Why are there no human apes alive today?

GULO is not an ERV. It is a pseudogene of an enzyme in the Vitamin C synthesis pathway. This is the third or fourth time I have told you this.So which ERV are you talking about? Remember, we are focusing on ERV's. How are these non-orthologous ERV's inconsistent with the consensus phylogeny? Remember that PTERV1 paper? It said the same thing. That's what all of the research says. Non-orthologous ERV's are the result of independent insertions in two different lineages after those lineages have split from their common ancestor. This is the case for both PTERV1 and human specific HERV-K insertions. Exactly, you can have both exogenous insertions which produce non-orthologous ERV's and insertions into a common ancestor which produce orthologous ERV's. Your quote agrees with me. I did crunch the numbers. Only 1 in 1.5 billion insertions will occur at the same spot. Using HIV as the example, 80% of the time it inserts into transcriptional units. Transcriptional units make up 45% of the 3 billion base human genome. Therefore, it takes 1.5 billion insertions, on average, for two insertions to occur at the same spot. Please show me where my math is wrong.And if retroviruses insert so easily into the same position in several species then why can't we find a single PTERV1 insertion at the same spot in any species? How do non-orthologous HERV-K insertions falsify the theory? Isn't it possible for HERV-K to continue to infect the human lineage after it split from our common ancestor with chimps? No, it took sequencing of the DNA flanking the inserts. And did you read this part?"Several lines of evidence indicate that chimpanzee and gorilla PTERV1 copies arose from an exogenous source. First, there is virtually no overlap (less than 4%) between the location of insertions among chimpanzee, gorilla, macaque, and baboon, making it unlikely that endogenous copies existed in a common ancestor and then became subsequently deleted in the human lineage and orangutan lineage."They point to the fact that PTERV1 insertions are non-orthologous to evidence horizontal transfer.Citing non-orthologous ERV's does not falsify the theory. Period. If humans and apes did not share a common ancestor then ALL of the ERV's should be non-orthologous. Using your criteria, all I have to do is point to a single orthologous ERV to falsify your baramins. I have over 200,000 such ERV's.

You haven't refuted it yet, so what makes you think you can in further posts?Admin has allowed us 20 more posts.From the PTERV1 paper:"Our data support a model where ancestral chimpanzee and gorilla species were infected independently and contemporaneously by an exogenous source of gammaretrovirus 3—4 million years ago. "
Lineage-Specific Expansions of Retroviral Insertions within the Genomes of African Great Apes but Not Humans and Orangutans - PMCThe authors agree with me. The non-orthologous nature of PTERV1 infections points to an exogenous source that infected the chimp and gorilla lineages independently after they split from their common ancestor. So PTERV1 insertions are out.Let me put this in simpler terms for you. Let's assume you have a sister, just for this thought experiment. Both you and your sister were born with around 200,000 ERV's that are found in the same spot in each of your genomes. This is due to the fact that these ERV's are in the genome of you and your sister's common ancestor (your parents). Let's also say that you and your sister have a few kids. Let's also say that your sister suffers a retroviral infection that made its way into one of her eggs. That egg went on to become one of your nieces. That niece now has an ERV that is not found in an orthologous position (the correct term is paralogous for intraspecies, but never mind that) in your children. Does this mean that your children and your sister's children no longer share a common ancestor?

For once, you are actually getting closer.So which HERV-K insertions are we talking about? Did you read this part?"Also consistent with the hypothesis of two independent germline infiltrations, the Southern blot (Figure 2) and PCR screening (Figure 5) of pSIV insertions in six Microcebus species and Cheirogaleus did not reveal any shared orthologous insertion between Microcebus and Cheirogaleus, as would be expected under the single ancestral germline infiltration model."Like PTERV1, these are non-orthologous insertions which indicates independent insertions in the two lineages that occurred after common ancestry.

On that front, I am still waiting for your description of what a real transitional fossil would look like. Until you supply this description you can not claim that any fossil is or is not transitional.

Here is a quote from the abstract:

quote:

---

Overall, 61% of the human elements compared to 21% of the chimpanzee and 47% of rhesus elements had estimated integration times less than 4.5 million years before present (MYBP), with an average integration times of 7.8 MYBP, 13.4 MYBP and 10.3 MYBP for HERV-K, CERV-K and RhERV-K, respectively. By excluding those ERV-K sequences generated by chromosomal duplication, we used 63 of the 106 elements to compare the population dynamics of ERV-K among species. This analysis indicated that both HERV-K and RhERV-K had similar demographic histories, including markedly smaller effective population sizes, compared to CERV-K. We propose that these differing ERV-K dynamics reflect underlying differences in the evolutionary ecology of the host species, such that host ecology and demography represent important determinants of ERV-K dynamics.
oi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0001026]--> -->oi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0001026">source

---

Can you explain how this falsifies ERV's as a reliable indicator of common ancestry? These insertions are non-orthologous. Again, pointing to non-orthologous ERV's does not refute orthologous ERV's. All this study shows is that HERV-K was more active in the human and rhesus populations than it was in the chimp populations. This in no way refutes the point that orthologous HERV-K insertions shared by chimps and humans are due to a single insertion in the common ancestor of humans and chimps. How does this refute orthologous ERV's as indicators of common ancestry? You have not explained this. How is this an inconsistency? Nowhere in the theory of evolution or common descent does it say that ERV's should have equal stability and equal infectivity for all species.On the morphology front, I am still waiting for YOUR description of what a transitional fossil should look like. Where is it? Until you supply this description you can not claim that there are or are not transitionals. Do whatever it takes in order for you to list a set of features that a transitional fossil should have. You have stated that H. erectus does not have the features you are looking for. I am asking for the list of features you ARE looking for.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

