means comparing the "compete" human genome with the "complete" chimp genome. This was not done.

Nature (2005): Initial sequence of the chimpanzee genome and comparison with the human genome
"Here we present a draft genome sequence of the common chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes). Through comparison with the human genome, we have generated a LARGELY COMPLETE CATALOGUE OF GENETIC DIFFERENCES that have accumulated since the human and chimpanzee species diverged from our common ancestor..."

That's an accurate quotation. Let's see what you do with it. . .

Note: A COMPLETE catalogue of ALL differences?

Note: no one said it was a COMPLETE catalogue of ALL differences. You just quoted what the paper actually said: "a largely complete catalogue of genetic differences." Do you know what "largely" is doing in that sentence? It's an adverb; it modifies the word "complete". It means the catalogue wasn't complete and didn't include all of the genetic differences -- just the great majority of them.

This is a lie.

So you're saying I'm a liar?

The comparison was done AFTER they removed significant differences between the two genomes - differences so significant that they could not be aligned side-by-side in the first place or where there was too much 'overlap'.

Now this really is a lie -- or would be if you actually understood comparative genomics.

"Thus, by restricting our analysis to high-quality bases, the nucleotide-level accuracy of the WGS assembly is essentially equal to that of ‘finished’ sequence."

Um, yes. You think we should have included bases where we couldn't be sure of what the base actually was? That's what low quality bases are.

"“Best reciprocal nucleotide-level alignments of the chimpanzee and human genomes cover ~2.4 gigabases (Gb) of high-quality sequence”
"The combined alignments were chained and only best reciprocal alignments were retained for further analysis."
Note: they admit only using 'best-fit' sections of DNA for their analysis - aka cherry-picking the data to get the 'best' result, thus artificially increasing similarity between the two DNA sections. This, in turn, artificially increases overall similarity between chimps and humans.

Note: you don't know what you're talking about. There is a great deal of duplicated DNA in the human genome, where there is anywhere from two similar copies of a chunk of sequence to a million copies. In order to compare the right copies in the two genomes, you naturally pick the most similar ones. And when you do, it turns out they're in the same place in the two genomes in the great majority of cases. Whereas if you don't, the matches will be all over the place, since you're not really comparing the same parts of the genome. Why would you suggest we do a crappy job in this study?

Here is a brief explanation the article gives on how the chimp and human DNA sequences were 'screened' PRIOR to comparison (ref: Found under 'Supplemental Notes' of article):
"All alignments in the >90% and >60% categories were examined if the chimp scaffold spanned more than 1.5 times its counterpart in the human genome. When the offending supercontig only subsumed other supercontigs less than 1.5 kb, they were retained. For those that would completely overlap large contigs, the alignments were manually reviewed to determine if the alignment should be broken.
At this point scaffolds spanning a total of 2.85 Gb were anchored to the human genome sequence (excluding those in the random bins). All scaffolds that were completely overlapped by another scaffold based on the human position were then removed. Also removed were the smaller of two neighboring contigs when there was an overlap of 60% (based on human) between neighboring scaffolds. The total anchored sequence after these steps dropped to 2.74 Gb (2.41 Gb of actual contig length), or 88% of the total chimpanzee sequence."

The initial chimpanzee assembly consisted of lots of pieces, most with gaps in them and many of them overlapping each other. Dropping the overlaps seems like a good idea, doesn't it?

Assuming they were matching up the same number of Gb (2.41Gb) in each genome, then 2.41Gb / 3.2 Gb = .75 or roughly 75% of the human genome was used for comparison along with 88% of chimp genome.

As I said in a previous post, when we talk about the "complete genome", we usually mean the euchromatic genome, which is 2.85 Gb for humans and chimpanzees. The remaining ~0.3 Gb is made up almost entirely of short chunks of nearly identical DNA repeated over and over again, which makes it both uninteresting and extremely difficult to sequence and assemble. What was used in the paper was 2.41 Gb of chimpanzee sequence, or 85% of the euchromatic genome, which was compared to the nearly complete human euchromatic genome. (It was a little less than 2.85 Gb for human, since the human genome wasn't -- and still isn't -- "completely" sequenced, but I'm not sure exactly how much less.) This represents a massive improvement over previous small samples, and gives an excellent overall picture of the similarities and differences between the genomes.

