Any practical use for Universal Common Ancestor?

I'm making a distinction between "IN" the genome where they do nothing but produce a variation on what the genome does, and "TO" the genome where they putatively produce something the genome never could produce, which is what would be necessary if it really is possible to get an entirely different species from a given species. Which is impossible.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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I'm making a distinction between "IN" the genome where they do nothing but produce a variation on what the genome does, and "TO" the genome where they putatively produce something the genome never could produce, which is what would be necessary if it really is possible to get an entirely different species from a given species.

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If you mean something that the old genome couldn’t do then the pocket mice and the Scottish Fold cat qualify. But you obviously can’t mean something that the new genome can’t do.So I just have to repeat my question. What changes count? Obviously you must be dismissing some changes, but why ?

A change in color is entirely within the genome. Any form of cat's ear is within that genome too. Give me a rodent ear or a chimp's fingernail on a human being. I know those are ridiculous ideas but the change would have to be on that order, something that the genome can't and never will produce normally.

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A change in color is entirely within the genome. Any form of cat's ear is within that genome too.

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The original genome couldn’t produce them. So what makes those changes “within the genome” ?

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Give me a rodent ear or a chimp's fingernail on a human being.

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The first wouldn’t happen - evolutionary theory claims that it wouldn’t happen. And as far as I know the differences between a chimp’s fingernail and a human’s is as small as the changes that you say are “in the genome” - possibly smaller.

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I know those are ridiculous ideas but the change would have to be on that order, something that the genome can't and never will produce normally.

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But you have explicitly dismissed examples of something that the unchanged genome couldn’t and never would produce normally.So you are still being incredibly unclear.

As long as it's a color of fur or a kind of cat's ear it's within the genome though produced by a mutation. It is hard to come up with something the genome absolutely couldn't do but that's what is needed if the ToE is correct.

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As long as it's a color of fur or a kind of cat's ear it's within the genome though produced by a mutation

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But what makes it “within the genome” ? It isn’t that the unchanged genome could produce those traits. And what makes the differences between a chimp’s fingernails and a human’s “outside the genome”? You haven’t even said what those differences are.Unless and until you can explain your criterion there is nothing to discuss. We cannot be expected to produce examples meeting your condition unless we know what it means. And you either cannot or will not provide that explanation.

Hi Faith,I'm still mullling over how to respond to your general point, since I'm having trouble getting my head around what you understand a genome to be. But while I'm mulling I felt obliged to respond to this one, since it's more to do with your understanding of chimpanzees than your understanding of genomes. If a human grew a chimp's fingernail, how would anyone even notice? Have you ever seen a chimpanzee's hand? Chimp fingernails are exactly the same as ours. What distinguishing features do you see, bearing in mind that (for no clear reason) colour variation doesn't count by your own conditions:

As caffeine covered yesterday in Message 761:

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caffeine writes:

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Faith writes:

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You will never get even a human fingernail from the chimp genome

Chimpanzee and human fingernails are almost identical. The precise amino acid sequence of human and chimp keratin is a little different, but only a little, and here we probably could give you the exact mutations necessary. All you need to do is download the protein sequences for human and chimpanzee keratin; look at the compositional differences, and then list some hypothetical point mutations that could cause the different sequence. If we really wanted to, we might not need to stick at hypothetical, since the human and chimp genomes have been published. It's theoretically possible for us to track down the specific genetic changes responsible. I'm not going to do that, since I don't see what value it would have. Similarly, you ask

Faith writes:

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How do you turn chimp skin and fur and nails into human skin and nails?

And, again, that we could do, since they're made of the same proteins with slight differences in sequence. Scientists figured out the genetic code long ago; we know the requisite mutations to account for specific changes in protein sequence. Is this really what you want to see? Below is the first 60 amino acids in human and chimp KRT5 ( a type of keratin). As you can see, the only difference is at position 52 (bolded), where chimps have glycine and humans have alanine.

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MSRQSSVSFR SGGSRSFSTA SAITPSVSRT SFTSVSRSGG GGGGGFGRVS LGGACGVGGY
MSRQSSVSFR SGGSRSFSTA SAITPSVSRT SFTSVSRSGG GGGGGFGRVS LAGACGVGGY

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Would it help your understanding for me to look up the genetic code and list point mutations that could change glycine to alanine, or vice versa? Because I doubt this is getting to the heart of your misunderstanding. What do you think are supposed differences between chimp and human hair, or nails, that can't be accounted for by this kind of tedious exercise?