So should you, and yet you keep insisting that orthologous ERV's can be explained by independent insertions.So how many hotspots are there? How many bases make up these hot spots? Until you answer these questions you can not claim that orthologous ERV's are due to independent insertions. ERV's that are inhereted vertically are at orthologous positions. That is how you and your relatives share the same ERV's at the same locations in your genomes. If humans and chimps share a common ancestor then we too should have ERV's at the same locations in our genomes, plus non-orthologous ERV's that have entered each of the lineages since common ancestry. That is exactly what we see. We see over 200,000 orthologous ERV's shared by chimps and humans. Chimps and orangutans share fewer orthologous ERV's. This puts humans within the ape baramin.

Yes, the orthologous ERV-K insertions do. So why are you focusing on the non-orthologous ERV-K insertions that were inhereted horizontally? If humans and apes do not share a common ancestor then none of the ERV-K insertions should be orthologous, and yet we can find thousands of orthologous ERV-K insertions. Pointing to non-orthologous ERV-K insertions does not make this evidence go away. It doesn't. The paper you cited is using non-orthologous insertions which points to horizontal inheritance, not vertical. All the paper is talking about is the rate of integration into the the three species AFTER THE LINEAGES HAD SPLIT FROM THEIR COMMON ANCESTOR. You are making the same mistake with this HERV-K argument that you made with the PTERV1 argument.

It doesn't matter what the explanation is. The facts are that the retrovirus did not infect the human lineage or orangutan lineage, nor their common ancestor as evidence by the non-orthologous nature of chimp and gorilla PTERV1 insertions. How does species specificity of a relatively recent virus negate the more ancient orthologous ERV's that have been inherited vertically by both humans and chimps through common ancestry? You have not explained this. You numbers are way off again. Humans and chimps share over 200,000 orthologous ERV's with only a handful (100 to 300) that are non-orthologous. On top of that, chimps and humans share orthologous ERV's that are not found in an orthologous position in orangutans. This places humans within the ape baramin, not outside of it. How? Those figures came from the human and chimp genome papers. Not only did they sequence all of the ERV's, they also sequenced the ENTIRE GENOME. If you are going to turn a blind eye to the peer reviewed genome papers then you might as well admit that the evidence doesn't matter with regards to baramins. PTERV1 is the most abundant family with regard to size, not number. Due to their recent insertion they are mostly full sized. Older ERV's tend to be solo LTR's due to the fact that the repeat sequences lend themselves to recombination. This loops out the retroviral genes and leaves a single copy of the repeat region. The fact that there are so many intact PTERV1 copies also indicates that they were a recent addition to the genome. This is even more evidence for the recent horizontal and independent transfer of PTERV1 into the chimp and gorilla genomes. As far as number, PTERV1 has very few insertions compared to the overall number of insertions. This is supported by the FACT that chimp and gorilla PTERV1 insertions are not found at orthologous positions. Non-orthology indicates horizontal transfer given the random nature of retroviral insertion and the billions of hot spots in any given genome. The peer reviewed human genome paper says otherwise. Sorry, but I am going to side with the scientists who actually sequenced the genome instead of a random creationist who thinks GULO is an ERV. Then let's test your theory. If this scenario is true then I shouldn't find more than a handful of ERV's at orthologous positions between humans and chimps. Instead of a handful, I find over 200,000 at orthologous positions. Your theory is falsified.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

So you are saying that Lluc is transitional?

At some level? Yes. Definitely at the primate level. What some people seem to forget is that species are grouped by shared characteristics, not by differences. Chimps, gorillas, bonobos, and orangutans are all different, and I don't think Mazzy would disagree. Therefore, differences between humans and other apes is not at issue. What is at issue is the shared characteristics. So what other group of species do humans share more characteristics with than the great apes? The answer is none. Therefore, humans are within the ape group.However, Linnaean taxonomy is arbitrary. Where you draw the line between groups is always going to be subjective. For example, why not have all old world monkeys and great apes in a single taxonomic Family. There is actually nothing stopping this from happening, other than tradition. At the same time, if you are going to break humans out of the great ape group because of the differences between humans and other apes then you must also break off the other ape species into separate families because of the differences between them as well.What it comes down to is if you are going to put chimps, bonobos, gorillas, (gibbons?), and orangutans in a single group then you have no reason to exclude humans as well. If you want to exclude humans then you will have to put all of the other ape species into separate groups in order to be consistent.Added by edit:From a genetics point of view, it makes even less sense to put humans in a separate family. Chimps and humans share more DNA than chimps and orangutans. If anything, a grouping that put orangutans and gibbons in one group and chimps, humans, and gorillas in another would be consistent with the genetic data.Linnaeus himself debated whether or not to put chimps into the Homo genus, and this was in 1758 well before Darwin was even born. There is an unmistakeable resemblance between us and our ape cousins. When we look into the eyes of an ape we can't help but notice the same spark in their eyes that we have in ours. Some may say that comparing ourselves to other apes only insults the human species. They never stop to think of how we have elevated our taxon.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.Edited by Taq, : grammar