We're Really Chimps???

I was in a chat room and learned that the human genome project has proven that... I tried to say that our DNA is very similar, but has important differences. I pointed out that there billions of base pairs and 2% of billions is a significant difference. I asked why the proteins fold differently if the DNA is actually just the same with a few extra useless strands...answer: "it's a mystery." I wondered what about those poor human parents whose newborns' proteins did NOT fold differently.Is this current thinking? We're just chimps whose proteins inexplicably fold differently??? Is this what the human genome project has determined?

Thread moved here from the Coffee House forum.I think this belongs in a science forum rather than a general chat forum.This message has been edited by AdminAsgara, 01-15-2005 22:41 AM

Can I have some of what your smoking...

AdminAsgara,I thought it was just a chatty sort of topic...I forget that Coffee is for non-EvC discussions.Sorry and thanks.

1.61803,I'm actually not expecting educated evolutionists to make statements like: "human DNA is really chimp DNA, but the proteins mysteriously fold differently." But 2 or 3 people seemed really convinced of this and it also seemed to have been a recent-news type thing (I don't have cable and don't subscribe to magazines or anything).But I'm not sure what you mean...is my OP confusing?

It's obvious that man evolved from chimps. Just look at the similarities; arms, legs, hands, fingers, etc. Even a child can see we look alike. Isn't that enough? Who needs the science of DNA? And most of DNA is junk DNA anyway that has no purpose. No, wait; they already changed that idea (more and more JUNK DNA is turning out to be VERY useful DNA after all, but nevermind that).
But, what did the chimps evolve from?

I'm not a professional in this area but I do try to keep up with some of what is going on. With that warning let me give you my understanding of the current state of things.First, as I think you know (being more knowledable that our other "creo" chatter here) we are not evolved from chimps at all. We are not evolved from chimps any more than you are evolved from your cousin who shares a grandparent with you.'We are however, very closly related to them. Back a few million ( 5 to 7) years ago there was a population of primates in Africa who were all one species. That species was almost certainly more chimp like than human like but that isn't settled yet. (It did not have our brain capacity almost for absolutly sure and that is a defining feature of Homo). Some of the individuals of that species evolved to become the chimpanzees and some evolved to become us. The suggestion has been that the opening of the great rift valley supplied the isolation that allowed us to speciate originally. (Some problems with that with S. tchadensis being on the wrong side of the valley)Now for the question of how far from them are we?The closeness of our genomes is perfectly reasonable in the time frame involved. Remember you have a handfull of genetic changes different from your parent in only one generation. How many can pile up in a quater of a million generations? This will accelerate when we are separated by a species barrier.We are very similar to chimps. We also have very similar DNA. From this we may learn just what changes produce the phenotypical (body form) differences between us. There are, for example, genes in us that have a repeated sequence. The more repeats the longer the brain keeps growing before it stops. This just can't be the whole story but it is interesting. There is an amazing correlation between brain size and these repeats across a wide range of animals. It is the same sequence in mice and us.seeNature Via NurtureThere are a few very specific changes that make the differences between us. It is, to me, surprising that so few genetic differences make such a large, apparent difference in the result. Telling how thi s happens will be sorted out in the next decade or two. Regulation of genes is almost certainly going to have something to do with it.It is also clear, when you look at it in detail that we are not so very different from our cousins. We see the big differences from our biased point of veiw. Remember a chimp is about the same intelligence as a 3 or 4 year old child. They are, we would agree, human.Clearly the differences in our DNA and a chimps are NOT just a "few useless strands". That is a silly thing to say. I'd like to see the underlying source for such statements. It is the first I've heard of it and it sounds like someone only marginally knowledgable (like myself) makeing an exaggerated statement.See The Ape Man: Truth or Fiction? for some discussion of our relationship to them.This message has been edited by NosyNed, 01-16-2005 01:25 AM