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In reading his "As you can see, the only difference is at position 52 (bolded), where chimps have glycine and humans have alanine.", I just had to look it up.Basically, proteins are strings of amino acids and those amino acid sequences are encoded in genes with codons, a sequence of three bases which encode for a specific amino acid -- it turns out that a particular amino acid can have more than one codon that encodes for it.A common creationist error about proteins is to assume that each protein has one highly specific amino acid sequence -- we especially see this in their standard fallacious probability argument of the chances of an 80-amino-acid-long protein falling together by chance (see my discussion of it at http://cre-ev.dwise1.net/proteins.html). In reality, only a small number of loci in a protein requires a specific amino acid or type of amino acid while most loci can take any amino acid -- eg, in class notes for their balanced-treatment class (the only true one I know of), Thwaites and Awbrey describe a calcium binding site 29 amino acids long in which only 2 positions (7%) require specific amino acids, 8 positions (28%) can be filled by any of 5 hydrophobic amino acids, 3 positions (10%) can be filled by any one of 4 other amino acids, 2 positions (7%) can be filled with two different amino acids, and 14 of the positions (48%) can be filled by virtually any of the 20 amino acids. One consequence of that is that a particular gene can undergo a high number of point mutations that change the amino acid sequence of the protein and still remain viable. Another consequence is that we can sequence the same protein from many different species and compare their differences, an exercise which so far has strongly agreed with our ideas of how closely various species are related to each other (and provided fodder for false creationist claims, including Gish's outright lie on national TV about a bullfrog protein showing that humans and bullfrogs are more closely related (it was complete bullfrog!)).Back to the two sequences for keratin (finger-nail material), chimp and human, which only differ by one amino acid in locus 52, glycine (chimp) versus alanine (human). The codon for glycine is GG(GACU) -- that means that the first two bases are specified while the third base can be any of the four possible. The codon for alanine is GC(GACU). That means that the only difference between chimp and human keratin is one single base. That is about as minimal and simple a mutation possible. So for that one feature, finger nails, that Faith thought was so insurmountable a change, all it actually took was one single simple base substitution.Referring back to my page, The Bullfrog Affair, Gish's nationally televised blatant lie was in response to Dr. Russell Doolittle's story of comparing several human and chimp proteins and finding them all to be identical. From my page (originally uploaded to CompuServe back in the day):

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In a recent article in _Discover_ magazine, Dr. Russell Doolittle tells
how his early research in protein comparisons had sparked his interest in
evolution.  In a 1982 PBS program ("Creation vs Evolution:  Battle in the
Classroom", KPBS-TV, aired 7 July 1982), he told this story:
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Doolittle:  "Ever since the time of Darwin the chimpanzee has been
regarded as man's nearest living relative.  Naturally it was then
of interest to biochemists to see what chimpanzee proteins would
look like.  Now the first protein to be looked at in a chimpanzee,
and compared with a human, was the hemoglobin molecule -- hemoglobin
one of the blood proteins -- and in fact, there were no differences
found in the chimpanzee molecule when 141 amino acids were looked at
in the hemoglobin alpha chain.  In contrast, if you looked at a
rhesus monkey, there were four differences; or if you looked at a
rabbit, you found the differences got up into the 20s.  If you got
up to a chicken you'd find 59 differences; and if you looked at a
fish you'd find there were more than a hundred differences.  Now
this is exactly what you expect from the point of view of evolution."
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Narrator:  "Three more proteins were analyzed."
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Doolittle:  "Once again, no differences compared -- chimpanzee
compared with human.  It was astonishing.  In fact a rumor began
to sweep around biochemists, that maybe all the differences
between chimpanzee and human were really going to turn out to be
cultural.  Well, in fact, one more protein was quickly looked at
-- this was a large one -- 259 amino acids -- and a difference
was found.  Whew!"

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So then, in comparing the human genome and the chimp genome we find them to be very nearly identical with a very small number of differences. I would be willing to bet that the degree of differences between humans and chimps are little different from the degree of differences between species under Felidae which are divided into two different genera (plural of genus) Panthera and Felinae. Faith insists that Felidae is one big happy species whereas Hominini (including Pan and Homo) is not. Add to that her insistence that trilobites, an entire class(!!!!), Trilobita, is all simply one big happy single species (for reference of scale the Linnean classification system: Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species).By Faith's own perverted re-invention of the whole of biology, humans and chimps are clearly and undeniably the same species. By actual science, they clearly are not the same species. Faith's own perverted re-invention of the whole of biology clearly fails completely and utterly.

