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Author Topic:   Nested Biological Hierarchies
fallacycop
Member (Idle past 5520 days)
Posts: 692
From: Fortaleza-CE Brazil
Joined: 02-18-2006


Message 46 of 87 (322084)
06-16-2006 12:35 AM
Reply to: Message 44 by Hyroglyphx
06-15-2006 11:53 PM


Re: What's Theobald's premise?
nemesis_juggernaut writes:
For as many similarities that any organism shares with its supposed closest ancestor, there are hundreds of more disimilarities. That's as asinine as saying, "Look, the Manatee has eyes and we have eyes, therefore, we're related." That's an interesting deduction, but it would be just likely, if not more so, that a Creator made both organisms with eyes fo which to see.
What about saying that a creator made both humans and chimps with a broken gene for vitamine-C production with which not to produce vitamine-C? Now, that's an asinine statement if I ever saw one. Explain that away if you can. How come both these animals have the same broken gene? Not only that, how come all primates have that broken gene? How come this line of evidence supports the same nested biological hierarchie obtained by taxonomy? There is a very simple explanation: These organism have a commom ancestor. How come you are so prejudiced agaist this simple explanation? There is a very simple explanation for that too: blind religious belief.

This message is a reply to:
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nwr
Member
Posts: 6408
From: Geneva, Illinois
Joined: 08-08-2005
Member Rating: 5.1


Message 47 of 87 (322086)
06-16-2006 12:39 AM
Reply to: Message 45 by Hyroglyphx
06-16-2006 12:07 AM


Re: Wonders of nesting
Your post makes it seem as if I'm being silly in positing that had Dolphins gone extinct, that somone might have come up with a terrible conclusion, however reasonably they might have worded it.
Yes, indeed, you are being silly. The hierarchical classification is not nearly as ambiguous or fragile as you make it out to be.

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PaulK
Member
Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.2


Message 48 of 87 (322100)
06-16-2006 2:34 AM
Reply to: Message 43 by Hyroglyphx
06-15-2006 11:44 PM


Re: historical process and contemporary classification
Evolutionists use evidence.
Now perhaps you can explain why you think that evolutionists would assume that modern elephants evolved from mammoths or mastodons.

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anglagard
Member (Idle past 837 days)
Posts: 2339
From: Socorro, New Mexico USA
Joined: 03-18-2006


Message 49 of 87 (322105)
06-16-2006 3:02 AM
Reply to: Message 38 by Modulous
06-15-2006 9:57 AM


Re: Wonders of nesting
Its like classifying a library. Is the Italian cookbook written in French something we should classify as an Italian culture book, a recipe book or a book written in French?
Being an incessent cataloger myself as a librarian, I believe I may have something to add to the idea of nested heirarchies.
Both cataloging systems in the US, Dewey and Library of Congress, being created at a given time, are quickly rendered obsolete. Where does one place computer science or AI when such concepts did not exist in 1850?
To me this shows that the biological classification scheme is more than just solely a human construct. While it may require some minor tweaking, it does not over time have a similar appearance of obvious obsolescense as the classification of human knowledge.

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Modulous
Member
Posts: 7801
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


Message 50 of 87 (322109)
06-16-2006 3:24 AM
Reply to: Message 45 by Hyroglyphx
06-16-2006 12:07 AM


