Can the standard "Young Earth Creationist" model be falsified by genetics alone?

Fair enough, although I would put the number of generations at about 250. Since the flood many societies had early teenage marriages, and hence teenage pregnancies. To establish whether the "Noah" model is correct we need to establish a normal mutation rate for these 250 generations and see if it fits in with 1600 mutations over 6500 years. No problem, I will put my emphasis on increased mutations in low latitudes on hold for now until further evidence. However I also note your agreement that mutation rates do vary. There are obviously reasons for this. Thanks, I was looking for it lower down in that article, that's why I missed this. Ok I understand where you are coming from here. So now that we have general consensus on other matters, let's get into the nitty gritty of actual mutation rates.Your first link gave an estimate of 3.0 10−8 mutations/nucleotide/generation. The following is another estimate of mutation rates, remember the y-chromosome is only 2% of the genome and there are ~5 times as many accumulated mutations in the Y-chromosome than elsewhere.Not Found | Journals | Oxford Academic
"The two most direct methods yielded estimates of 10 10−9 (from electrophoretic variants of polypeptides) (88) and 8.6 10−9 (from a meta-analysis of 40 cases worldwide of de novo mutations producing unstable hemoglobin or hemoglobin M) (89)"We now have the following rates of mutation for the y-chromosome:
Study 1: 1.8 mutations per generation (from the two Chinese guys)
Above link: 3 mutations per generation (10 per billion bp, x5 for the y-chromosome)Ignoring the study based on a small sample, and assuming the rate of 50 mutations per billion bp in the y-chromosome, over 250 generations we would expect 750 mutations since Noah. Instead we have 1600 or so. That is more than double what we would expect, but we are getting closer.But there seems to be general consensus that a clear mutation rate has not yet been established. For example in the following article we get 35 and 49 germline mutations in one generation. Approximately 10% of all mutations are in the y-chromosome and so this would indicate an approximate rate of 3.5 to 4.9 y-chromosome mutations per generation. At 4.9 and assuming a 18 year generation over most of the period since Noah we would be so close to the observed mutations in study 2 of the OP post as to put doubt on the claimed timeframes of the second link in the OP.Variation in genome-wide mutation rates within and between human families | Nature GeneticsDue to the fact that we do not know exactly what caused the differences in the mutation rates between the 36 individuals in the study and we do not know the full environmental factors in the last 4500 years, its entirely possible that rates per generation were faster in earlier generations.Despite what you said in your opening post, it appears that all rates actually measured between actual modern generations, including rates quoted in this thread are far too slow to match the required rate of 160 per generation to explain human diversion from the common ape ancestor: Sandwalk: Estimating the Human Mutation Rate: Phylogenetic Method
"Nachman and Crowell (2000) looked at silent mutations in eighteen pseudogenes common to chimps and humans. They found a total of 199 substitutions in 16,086 nucleotides. Converting this to a mutation rate requires several assumptions. If we assume that equal numbers of mutations occurred in each lineage (~100) then the mutation rate works out to ~2.5 10-8 mutations per nucleotide. This calculation depends on the time since divergence (~5 million years), the generation time (they assumed about 25 years), and to some extent the population size (about 10,000).That mutation rate corresponds to 160 mutations per diploid genome per generation"It seems to be that the proof of evolution turns out to be evidence against evolution. A rate of between 18 to 45 germline mutations is actually measured in humans, and yet a rate of 160 mutations is required to explain divergence from apes. Edited by mindspawn, : No reason given.

The truth is I only need a factor of 2 in order to explain the differences since Noah 4500 years ago.Evolutionists need a factor of 4 to explain the differences since apes split with their common ancestor Sandwalk: Estimating the Human Mutation Rate: Phylogenetic Method
"The differences (substitutions and small deletions only) amount to 1.4% of the genomes or 44.8 million mutations."
If you follow the reasoning in that blog, you see that between 112 and 160 mutations are needed per generation to explain the observed divergence between the human/ape genomes.Edited by mindspawn, : No reason given.

Why have you not done so? Go for it. The OP has already thrown down the gauntlet.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

I faced the challenge, and have already shown that the opening post vastly underestimates the true rate of mutation, so I'm getting closer. As explained to bluegenes there is little consensus on core rates, and various studies contradict eachother. In addition there are many factors that effect the rate of mutation (ie our temperature discussion) and these factors could have been exacerbated in past environments. You and Bluegenes were stating that a factor of 2 is not enough to prove my position, I have now shown that is all I need.On the other hand evolutionists need a factor of 4 in currently measured mutation rates to explain divergence between apes and humans. I throw down the gauntlet to you and to bluegenes, can you explain why current rates of mutation are far slower than that required by evolutionary timeframes?Edited by mindspawn, : No reason given.

