My overall view from this boards.

LuisMost of the proof of evoltuion turns out to be for the part of evolution that we agree with. We love Galapogos, mutating viruses, bacteria generating antibiotic resistance, peppered moths - it's all OK with us.Then you guys jump to homology both anatomical and molecular shouting in triumph as if God couldn't create animals that used the same underlying biochemistry or sampled anatomical space completely! Why should created animals that are more similar not have more similar biochemistry!We are simply prepared to tell you the common sense reasons why we beleive in creation and why 99% of scientific findings have an immediate creationist interpretation. Your proclamation that your side has won, when none of you ever even agree 'that's a good point' as I often have for your side, betrays your sides' extreme bias.

BradI knew you'd get some EM into that post. I think I agree with what you said.

The point is that we can easily see the sequence simlarity of the ribosome proteins that are in all of life. But the 'new' genes in the 'most primitive' organism with an immune system aren't recognizable as having come from elsewhere. They came out of thin air.Of course you can propose that hemoglobin in humans is related to hemoglobin in frogs - but that does not work for the 'first' hemoglobin. It does not work for the first insulin.Genomes are orderable into protein families. We have protein families that other organisms categorically do not have. In hope evolutionists call that drift to unrecognizability. We call it creation. Faith either way.

JohnI used quotes to indicate that for us they are only 'new' or 'primative' in the sense of God's design blueprints.I am very happy to define the 'first' hemoglobin. From your point of view it is the hemoglobin in the first organism in the evoltuionary progression that has hemoglobin. From our point of view it would be the hemoglobin in the organism with the least complexity. Much the same actually. But in your scenario the hemoglobin requires a natural explanation. It is in one organism and not in the previous (extant) anscestor or ansecestral relative and yet the rest of the genomic sequence nicely lines up between these similar kinds (eg man and ape). There are almost invariably no hints as to where these new sequences come from. You don't get any genomic hits using sequence search tools.Almost every protein type you can think of are organizable into families which are undoubtedly 'related' (inverted commas simply means that you and I interpret this differently). There are cytokines, insulins, globins, enzyme families etc. You can think of your genome as made up of about (guess coming up) 5,000 to 10,000 protein families. Each family might have between one and a half-dozen members (some families might have much larger numbers of members).We would not argue that the members of the families could have evolved from each other (although we believe hat they didn't).But what we ask is where did the first member of each family come from - eg the first insulin, or the first globin? Becasue the closest living 'relative' has almost all of the genes that the 'descendent' has but no hint of where the new 25 proteins came from. That is how life is organized. You can't find the hints of where these genes came from in the genomic sequence databases. I'm not kidding. If you could there would be no creationists who were also scientists.By the way, I talk no double talk. I talk the same language as a molecualr evolution researcher. With the genomes in now there is some fascinating work going on trying to understand how genomes are organised and how they relate to each other. Some of my collegues would say that some of my work is molecular evoltuion (and I would agree except that the data actually supports microevolution and kinds). The term 'first hemoglobin' contains no ambiguity, nor does the term 'protein family'. I enjoy explaining my work regardless of creation/evoltuion so it is no hassle for me.[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 09-09-2002]

SLPxIn kind variation is extremely well understood. We all know exactly how the Galapogos finch beaks changed shapes. I know you know that. Go to Medline and check out the protein sequence variations from finch to finch. It's variation of existing genes.What about brocoli, cabbage, cauliflower and mustard. They all have the same genome - they're all mustard actually! If you select for leaves or stems or flowers you end up with these varities. Not a single evoltuionist suggests that new genes arose during the hundreds of years that agriculturalists bred these varities. It is a mix of hybridization and selection.

^ Brocolli, cauliflower, cabbage and mustard looks as different as lions and tigers to me.[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 09-10-2002]

^ Why not just give your scientific reason (that the hints have drifted away) rather than be so shirty John? Given the 'conservation' of much of the genome including introns I would expect the hints to be visible in many cases. Many of your comments are plain rude and illogical. There is nothing wrong with my definition of the 'first' hemoglobin for example.[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 09-11-2002]

MammuthusGiven that those varities of wild mutard were generated by selective breeding their genomes would be related by differntial gene losses. No evoltuionist would calim that ne wgenes evolved during those centuries of slelctive breeding. There is a universe of difference between genomic gain vs loss.The experiment I prpose to test the idea of 'out of thin air' is continued genome sequencing. If actually seeing creaiton played out is all that will satisfy you that is just too bad. Maybe it is our consciences that God expects us to really find these answers from.