Re: Wonders of nesting
But you're acting as if some of the alleged transitions aren't based on some pretty fanciful conclusions.
I never mentioned transitions, I was talking about classification. The two can be related, but they are essentially seperate topics.
For as much as a Hyrax has in common with a Manatee, how much more does it not share? So the large, lumbering sea cow inexplicably took to land evolving into a Hyrax, which is small and furry.
Well, let's use the hierarchy to explore this issue. First the Hyrax:
Kingdom Animalia (animals)
Eumetazoa (metazoans)
Bilateria (bilaterally symmetrical animals)
Deuterostomia (deuterostomes)
Phylum Chordata (chordates)
Craniata (craniates)
Subphylum Vertebrata (vertebrates)
Superclass Gnathostomata (jawed vertebrates)
Euteleostomi (bony vertebrates)
Class Sarcopterygii (lobe-finned fishes and terrestrial vertebrates)
Tetrapoda (tetrapods)
Amniota (amniotes)
Synapsida (synapsids)
Class Mammalia (mammals)
Subclass Theria (Therian mammals)
Infraclass Eutheria (placental mammals)
Superorder Paenungulata
Order Hyracoidea (hyraxes)
Family Procaviidae (hyraxes)
Genus Procavia (rock hyrax)
Species Procavia capensis (rock hyrax)
(source)
And the manatee:
Kingdom Animalia (animals)
Eumetazoa (metazoans)
Bilateria (bilaterally symmetrical animals)
Deuterostomia (deuterostomes)
Phylum Chordata (chordates)
Craniata (craniates)
Subphylum Vertebrata (vertebrates)
Superclass Gnathostomata (jawed vertebrates)
Euteleostomi (bony vertebrates)
Class Sarcopterygii (lobe-finned fishes and terrestrial vertebrates)
Tetrapoda (tetrapods)
Amniota (amniotes)
Synapsida (synapsids)
Class Mammalia (mammals)
Subclass Theria (Therian mammals)
Infraclass Eutheria (placental mammals)
Superorder Paenungulata
Order Sirenia (dugongs, manatees, and sea cows)
Family Trichechidae (manatees)
Genus Trichechus (manatees)
Species Trichechus manatus (West Indian manatee)
(source)
Using the nested hierarchy of life alone I can predict (I don't know at this point) that hyraxes and manatees are quite distantly related. They share the same superorder - Paenungulata. I go away and look up this superorder to find out; we're looking at the most recent common ancestor between these two things being around at the same time as the dinosaurs! The nested hierarchy was right, pretty distantly related really.
So why would you bring it up? You probably heard that the closest living species to hyraxes are manatees, am I right? The reason is that the other relatives are all dead. If we were the only primates, we'd have a similar dilemma when discussing our closest relative.
. It concievably must have had thousands of transitions, which had to have had some biological success in order to be the progeny of another, and another, and another, etc; none of which can be verified with any veracity.
With 65million years and a generational time of ten years, we are talking about 6.5 million generations. Its probably more than that. Nobody is saying that they are sure of every single one of them. There is considerable dispute indeed, on the exact details. If we were to make it into a film and watch every generation at 100 generations per second (television is only 30 frames per second for comparison) it would take 18 hours to watch the whole thing. We would miss most of the frames (though each frame would be pretty much identical to the last one). This is using a very long generational time of ten years. It is most likely to be much lower than that.
Hyraxes reach sexual maturity at about 18 months. If we assume their generational time is about 2 years. Manatees are a little more complicated - about 5-9 years. So if we reduce the generational time to their average we get about 6 years or so, which would increase our film length to 30 straight hours of frames, each nearly identical to the one before.
(Assuming total gradualism which is not what we observe, this is just to impress upon you the scale of change from one generation to the next that we are talking about here).
Your post makes it seem as if I'm being silly in positing that had Dolphins gone extinct, that somone might have come up with a terrible conclusion, however reasonably they might have worded it.
Unless the fossil record of our extinct dolphins was particularly bad, we should be able to classify it quite easily. If we had access to its ear we would immediately classify it as a cetacean. Pretty much any bones would enable us to classify it as a mammal, if things were pretty bad we'd probably get stuck on tetrapod. It would have to be the most direst collection of bones to not be sure if it was a fish or a mammal.
Edited by Modulous, : Adding the film metaphor.

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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 51 of 87 (322134)
06-16-2006 7:14 AM
Reply to: Message 28 by Scrutinizer
06-14-2006 6:38 PM


Re: Greetings
Welcome to the fray
I'm just saying that you should not use taxonomical structure as "confirmation" of evolution, since such a pattern can also be expected assuming intelligent design.
The difference is that the taxonomical structure is predicted by the concept of common descent which is predicted by the theory of change in species over time (evolution).
ID on the other hand would predict that good design would be used again - where needed, regardless of what the pregression of the individual designs involved. Good design combines useful elements no matter where they come from.
Thus for a really good eye design you would take the retina from an octopus (right side out instead of backwards like humans have) and combine it with both the lens from mammal eyes and the adjustable eye\retina distance mechanism that octopuses use for focus (they have a fixed lens) and end up with an eye with telescopic\microscopic ability: better than either design on their own.
This is what ID predicts for the development of features, and not the evolution of features constrained to a taxonomic tree, where features can only come from the branches below the organism as they evolve, or 'bud-off' from the tree into a new branch.
According to evolution, humans can never get a retina turned right-side-out without first entirely losing the current vision system, but according to ID (or to god-did-it) there is no such restraint on updating the design.
So ID does not predict taxonomy and in fact predicts a criss-crossing of taxonometric structures instead of taxonomy.
Inferring from the biblical story of creation, ...
You are either talking about intelligent design OR creationism: these concepts are not compatable.
The fact that you can conceive of a way for ID to explain taxonomy and be consistent with creationism means that you are taking ID and changing it to suit preconceptions, rather than exploring where the concepts take you -- that is not science.
Enjoy.
Edited by RAZD, : corrected sentence