I suggest when you know jack squat regarding the subject at hand that you don't bother to prove your lack of knowledge with such posts.This message has been edited by NosyNed, 01-16-2005 01:18 AM

we know there is more to the difference between chimp and human than just a simple fold in the DNA structure, the usual figure bounces around 98.5% similarity in the total sequence.the problem with a fold scenario that I see is how to get it into a general population if it is immediately incompatible in reproduction? It is much more likely that a fold evolved after the divergence of the two species from their common ancestor.another similar bit of information is that humans lack one pair of chromosomes compared to chimps but that one of ours looks like two of theirs joined together. again this probably happened after divergence. you have a similar thing going on between horses and donkeys.I did a google on {chimp DNA folding} and got nothing that I could find that looked like what you were talking about.That's my take on it anyway.

---

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

...no.we've known for a long time that human beings and chimpanzees are closely related. but not THAT close.however, i've heard some talk from creationists who seek to define the word "kind" in such a way that neanderthals and modern humans are basically the same thing. such a broad margin would, of course, also include chimpanzees, which i doubt they'd group with humans.

and there are scientists that think the chimps should be classed in Homo rather than Pan family.Chimps Belong on Human Branch of Family Tree, Study SaysThis message has been edited by RAZD, 01-16-2005 01:27 AM

---

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

TheLiteralist writes of a comment he heard in a chat room:

quote:

---

We are really just chimps whose proteins fold differently for some reason.

---

That isn't quite what I had heard. Instead, what I had heard is that while the chimp and human DNA are amazingly similar, there appears to be a difference in how it is expressed.For example, one thing that we have learned from the Human Genome Project is that there is much more to proteins than just the number of genes. That is, our original estimates of the number of genes were around 100,000 due to the number of proteins that seem to be part of the body. That was primarily based upon a one gene/one protein concept. But it seems we have much fewer genes than that...about 30,000 if I recall the numbers correctly.More research showed that it seems proteins are often the result of combinations of genes working together. Genes A, B, and C create proteins X, Y, and Z individually, but then they also create proteins XY, XZ, and YZ and well as XYX and ZZY and other various combinations. Thus, a single gene may be involved in multiple proteins.Part of the difference between human and chimpanzee biology, it seems, is that humans have much more expression of certain proteins than others. With regard to the brain, humans express some proteins much more than chimpanzees. It isn't just the genes. It's also the gene regulation and expression.The scenario is much more complicated than simple "folding of proteins," though I'm sure that is part of it.

---

Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

"Junk" is somewhat of a bad or loaded term; it would be better to describe it as non-protein-encoding DNA, which we're discovering has regulatory or structural functions, sometimes.But here's the thing. We're actually discovering that more of our DNA than we thought before is that non-protein or "junk" DNA, not less. We're revising the human gene counts downward.But that's off-topic. Interesting, though. The same thing we did - our shared common ancestor, itself an ape. We did not ourselves evolve from chimps. Evolution is a bush, not a ladder.But we're not chimps. That humans are reproductively isolated from chimps should be obvious.

really? that's interesting. i would think that if there were, they'd still have to have branched off rather far back, since the hips are so fundamentally different.

Hi RAZD,Heh...I meant this to be more or less a funny topic (thus my attempt at putting this in the Coffee House. I guess it could EVOLVE into a serious topic.No...it's worse than saying that our DNA has some different folds or whatnot...the fellow said that the DNA is the same but the PROTEINS just fold differently for some reason in humans...it's "mysterious," of course.Then there were one or two who chimed in with comments like, "Yep, were chimps." I was dumbfounded. I told the fellow he had left the realm of reality when he said "the DNA is the same but the proteins just fold differently in humans." The human genome project proves this (his claim, not mine)...I think I even told him that many evolutionists (you guys here) do not make such claims.He encouraged me to study the human genome project so that I, too, could share in this knowledge.I will try to look into it though...it's possible, I suppose, that there's some kind of article or something out there about this (severely misinterpretted, perhaps).