Unfortunately I think I've confused you a bit here. I only showed 60 amino acids - since I was just looking for the first difference in the human and chimp sequences to use to make my point. The full protein sequence is about ten times as long, so I assume this is not the only difference (I didn't check).Also, there is more than one type of keratin. The sequence we're looking at is just keratin-5, which is one of 54 keratins involved in making a human body. To make matters worse, in double checking just now I think I may have picked a keratin which is not even involved in nails.There's probably more than one single base change needed to make a chimp and human nail have the same chemical composition - sorry for confusion!

But you are saying that mutations can never produce changes that would result in a new species. Obviously, they can. Can you name a single genetic disease that has reached fixation (i.e. found in 100% of the population)? Bodies need DNA.There is just a few percent difference between the human genome and the chimp genome, so how do you explain the 98% that is shared? Why do we share that much DNA, even in parts of the genome that have nothing to do with making our bodies?You also claim that no matter how many changes you make to the human genome you will only ever get genetic diseases or a human. This would also be true for a creator. So how is it that changing just a small percentage of the human genome results in a new and healthy species? Then which of the genetic differences between humans and chimps can mutations not produce? I can't find any. How about you? You just contradicted yourself. Which mutations are impossible? Point to a single genetic difference between humans and chimps that mutations could not produce. Now you are just making stuff up.

We already have a chimp fingernails, and even the ears are very similar:

Well then pick a trait that is clearly chimpanzee, I'm making a general point, I don't care about the specifics and certainly there are chimp characteristics that COULDN'T be taken for human and my argument would be the same: mere mutations in the genome aren't going to turn the chimp genome into a human genome. You say they can, I say they can't. They can only reproduce chimp characteristics.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Why would it have to be 100%? Good thing it isn't of course. Of course. He made the DNA from which the bodies are reproduced. God made each creature as He did, no mystery. I'm sure we could think of things humans make that have the same degree of similarity and difference. Creator's choice. What are those other parts by the way? WHAT? Something is getting VERY confused here. Genetic disease or a human????? You'll NEVER get a human. Mutations are never going to be able to produce ANYTHING that organized. The best they could do is make superficial changes in the genetic stuff of the given genome. Mutations can't produce ANYTHING organized that is not already part of the given genome in which they occur and there it is because the organization is already built in. Mutations did not and could not produce the differences between humans and chimps. Those differences were created into each genome. Mutations are RANDOM, they are MISTAKES, they can't produce ANYTHING ORGANIZED. No I didn't. You think it's possible for mutations to make such changes, I do not think it's possible, all I'm saying is that if you made such changes so that you have a chimp genome then it follows that of course you'd have a chimp. But there is no way to make such changes. Mutations cannot make such changes. Any of them, all of them. Mutations are random mistakes they could not possibly produce something organized. What I'm saying follows on what I've been saying. It's perfectly logical that if you COULD get a new species from an existing species this is how it would have to happen. And it's impossible so it's just a mental exercise anyway.

Is it a fact? Not in the way you mean. No.We know the chemistry exceptionally well. We know with near certainty what both the chimp and the human DNA look like. We seem to have a pretty good grasp of the exact chemicals involved and how they work. Each nucleotide is composed of one of four nitrogen-containing nucleobases - cytosine [C], guanine [G], adenine [A] or thymine [T]. You already know this.We have the complete sequence of the nucleobases, in order (more or less), for both. And, yes, this involves a whole lot of different alleles both common to both and different of each.More than 95% of this DNA is shared. It is precisely the same chemistry. That is why we are so similar. Call it a common base between us.Then there are enough alleles different between us, the other 5%, that makes us so different from each other.There are already human genes in the chimp, or vice versa. 95% of them. The common base.A lot of the alleles different between us are not all that different. We’re talking down at the per nucleotide position accuracy.Problem is we don’t know for sure how those unique proteins interact with everything else in the rest of the common base.Can’t plant even a single chimp allele into a human gamete nor would it be ethical the other way around.The one thing we do know is that, as you like to say, if you put all the separate chimp-only alleles (5%) into the common base (95%) then you would get a chimp. If you put in only the human 5% you get a human. No big surprises.Since we can’t experiment directly we can only think on these things and maybe do some computer simulations, but we first need a whole lot more study of proteins and how they interact. Proteomics. We’re learning a lot about this too, but proteins are so complex we know next to nothing about how they are used.As we understand more we may be able to simulate possible evolutionary pathways showing each step, each mutation, that made us evolve in such different directions from our common ancestor. The one that evolved the common base we and chimps use today. hereEdited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!! Fossils of evidence of Darwinian evolution, progressive creation and genetic engineering by aliens. Edited by Dredge, : No reason given.