The generation time for the Y-chromosome would be determined by the average age of all fatherhood in the population. 25 is reasonable. The age group from 15 to 25 could certainly account for half of the births in some cultures, but the 25 to 50 year olds would usually match them. For non-human apes as a whole, I'd accept 18, and for women in human cultures of the past few thousand years, it could certainly be younger than 25, but for men it can actually easily go up into the early thirties, as it has been in western cultures for the last few hundred years, so I think 25 (180 generations to Noah) is fair enough. But this is an interesting side issue, and not really important. The Noah story means we should all be in one haplogroup dating from 4,500 years. The 1600 mutations (actually nearer 2,000) have happened since then. It's been known for a long time that rates vary in families. In population groups, they are subject to control by natural selection. Of interest to you is the obvious point that if they get too high, too many detrimental mutations are produced, so that the high rate itself is indirectly selected against as the lineages with too many detrimentals are disadvantaged. Accumulated since when? Noah? And the Y-chromosome is about 1% of the male genome (2% of a haploid genome, but the other chromosomes are double). Apart from the fact that we have no reason to multiply the Y-chromosome rate by 5!! No. Only if we pretend 10% of the total mutations come from 1% of the father's genetic material, and therefore 0.5 % of the material of both parents. We don't want to give a super healthy population that managed to multiply rapidly and spread around the world in about a thousand years starting from just one family too many detrimental mutations to cope with, do we? 160 isn't the "required rate". It's a rate you get if you assume 5 million years of time and 25 year generation gaps in non-human apes. Remember, I'm not working from scriptures that tell me that humans and chimps have to diverge at a certain time. I'd be perfectly happy with 9 million years and 18 year generation gaps, for example.But remember, with the model we're testing, we don't descend from a common ancestor with the chimps anyway. We're testing the hypothesis that we all descend from one 4,500 year old man.So, let's look at our main problem here. You seem to have come up with the idea that the mutation rate on the Y-chromosome is 5 times that of elsewhere, and that 10% of all germline mutations would be on the Y-chromosome. Where did you get this idea?The only thing I can guess at is that you've mistaken the hypothesis that men are about 5 times more prone to picking up and passing on germline mutations than women for something it isn't. If that's the case, what you're getting wrong is that this applies to the all the male genome, not just the 1% of genetic material that is that Y-chromosome.Let's take your example of the child who received 49 germline mutations from its parents. All things being equal, this might be about 25 from each parent, but with the 5 to 1 hypothesis, an average scenario might be that 40 mutations came from the father, and 9 from the mother. This might mean that the father actually had about 80 mutations spread between his 44 non-sex chromosomes, his "x" and his "y". Because the child gets half of its genetic material from the mother, it inherits the 40 mutations only.All things being equal, the 1% of genetic material that is the "Y" has 0.8% of a mutation, on average, but let's say one. So if the child is a boy, then he will automatically receive this, as there is no maternal alternative. Therefore, we can see that the Y-chromosome would in fact seem to be set to receive more mutations for its size than the average chromosome if it's correct that males mutate significantly more than females, merely because none of its mutations would be lost, like the missing forty elsewhere, due to the maternal effect.But perhaps that wasn't where you got the idea of the Y-chromosome having 5 times the rate. If not, where did you get the idea from?

When will those goal post stop moving?Your claim is that a factor of two greater than rate implied by the OP is enough to explain the issue raised by the OP. You haven't done anything even close to that.

18 might be high. Chimps, for example live to be only about 40ish. One thing that is fairly non-symmetric about the two arguments (evolution from non-humans and evolution since Noah) is that mindsprawn is pretty much stuck with what works for people pretty much like us. On the other hand our common ancestor with chimps did not survive, but that ancestor must have been very different from us in many ways. We did not actually evolve from chimps, and chimps have evolved too.

Since this thread was revived, I've realised something was wrong, but hadn't the time to sort it out until yesterday. I was using the data from this paper to come up with the approximate number of SNPs that separate us from the most recent common Y-chromosome ancestor. But I'd noticed that if I did a back of the envelope type calculation with my results, I was coming up with a time estimate of just over a third of the authors' 101,000 to 115,000 years for the age of the Y ancestorThe authors found 5,865 SNPs on 8.97Mb (about 1/6 of the total non-recombining Y) of the chromosome. Using the chart below, I was multiplying the average lineage (about 330 mutations) by 6 to get an approximation of the number of mutations on the entire chromosome (about 2,000). However, realising something was wrong, and looking at the chart, I finally noticed that most of the 5,000+ mutations were missing from it. Looking back at the paper, I found out why, and what I had missed.From the paper (section title:Constructing the Y-chromosomal haplogroup tree).

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Third, we removed all sites that were recurrent in this set of 36 males or lacked ancestral information, and restricted the region considered to the 3.2 Mb with high coverage in the haplogroup A individual, NA21313 (tree 3, Fig. 2).

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The tree is made from a smaller portion of the Y (3.2Mb) which is actually about 1/17 of the total. So, I should have been multiplying by 17, which gives an average of 5,600 SNPs across the entire Y. That means that the Young Earth Creationist standard model requires an average 31 mutations per. generation transfer on the Y-chromosome since the time of Noah (4,500 yrs.)So, my apologies to those following the thread for not reading the paper with enough care, and for not spotting the problem earlier.