MammuthusQuick answers:1) A kind is approximately at the family level. Future genome seqeuncing may even back this up in detail in the future as a naturally emerging concept from the data.2) Micro works on existing genes and maintains their basic funciton. Macro needs new genes. they are quite different. Why do jump from micro to macro so readily?3) That proteins exist in families is well known becasue you can do a BLAST search on any protein in humans and you will get human hits! Sure some families are very small. Exon shiffling is fine with me. You show me how the first hemoglobin arrived this way.4) For us God created introns. They, and via RNA splicing, are a way of getting more than one protein from a gene.5) I have no problem with retroviruses or any sort of horizontal transfer. If you insist on calling it macroevoltuion then I believe in macrevoltuion.6) The original state of finches was a created pair, or a few sets of pairs, presumably. Microevoltuion and hybridisaiton generated the observed variation. Where did I state that all plants have the same genome? No-one on Earth believes that.7) Genotype dictates phenotype ultimately deterministically. My genes are comprised of a mix of my parents' genes. What are you getting at?I try to "speak the language of a molecular evolutionist" but I am actually a strcutural biologist. Some of my work impinges on molecaulr evoltuion, I lecture on molecualr evoltuion but yes, I am not an expert on it. And it is easily possible to talk of 'genes coming out of thin air' whilst believing in microevoltuion.[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 09-11-2002]

^'Kind' could be exactly identical with families. Who knows? We'll see. From our point of view we expect it to be easy to identify ultimately from genomes but it may be obscured by issues of loss vs gain.Genotype does dictate phenotype to an extremely large extent - consider identical twins. Of course there are epigenetic influences - environemnt etc but they really are minimal in terms of what your face will look like for example.

QuetzalThere are creationists who have been thinking about this - see their barimin stuff. But I prefer the genomics angle and when we've got more genomes we'll have a better idea.What gene families distinguish? To a large extent I'm saying any gene families will. But if you have two identical genomes apart from one gene family it is certainly possible that the 'new' gene is one that became a pseudo-gene in the other so that should be considered. So I would suggest studying large numbers of genomes and see if there is an abrupt jump where suddenly a whole swag of genes comes in. If this occurs across life we would identify that with kinds. The data does approximately fit this scenario already but we need more genomes to really see.I do plan (in my own mainstream research) to get into the sorts of questions you have asked (eg cat vs dog families). But, as you know, we only have two mammalian genomes and the other genomes we have are very differnet. But I am interested in catching up on the comaprative genomics of fly vs. mosquito for example.I agree this needs to go beyond hand waving. But at this point it is without doubt that there are core genomes, there are sub-genomes for each novelty (like the immune system) and these sub-genomes are characterizable by unique protein families. That is undeniable. I have started a new project in this area and I will report here even before I publish, OK!EDIT: Guys, we need to respect what Moose has told us - I'm starting a 'kinds' thread. SO let's not post here anymore.[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 09-12-2002]

SLPxYour post requires actual work to be done! Its not just a chat subject.For now let me say that we've talked about it before that these pseudo-genes may have unknown purposes or that the mutaitons are in some sense determinsitic due to some DNA motifs etc. For us it may even be God's implementation of the curse at the fall.I have agreed here before that what you (and others before you) have shown is powerful evidence of common descent. How many times do I have to say it?Kinds? I do not use these sorts of alignments to distinguish kinds. I would use summaries of presence or absence of protein families. We all know that the sequences of functional genes can easily drift through mutations and yet perform the identical function. It is not like this sort of evoltuion created a new function - it is simply drift and optimization.It is the presence or absence of protein families that we need to use.Introns? I have no evidence that God created introns - but they have a purpose - they partition genes for multiple splicing.EDIT: Guys, we need to respect what Moose has told us - I'm starting a 'kinds' thread. SO let's not post here anymore.[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 09-12-2002]

Guys, we need to respect what Moose has told us - I'm starting a 'kinds' thread. SO let's not post here anymore.

SLPxOK, can you explain what the precise significance of those sequences is again in your opinion (for poor old TB) - and what organisms they came from, and what they code for and . . . ?Synapomorphic seqeunces? Sure, but let's clearly define what we are trying to achieve. Are we trying to figure out what are the key differences between significantly different taxa? Or what? What are you trying to achieve? I am trying to find out what the key differences are between taxa. To a large extent I see hemoglobin in man and rat as being almost exactly the same thing. I want to see what really new things came up.EDIT: Hey, this should be discussed in the KINDS thread! Please answer there.[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 09-16-2002]

YEs I am interested genomically comparing differnt families. But I will await the genomes so you will have to submit your suggestion to the genome prioritising authorties.I just found out that I was mistaken - the mosquito genome is not in draft mode yet. That explains why I can't fin the coparative genomics paper! I think it will be out soon. Are fly/mosquito sibling families (ie in same order but different families)?[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 09-17-2002]