A Different Perspective on Chromosome 2 Fusion

[The IbanezerScrooge]

Nice job! The problem with people like Tomkins is that he seems to know that his target audience will not know enough about the subject matter to question his 'expertise', and detractors from outside the 'family' will be dismissed as doing the work of the Evil One. A win-win for a former scientist turned evangelist.

You may know, but there was a take-down of his % sequence similarity claims (alluded to by sfs already) on Reddit a few years ago. He made a brief appearance to defend himself, but all he did was claim everyone was wrong, called some names, and then he scampered off.

u/Aceofspades25. It was a magnificent display of critical thinking versus ideology.

 

[Justatruthseeker]

Now Tomkins’ claim is only valid if it can be shown that DDX11L2 variant 1 is expected to have predated the fusion event. So, I did BLAST alignments on the two variants of the gene against the whole human genome. The BLAST tool compares a particular sequence against part or all of the its own genome or the genome of another species. The results were unmistakeable. Variant 2 (the variant which does not span the fusion site) aligns with multiple sequences in the human genome that lie on other human chromosomes. Take for example DDX11L1 which is on chromosome 1. It has the same three exons as the gene we are discussing, and the sequence similarity is 99%. Another example is DDX11L9 which lies on chromosome 15 with a sequence similarity of 98%. DDX11L10 lies on chromosome 16 and has 98% similarity. And so on. All these paralogous genes align with all three exons of variant 2 and are almost identical.

Umm, what other human chromosomes, if the split occurred before the human race had developed its own distinct chromosomes? You mean you aligned them with chimp genomes, since they came from chimp ancestrors, right? Right?

Are you saying you aligned them with chromosomes that did not yet exist, so the fusion site would have to have occurred long after the claimed merger event and so would be unrelated to any claimed merger from a common ancestor?

So the merger must have occurred long, long after the claimed merger event time frame, otherwise existing human genomes, separate from apes, would not have had time to develop. Or are you suggesting existing human genomes magically popped into existence at the time of the merger and so were joined into the event? If both came from the same ancestor, then at this point in time, only the merger site would have included distinct genomes, the rest would still be virtually identical and therefore that same sequence should align with apes as well.

 

[Brightmoon]

That’s an odd thought. The other 22 chromosomes are almost identical in humans and chimps. If I caught your drift correctly. It just seems odd to me that someone wouldn’t know this.

 

[hecd2]

Apologies for not replying earlier - I have been busy with other things and didn't notice this post.

Umm, what other human chromosomes, if the split occurred before the human race had developed its own distinct chromosomes? You mean you aligned them with chimp genomes, since they came from chimp ancestrors, right? Right?

Wrong. I aligned it with other copies of genes in the same gene family which are located in the subtelomere region of other human chromosmes as I explained above. Since humans and chimps have identical chromosomes (except that chimp 2a and 2b are fused in humans to make a single chromome 2), I am not sure what you mean by the "human race had developed its own distinct chromosomes".

Are you saying you aligned them with chromosomes that did not yet exist, so the fusion site would have to have occurred long after the claimed merger event and so would be unrelated to any claimed merger from a common ancestor?

All the human chromosomes have existed since long before chimps and humans diverged, since the other great apes also share the same set of chromosomes. The fusion site obviously was created by the merger. One variant of the gene near the fusion site is a member of an extensive family but this variant doesn't span the site. The variant which does span the site does not align with other homologous genes and is a new splice variant which arose after the fusion.

So the merger must have occurred long, long after the claimed merger event time frame, otherwise existing human genomes, separate from apes, would not have had time to develop.

Eh? I don't understand what you are saying here.

Or are you suggesting existing human genomes magically popped into existence at the time of the merger and so were joined into the event?

Nor here.

If both came from the same ancestor, then at this point in time, only the merger site would have included distinct genomes, the rest would still be virtually identical and therefore that same sequence should align with apes as well.

No - to say that humans and chimps share an identical set of chromosomes is not to say that they share an identical genome - otherwise they'd be the same species.