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Scrutinizer
Inactive Member


Message 52 of 87 (322272)
06-16-2006 12:41 PM
Reply to: Message 34 by fallacycop
06-14-2006 11:43 PM


Re: Greetings
fallacycop writes:
That won't do as an answer because it would only explains why there is a hierarchical pattern, but gives no reasonable explanation to why that same pattern can be obtained by differet methods, such as taxonomy, and genetic analysis (or did god expect Adam to do some genetic analysis before naming the animals?).
No, of course Adam could not have done any genetic analysis. My example with Adam was only to show that we would expect some pattern among creatures even from the premise of creationism.
Certainly there should exist a significant degree of correlation between genetic analysis and taxonomy, to use your example. For instance, we would expect a hippo to be more genetically similar to a worm than to, say, a ficus. Even just among mammals, we would expect a human to more genetically similar to a chimpanzee than to, say, a mouse. This is of course because phenotype is defined largely by the genotype, so those organisms with more physical characteristics in common should obviously have more in common genetically than organisms with fewer shared physical characteristics.
No one denies that taxonomically closer organisms (i.e., those with closer phenotypes) ought also to have generally more similarity genetically. It should be predicted by anyone, creationist or evolutionist, with any background in genetics.
Most creationists even accept that certain similarities between species are due to common ancestry, such as between dogs, cyotes, dingos, jackals, foxes, and wolves or between horses, donkeys, and zebras. As I said before,
Speciation can occur in multiple ways that in no way contradict creationism, including geographical isolation, changes in mating seasons, sexual preference, and mutations that prevent production of fertile offspring, as is the case with the horse and donkey, for instance. None of these require the addition of new genes or alleles [(i.e., macroevolution)], only the "sifting" or loss of some within a population by natural selection.
Of course there are some examples of where genetic similarities are observed which are not predicted by common ancestry:
Actually, the molecular clock has many problems for the evolutionist. Not only are there the anomalies and common Designer arguments I mentioned above, but they actually support a creation of distinct types within ordered groups, not continuous evolution, as non-creationist microbiologist Dr Michael Denton pointed out in Evolution: A Theory in Crisis. For example, when comparing the amino acid sequence of cytochrome C of a bacterium (a prokaryote) with such widely diverse eukaryotes as yeast, wheat, silkmoth, pigeon, and horse, all of these have practically the same percentage difference with the bacterium (64 -69%). There is no intermediate cytochrome between prokaryotes and eukaryotes, and no hint that the ”higher’ organism such as a horse has diverged more than the ”lower’ organism such as the yeast.
The same sort of pattern is observed when comparing cytochrome C of the invertebrate silkmoth with the vertebrates lamprey, carp, turtle, pigeon, and horse. All the vertebrates are equally divergent from the silkmoth (27-30%). Yet again, comparing globins of a lamprey (a ”primitive’ cyclostome or jawless fish) with a carp, frog, chicken, kangaroo, and human, they are all about equidistant (73-81%). Cytochrome C’s compared between a carp and a bullfrog, turtle, chicken, rabbit, and horse yield a constant difference of 13-14%. There is no trace of any transitional series of cyclostome ’ fish ’ amphibian ’ reptile ’ mammal or bird.
Another problem for evolutionists is how the molecular clock could have ticked so evenly in any given protein in so many different organisms (despite some anomalies discussed earlier which present even more problems). For this to work, there must be a constant mutation rate per unit time over most types of organism. But observations show that there is a constant mutation rate per generation, so it should be much faster for organisms with a fast generation time, such as bacteria, and much slower for elephants. In insects, generation times range from weeks in flies to many years in cicadas, and yet there is no evidence that flies are more diverged than cicadas. So evidence is against the theory that the observed patterns are due to mutations accumulating over time as life evolved.
Design in Nature | Answers in Genesis
fallacycop writes:
For instance: why would god choose to have man and chimp share a similar set of broken genes? That one is really hard to explain away with some just-so explanation.
Could you please provide some examples of "broken" genes that humans and chimps share?