No they don't. They aren't. But if you want to "throw down a gauntlet", by all means start a thread on why you think mutation rates are a problem for human chimp divergence. Here's an interesting up to date paper about generation times. They think our ancestral generations and those of the chimps are long, and they estimate divergence at at least 7 to 8 million years in the introduction, and further on in the paper at 7 to 13 million years. They are well aware of recent mutation rate estimates.And here's the paper you mentioned earlier in the thread where they searched two parent child trios and found 49 and 35 de novo mutations in the kids. They say:

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The sex averaged germline mutation rate estimates we derived agree very closely with three other recent studies focusing on sex-averaged mutation rates in the most recent generation.
Averaging across these four studies gave a more precise sex-averaged mutation rate of 1.18 10−8 (0.15
10−8 (s.d.)), which is less than half of the frequently cited sex-averaged mutation rate derived from the human-chimpanzee sequence divergence of 2.5 10−8. These apparently discordant estimates can be largely reconciled if the age of the human-chimpanzee divergence is pushed back to 7 million years, as suggested by some interpretations of recent fossil finds, and by considering more recent (and slightly lower) robust genome-wide estimates of sequence divergence. These considerations suggest a plausible range for the divergence-derived mutation rate of 1.12 10−8 to 2.05 10−8, which encompasses the averaged contemporary mutation rate above.

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And there's no actual reason why the two groups can't start diverging more than 7 million years ago.But start a thread. Throw down the gauntlet, my good knight crusader.

Bump.The number of Y-chromosome mutations (SNPs) separating the 36 individuals surveyed in this paper from their common Y-ancestor would be about 5,600 according to the data.The standard YEC model indicates that there should only be about 300 such mutations (from 100 to 500) according to research on Y chromosome mutation rates and general mutation rates.The YEC model is therefore effectively falsified, as any common Y ancestor would be far older than the mythological Noah, and also far older than "Adam".

It's interesting to note that it would be even harder to fit the common chimps and gorillas into a bottleneck 4,500 yrs ago than it is humans, as they have greater within species diversity than we do.

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The data revealed that the nucleotide diversity () in bonobos (0.077%) is actually lower than that in humans (0.087%) and that in chimpanzees (0.134%) is only 50% higher than that in humans. In the present study we sequenced the same 50 segments in 15 western lowland gorillas and estimated diversity to be 0.158%. This is the highest value among the African apes but is only about two times higher than that in humans.

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http://www.scienceresearch.duq.edu/...pubs/Yu_et_al_2004.pdf

Actually, the YEC position makes more sense based on that if Noah, the sons and the wives were Chimps or Gorillas. Humans were just one of the other species on the ARK or a deformed and degenerate offspring of the Gorillas.As I pointed out back in 2004 in Message 57

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I often hear that Humans are more intelligent than the Gorilla.

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But one:

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• never seems in a hurry.
• spends his day eating and playing with the kids.
• has his women folk about him.
• takes a nap every day.
• never worries about what to wear.
• never worries about budgets or taxes.
• has never gone to war.
• doesn't much care what the neighbors think.
• is never late for work.
• has never heard kids asking "What's for dinner"?
• doesn't have to block out channels on the remote.

I have a feeling that just maybe, when they were handing out intellegence, the Gorillas and Humans flipped a coin.

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We lost.

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The larger problem is that if the human and ape groups have separate common ancestors then humans should be genetically equidistant from all ape species. As it is, chimps and humans share more DNA than chimps and gorillas.

The way I read the article is that 8.97 mb of the Y-chromosome had high coverage in 35 individuals. This 8.97 Mb is the region that the information was extracted from for that study:
"We have identified variants present in high-coverage complete sequences of 36 diverse human Y chromosomes from Africa, Europe, South Asia, East Asia, and the Americas, representing eight major haplogroups. After restricting our analysis to 8.97 Mb of the unique male-specific Y sequence, we identified 6662 high-confidence variants"
"After QC and validation, we extracted 6662 high-confidence variants (i.e., sites that differ from the Y chromosome reference sequence), including both SNPs and indels, from 8.97 Mb of unique Y sequence"The 36th individual was the haplogroup A individual. They only had high coverage in 3.2 Mb of the haplogroup A individual. (restricted the region considered to the 3.2 Mb with high coverage in the haplogroup A individual). They had to make do with a smaller region with the 36th guy, but the first 35 guys had 8.97 Mb of high-coverage.So I believe your original estimate stands.

Wishful thinking on your part, I'm afraid. They restrict themselves to the 3.2 Mb for all 36. Apart from the fact that they say that at the end of the paper, you can tell, because otherwise the other 35 would have nearly three times as many SNPs as "A".The chart with all the SNPs from the 8.97 Mb survey is in the supplemental figures, which you can find by clicking on the link to the right. Here, individual "A" is relatively low, as they say, at 750 SNPs. Some of the other lineages go up over 1,000, and the overall average is over 900. This is 1/6 of the Y, and if we multiply by 6 it gives exactly the same result of ~5,600.So, that blows out the standard YEC model easily, both Noah and Adam. You are no longer a YEC. Welcome to reality .