Bottom line: This heavily biased methodology brings us to the 99% similarity between humans and chimps. nice... It would be much more accurate to align both DNA side by side INCLUDING the 'gaps' and 'misalignments' to see the real difference.

The study did include the gaps in the two genomes, and those are reported in the paper. It certainly shouldn't have compared misalignments, since a misalignment is a place where you've done the alignment wrong. Why would you want to include errors in the study? Note also that 5% of the chimp genome couldn't be included in the comparison because we didn't manage to sequence it well enough to say anything about it.

Now, to make your accusations of lying and scientific misconduct have any merit, your job is to show that the 15% of the chimpanzee genome that wasn't included in the comparison would differ in any material way from the 85% that was included. Please be thorough -- you wouldn't want to give the impression that you were groundlessly libeling people, would you? When you've done that, you can also tell us why the 85% of the genome that was studied lines up so well and give such a consistent answer.

 

[imind]

Thank you for your input. It helps to see stuff like this

do you even know what it says or are you simply supporting it because you think you want to/should?

by the way the OP and much of the rest of the thread seems to be plagiarized from different sources around the web...its at least in part from another forum that i don't believe i can link to per the rules.

 

[imind]

dp

 

[Theunissa]

do you even know what it says or are you simply supporting it because you think you want to/should?

by the way the OP and much of the rest of the thread seems to be plagiarized from different sources around the web...its at least in part from another forum that i don't believe i can link to per the rules.

I am no expert on the subject. But i have always thought. If we evolved from apes why are they still here. Why can't we mate with them and produce offspring? Why does everything i see everyday point to a higher power at work? And is he lying by saying that the comparison is flawed. You cant say two things are the same because they have similarities. It just doesn't seem to add up. I did not come from rain that fell on a rock and turned into soup. If i mix eggs , milk, flour, sugar, salt and bake it. After some time it turns imto a cake. No more eggs, milk, flour, sugar or salt left

 

[sfs]

I am no expert on the subject. But i have always thought. If we evolved from apes why are they still here.

The apes we evolved from aren't still here. Whatever that species was, it split into two groups. One evolved into humans, and the other into chimpanzees. This is similar to the question, "If the English language comes from German, why do people still speak German? The answer is simple: There was a group of people who spoke a Germanic language. They separated geographically, and the language of each evolved. In one group, the language evolved into modern German, and in the other it evolved into English.

Why can't we mate with them and produce offspring?

Because we've both evolved too much in the last sixish million years; we're now so different that we can't (or at least don't) mate. We can see different stages of this process in various species in nature. Wolves and coyotes can interbreed successfully (Eastern coyotes actually have a fair bit of wolf heritage in them, for example), although they don't do so very often in nature. Other closely related species (tiger/lions, polar/grizzly bears, horses/donkeys) rarely or never mate in the wild, but can produce offspring, even if they're often sterile.

Why does everything i see everyday point to a higher power at work?

Everyone posting in this forum sees a higher power at work.

And is he lying by saying that the comparison is flawed.

I have no idea, and no desire to speculate. All I know is that some of his statements are factually wrong, and many are based on misunderstanding what was in the paper.

You cant say two things are the same because they have similarities. It just doesn't seem to add up.

We don't say that. The simple fact that we're genetically similar to chimpanzees doesn't tell us anything. It's the patterns of similarities and differences that unmistakably show that we're relatives.

 

[scottyp588]

Thank you sfs for this.
Common misconceptions about biology and evolution seem to stem from lack of research on the topics. Or at least getting the information from sites that promote the same world view that they agree with and not the actual source.

 

[-57]

As science gets more accurate concerning the differences between human and chimp DNA..and as more and more so-called junk DNA is discovered to have a function....scientist will realize there isn't enough time for the rare and few so-called beneficial random mutations to produce all of the required changes since the so-called human chimp split.

 

[sfs]

As science gets more accurate concerning the differences between human and chimp DNA..and as more and more so-called junk DNA is discovered to have a function....scientist will realize there isn't enough time for the rare and few so-called beneficial random mutations to produce all of the required changes since the so-called human chimp split.

Be sure to get back to us when that happens.

 

[-57]

Be sure to get back to us when that happens.

I think it's obvious that there is a percentage of difference between human and chimp DNA where there wouldn't be enough time to "evolve" the different characteristics. Where would you place that % difference? 95%? 90%? 85%? 80%? ...lower?