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Jazzns
Member (Idle past 3912 days)
Posts: 2657
From: A Better America
Joined: 07-23-2004


Message 53 of 87 (322287)
06-16-2006 1:01 PM
Reply to: Message 52 by Scrutinizer
06-16-2006 12:41 PM


Re: Greetings
Could you please provide some examples of "broken" genes that humans and chimps share?
I believe it is called the GLO gene and it is not just that they are broken but that they are broken in the exact same way which is unique. The gene itself is what allows other mammals to synthesize their own absorbic acid (vitamin C). In primates if we don't eat enough vitamin C we get scurvy.
The gene is broken in primates due to a retro-viral insertion. A virus invates a gamete cell and tries to hijack the cell's copy mechanism like all good viruses do. In this case something terrible (for the virus) goes wrong and the cell copies just fine except that it includes some of the virus code in the cell's regular DNA. In this case the virus code interrupted the GLO gene causing the offspring to loose that feature. Since primates ate a lot of stuff that had Vitamin-C to begin with there was no survival disadvantage to this loss.
If God created humans, chimps, gorillas, etc seperatly then he also decided to break all of the GLO genes by sending the exact same virus to cause the exact same highly rare event to occur to each species in the exact same spot in the genome. Not a very good "design" for an ID to do when he simply could have designed those creatures without the GLO gene to begin with.
I may have butched that description so I hope someone who is not an armchair scientist will fix anything I said that was not quite on detail. The gist I believe is correct though.
How this fits into nested hierarchies is rather interesting. These type of genetic anomalies can be used as characteristics to construct a nested heirarchy. For example, there are other mammals that also have a broken GLO gene but they are broken in a different way. So we can take a number of these traits and create a different nested hierarchy then what we might create from other physical traits, genetic similarity, fossil progression, etc. Even though there is no reason for this particular hierarchy to match the other ones it does. Related creatures have similar quirky genetic sequences that make no sense in "design" because they are non-functional.
Also, instead of looking at cytochrome-C differences from the perspective of how different they are from some worm it makes more sense to look at the cross differences between all species. When we use this we get a measure of similarity between humans and chimps, humans and gorillas, humans and mice, humans and fish, etc. You use that difference to build a nested hierarchy and guess what it looks like. You got it, the same hierarchy we get from the physical characteristics, genetic similarity, fossil progression, sharing of non-functional sequences, etc.
There is no reason for a human and chimp to share the same cytochrome C unless they were related. This taking into account that it is slightly more different than other primates which is then slightly more different than other mammals, etc. There is an impossibly huge number of ways to make a functional cytochrome C and no reason a designer had to assign the sequences to animals in a way that exactly mimics common decent.

Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

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Chiroptera
Inactive Member


Message 54 of 87 (322289)
06-16-2006 1:06 PM
Reply to: Message 46 by fallacycop
06-16-2006 12:35 AM


Re: What's Theobald's premise?
quote:
What about saying that a creator made both humans and chimps with a broken gene for vitamine-C production with which not to produce vitamine-C?
Not only that, but the vitamin C genes of humans and chimps are broken in exactly the same way.
Guinea pigs are another mammal with a broken vitamin C gene. The interesting thing is that the guinea pig vitamin C gene is broken in a different way than the higher primates'.
Very consistent with the idea that the common ancestor of guinea pigs and primates had fully functioning vitamin C genes (like the vast majority of mammals do), but the vitamin C gene became broken in different differently in an ancestor of guinea pigs and in a common ancestor of humans and chimps.

"These monkeys are at once the ugliest and the most beautiful creatures on the planet./ And the monkeys don't want to be monkeys; they want to be something else./ But they're not."
-- Ernie Cline

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Wounded King
Member
Posts: 4149
From: Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Joined: 04-09-2003


Message 55 of 87 (322293)
06-16-2006 1:09 PM
Reply to: Message 52 by Scrutinizer
06-16-2006 12:41 PM


