Pseudogene, relic or functional?

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It's the same question again: if species have similar genes because they are morphologically similar,

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They don't have similar genes because they are morphologically similar. they have similar genes because they inherited them from a common ancestor. Morphological similarity need not imply genetic similarity i.e. the case of the Tazmanian wolf.

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and if pseudogenes used to have a function, why were they "broken" in similar ways in similar species? They "functionality" argument doesn't work in this case.

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If an error occurred in the common ancestor of a variety of species, one would expect to see the same error propagated in all or many of the descendant species. A functional argument in this case does not work. Only if the pseudogene actually has an unknown function and is under intense selection or a nearby locus, shared by a variety of species is under intense selection and thus restricts the variation in the pseudogene by hitchhiking. [/quote]

Yes, when examined according to evolutionary theory pseudogenes make perfect sense. Unfortunately for the creationists, the complexity of the genome cannot be so easily explained through Genesis-creationism, at least not without resorting to some sort of "well, that's the way God did it" sort of argument.

I am curious if there is a consistent creationist position on pseudogenes (not that there are any consistent creationist positions other than evolution is wrong). But the idea that species are not related and humans are a special creation that have pseudogenes because of the fall is hard to reconcile with homologous pseudogenes among species sharing specific mutations...the Goddidit arguments are great..they can be consistent with everything i.e. useless or with nothing..equally uselesscheers,M

I think the most common position I have heard from creationists in response to the GLO pseudogene is that it is a result of the fall in the garden of eden. Presumably the other primates which share the pseudogene are merely collateral damage from an avenging deity who isn't to precise with his curses.

Mamuthus:I am curious if there is a consistent creationist position on pseudogenes (not that there are any consistent creationist positions other than evolution is wrong). But the idea that species are not related and humans are a special creation that have pseudogenes because of the fall is hard to reconcile with homologous pseudogenes among species sharing specific mutations...the Goddidit arguments are great..they can be consistent with everything i.e. useless or with nothing..equally uselessJudge:
Hi M,
Just what do you mean "have pseudogenes because of the fall " ?

To say that we have pseudogenes because of the fall is rather humorous. The idea is that God broke a gene he had given us. He did this as punishment for the incident in the garden involving the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.I remember the first time I came across this idea on a creationist web page. What interested me most was their deliberate choice to omit the fact that we share this pseudogene with other primates. The article just said something like "...and a few other species...."Why do they think their audience cannot be trusted with the facts? If they're right about the history of the world, the truth can only point them to God and to a literal Genesis creation story.........right?

That makes me wonder where the legal oath " Do you promise to tell the truth,the WHOLE truth,and nothing BUT THE TRUTH so help you GOD" comes from.

Zephyr:To say that we have pseudogenes because of the fall is rather humorous. The idea is that God broke a gene he had given us. He did this as punishment for the incident in the garden involving the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.Judge:
well..I am not familiar with every creationist idea re pseudo genes, but the only creationist explanation I recall is not really what you seem to propose here, although there may be some crreationists who propose what you say here.Although to be honest I am not exactly clear as to exactly what you are saying the creationist position is.

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well..I am not familiar with every creationist idea re pseudo genes, but the only creationist explanation I recall is not really what you seem to propose here, although there may be some crreationists who propose what you say here.

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Although to be honest I am not exactly clear as to exactly what you are saying the creationist position is.

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Hmmm... I hesitate to generalize excessively, because I don't know enough about the variety of creationist ideas. I'm not sure how many creationists even know of pseudogenes, let alone actually believe God created this specific one (read: broke an existing, functioning gene) to punish men (and several kinds of apes ? ? ? ) for his sin. It was only one site that I read, but the idea may be common. Your guess is as good as mine.

M:
I am curious if there is a consistent creationist position on pseudogenesJudge:
Not too sure....there sems to very little on it anywhere.The evil Dr Borger went some way to providing a good start. That being that separately created genomes are "plastic" yet "stable". He may here have lent on Peter M. Scheeles book.If I unerstood correctly some parts of the genome/s can be disabled and others are indsipensible.Thus the exact same pseudogene occurring in two different genomes would be the result of both genes being exposed to the same incident.They would mutate the same because the mutations are "non random".He stopped short IIRC of explaining why there would be a nested heirarchy that matches taxonomic groups (to some degree).I imagine the explanaton must be that similar homogenies (or is that anagenies?) mean similar biochemistry.Any ideas how this could be tested best?

There are plenty of ideas that genes could be divided both classical (Muller) and recent (intron) so it is wishful to doubt and use God as an excuse especially when a new prof to Cornell finally simply asked what a gene was anyways that the others already tenured in the audience of grad and undergrads and the profs in residence COULD NOT ANSWER and simply broke out into a specific calcuation of what for a pink patch of Antartica we call by our DC representation "bean bag".