Re: Greetings
No one denies that taxonomically closer organisms (i.e., those with closer phenotypes) ought also to have generally more similarity genetically. It should be predicted by anyone, creationist or evolutionist, with any background in genetics.
I see absoloutely no reason for this to be the case at all. There are many possible alternative aa sequences which could perform specific tasksa and even more DNA sequences which could code for these tasks. Other than positing a parsimionious god ther is no reasin at all why a creationist should predict more similarity genetically, at least not outwith the bounds of a 'kind' derived from a common ancestral population. Why should drosophila have a highly conserved homeobox domain and conserved homeobox binding sites, any number of other schemes would have allowed the binding of the requisite factors to the right DNA locus. Why should a creationist predict this?
Could you please provide some examples of "broken" genes that humans and chimps share?
The most commonly given example is the gene for Vitamin C synthesis.
As well as this there is a lot of research into processed pseudogenes which have been rendered non-functional as protein coding genes.
Its hard to rebut your third hand argument about sequence similarity in the absence of any actual reference to real data. If I have the time I'll try to pull together an alignment of the mitochondrial cyt-c sequences for those species, although the rather random nature of the choices seems peculiar, so I might throw in a few more species.
Another important point is that the generational argument is significantly undercut by the fact that the gene is mitochondrial, assuming that they aren't referencing a nuclear copy of cytochrome c, and a mitochondrial gene is going to be someone disconnected from the evolutionary rate of the nuclear genome and certainly more likely to be decoupled from direct generational considerations.
TTFN,
WK
Edited by Wounded King, : Forgot to sign

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Chiroptera
Inactive Member


Message 56 of 87 (322300)
06-16-2006 1:20 PM
Reply to: Message 52 by Scrutinizer
06-16-2006 12:41 PM


Re: Greetings
quote:
My example with Adam was only to show that we would expect some pattern among creatures even from the premise of creationism.
Actually, you didn't quite succeed in that. As I have explained, nested hierarchies are easy to construct; if Adam needed one, he could have easily have made up a nested hierarchy; an single objective hierarchy would be unnecessary. Furthermore, determining the real hierarchy would have required dissection of specimens and careful comparisons, and years and years of work, beyond the means of Adam at that time.
So, the objective hierarchy would have been unnecessary for Adam's work, and would have been beyond his ability to determine.

"These monkeys are at once the ugliest and the most beautiful creatures on the planet./ And the monkeys don't want to be monkeys; they want to be something else./ But they're not."
-- Ernie Cline

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Scrutinizer
Inactive Member


Message 57 of 87 (322319)
06-16-2006 2:17 PM
Reply to: Message 51 by RAZD
06-16-2006 7:14 AM


Re: Greetings
RAZD writes:
According to evolution, humans can never get a retina turned right-side-out without first entirely losing the current vision system, but according to ID (or to god-did-it) there is no such restraint on updating the design.
This may be off-topic, but I just thought I had to say something. The human retina is by no means "inside-out" or a "bad" design. First of all, the neurons connected to the photoreceptors must run in front for the opaque retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) to make contact with all the rods and cones from behind to provide nutrients and keep them from wearing out. If I remember correctly, the neurons "in the way" of the light actually are virtually transparent and have the same index of refraction as the surrounding vitreous humor. As for the inherent blind spot, it's no impediment since it is off to the side, and the other eye makes up for the lost information, anyway. We could discuss this in another thread if you wish.
Anyway, there actually is a restriction to updating the design, at least assuming one God. If designs were constantly changing or there were no consistency, it would make it look like multiple gods were competing; God would have to be consistent to show He is the only Designer. Besides, there is no real need for any modification to the human eye; it is all we need for survival, and our intelligence more than makes up for any deficiencies it may have (i.e., we can make glasses or contact lenses to correct near- or far-sightedness, and we can invent microscopes and telescopes if we ever need to see anything small or far away).
RAZD writes:
You are either talking about intelligent design OR creationism: these concepts are not compatable.
Actually, both concepts are entirely compatible. Any theory of intelligent design implies some supernatural intervention sometime in the past (whether it be billions or only thousands of years ago) for life to now exist at all, and in just about every creation story, at least one intelligent designer is involved. ID theorists just claim that ID does not say anything about the Designer, except that He is intelligent; ID in no way precludes the God of the Bible.
I'm sorry if I wasn't clear. I was talking about the biblical story of creation and just assumed you knew that that story involves an intelligent designer. Hence life is an intelligent design according to creation.