Sory Brad...your post went "straight through to the keeper" as we say here.
You may have to dumb it down a little for me. I am interested in this topic but not quite up to speed with the jargon

Hi judge,
long time no see. Welcome back.
I am familiar (way too familiar) with Peter Borger's musings. However, I don't think he could be taken as having a mainstream position on mutation or genomics wrt creationism.In genetics, if a mutation occurs, one can follow it as it goes from the organism that suffered the mutation to its offspring from generation to generation. Heredity is a common position for both genetics and evolution thus there is a mainstream explanation for the common occurrence of specific defects in pseudogenes among species. I was wondering if there was a consistent view among creationists. What I meant by the fall is the creationist position that Adam was perfect and after the fall our sins caused the genome to degenerate (and for some unexplainable reason by creationism) animals share an enormous number of identical defects..which increase in number the more morphologically similar those animals are to humans.cheers,
M

If I were to answer the question "what is a gene" I would refer to RNA transcription followed by translation. I think we should differentiate between open reading frames (ORF's) and actual genes. Genes seem to be under some control, or at least have a promoter upstream that causes first transcription and then translation. Pseudogenes, in this light, are "false" genes in that they represent a previously functional gene that is now turned off due to internal deactivation (eg, internal stop). I guess a promoter mutation leading to no transcription could also fit under this category, but I'm not sure if they are classicly listed in this way.Introns can also throw us a curveball, but this can usually be cleared up when looking at the mature protein. Internal mutations at cleavage sites (at the protein, RNA, and DNA level) could hinder production, but I would guess that most intron mutations are neutral.But I am surprised no one stood up and gave a definition for "gene". Maybe everyone thought it was a trick question and didn't want to feel singled out. Some of my profs used to do that, ask a general question and refute it with a specific case. That's when vague languange (usually, mostly, and the such) comes into play.

I suppose the point was to use pseudogenes in a continuous argument much as Drosophila salivary glands and Dobshansky's surpise that he felt it OK to do phylogeny but one involves the CONCEPT OF MUTATION as well as in this case. There is already an issue for me in Bertrand Russel's use of symbolic logic FROM BOOLE's thought on the laws of thought that remands continuity explained much as Einstein simply needed admitted to generate general relativity but does not necessarily imply the philosopher MUST judge of temporal priority so by using psedogenes especially to argue anti-C especially in the profesional climate where the concept of the gene was not specified (ie how in this case of psedogene can we be MORE certain than the case of introns that the changes in the set of psedo genes asserted to be more than correlationally connected that Mueller's ideas on how a gene itself may be divided is not or is not relevant ). What I was saying there is that to use it as an argument and not merely a term or category to organize knowledge is problematic should you feel with me, which you may not, tht Mendel's use of reciprocal crosses crosses IN THE CURRENT HISTORY OF SYMBOLIC LOGIC (not strategies of creation evolution disputation)(of course times can change and I rarely find I am siding with the evos projections etc etc...) a temporal and spatial continuum that needs seperation rather than conflation as the singling out in this case psedogenes. I do not know if there is a consistent and plausible use of pseudogenes in creationist praxis which seems to be the orginal question here. I only wanted to point out that turning this topic against creationsim by BLAMING A GOD you may not believe is better left to figuring out what the causation is actually that my bind a group of psedogenes. To think that the fall "broke" them I could have accepted as a strarting to talk on the topic but that thought immediately brought up any idea of division of genes which may or may not be due to mutations but I would be willing to propose thoughts on such physiologically genetically before disussing the transmission across generations which would be what would be needed materially if the there were sets of defects traveling with other forms of DNA seqencing to which I noted tht there is not really good enough consensus in the advanced schools on what THIS gene is anyways except that whatever it is it is the magnitude targeted in population genetics calculations but if one STARTS THERE there is no reason to argue for the any other continuum of genetics than the one that really exists and will be increasingly found to exist. The creationist in me just refuses to believe that the Mendelism in this population thinking must always go to ANY evolutionary speculation as to how to scale biological change whether by point mutations, mistakes in replication, pseudogenes, information transfer via microtubule guanosine, friction induced ionic path changes on thermal contact of two cells, anatomical refernence form sinks of negentropy, metric singularites of catstrophe sets, group vehicles of biologically closed electric cirucits or what have you. I cn go a long way before I question Crick on vitalism let me say. The reason time willing I will explain out of Boole's doctrine of elimination but this will take time and I am going to think on it this weekend. I do think that c/e may have indeed succeed in wresting from Kant (without answering him sofar however) some of what was ONLY metaphysical territory for him but I think Russel's idea that Kant's distance of life from sun increasing being better was disengeious. It disqualifies Russell and not Kant but one must realize that then Kant is preferable to Laplace. This seems to have been missed by the current crop of elite historians of biology.