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fallacycop
Member (Idle past 5520 days)
Posts: 692
From: Fortaleza-CE Brazil
Joined: 02-18-2006


Message 58 of 87 (322321)
06-16-2006 2:20 PM
Reply to: Message 52 by Scrutinizer
06-16-2006 12:41 PM


Re: Greetings
Scrutinizer writes:
Could you please provide some examples of "broken" genes that humans and chimps share?
Jazzns has kindly provided a good example of a broken gene in post 53. It is really difficult to fit the broken genes inside the ID picture. The fact that these genes creates a nested hierarchy that agrees well with the hierarchies obtained by other methods is a very strong indeed evidence for evolution that cannot be handwaved away.

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Coragyps
Member (Idle past 735 days)
Posts: 5553
From: Snyder, Texas, USA
Joined: 11-12-2002


Message 59 of 87 (322327)
06-16-2006 2:28 PM
Reply to: Message 52 by Scrutinizer
06-16-2006 12:41 PM


Re: Greetings
Could you please provide some examples of "broken" genes that humans and chimps share?
In addition to the GLO gene, there is a urate oxidase pseudogene that has the same "break" in great apes but not monkeys. We and chimps can't oxidize uric acid because of this, so we can get gout - but it may help us live longer, as uric acid is an antioxidant. We share at least dozens of pseudogenes for odorant receptor proteins with various primates, as well. I'd have to look up the particulars, but the more visually-oriented primates, particularly those with three-color vision, seem to have developed sight to the exclusion of being able to smell as many things as a lemur. Same for the vomeronasal organ of great apes and humans - we don't even keep the organ past the fetal stage, so we don't keep many of the genes for its receptors.

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Modulous
Member
Posts: 7801
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


Message 60 of 87 (322331)
06-16-2006 2:40 PM
Reply to: Message 52 by Scrutinizer
06-16-2006 12:41 PM


d
The same sort of pattern is observed when comparing cytochrome C of the invertebrate silkmoth with the vertebrates lamprey, carp, turtle, pigeon, and horse. All the vertebrates are equally divergent from the silkmoth (27-30%). Yet again, comparing globins of a lamprey (a ”primitive’ cyclostome or jawless fish) with a carp, frog, chicken, kangaroo, and human, they are all about equidistant (73-81%). Cytochrome C’s compared between a carp and a bullfrog, turtle, chicken, rabbit, and horse yield a constant difference of 13-14%. There is no trace of any transitional series of cyclostome ’ fish ’ amphibian ’ reptile ’ mammal or bird.
It takes a while to do sequence comparisons, but here are the sequences:
silkworm
lamprey
turtle
Pigeon
Horse
and the result of the comparison:
Sequence 1: silkworm 107 aa
Sequence 2: lamprey 103 aa
Sequence 3: turtle 104 aa
Sequence 4: pigeon 104 aa
Sequence 5: horse 104 aa
Sequences (1:2) Aligned. Score: 70.8738
Sequences (1:3) Aligned. Score: 76.9231
Sequences (1:4) Aligned. Score: 77.8846
Sequences (1:5) Aligned. Score: 75.9615
Sequences (2:2) Aligned. Score: 100
Sequences (2:3) Aligned. Score: 79.6117
Sequences (2:4) Aligned. Score: 80.5825
Sequences (2:5) Aligned. Score: 82.5243
Sequences (3:2) Aligned. Score: 79.6117
Sequences (3:3) Aligned. Score: 100
Sequences (3:4) Aligned. Score: 92.3077
Sequences (3:5) Aligned. Score: 89.4231
Sequences (4:2) Aligned. Score: 80.5825
Sequences (4:3) Aligned. Score: 92.3077
Sequences (4:4) Aligned. Score: 100
Sequences (4:5) Aligned. Score: 89.4231
Sequences (5:2) Aligned. Score: 82.5243
Sequences (5:3) Aligned. Score: 89.4231
Sequences (5:4) Aligned. Score: 89.4231
Sequences (5:5) Aligned. Score: 100
Not easy to read, so I can make a N-J tree:
This is the way we should do these things. The interesting thing here is that the pigeon and turtle are grouped together, as per the hierarchy. You will note that it isn't perfect, which leads to my other point:
Just testing one protein is dangerous and firm conclusions cannot be drawn, but general tendencies are useful (and such a small number of organisms doesn't help, I don't have the time now, but might later to expand on this). One thing to bare in mind is that different techniques need to be applied with non-vertebrates, so a straight comparison between vertebrates and non-vertebrates is also fraught with potential error. There are some interesting resources out there, but they are a topic in themselves, if you are interested let me know.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 52 by Scrutinizer, posted 06-16-2006 12:41 PM Scrutinizer has not replied

  
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