Is Human DNA as good as it gets?

Check out C-value paradox sometime. The amount of DNA has almost no relationship to the complexity of the organism.

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Anyway, I don't like to say "primitive." What's primitive in a contemporary context? Are bacteria "primitive", even though they're the most successful lifeform - by far - the Earth has ever known? Bacteria are adapted to their many varied environments, just as anything else is; evolution didn't stop for bacteria any more than it stopped for lizards or mammals or apes.

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Primitive relates to something that comes first, as in "primary". It originally had nothing negative about it. Another way to look at the first type of anything is generalized and then things tend to move to more specialized forms, with the consequent risk of extinction that goes with specialization. You in fact can have extremely specialized bacteria, so specialized that when their host/niche dies; so do they.At the root of the problem is how most people conceptualize evolution in that it is generally believed that species such as ourselves are at the top of the evolutionary "ladder". Only problem is...there is no ladder.This message has been edited by Speel-yi, 02-04-2006 11:40 PM

There are changes in human DNA all the time, each of us has about 10 mutations that are more or less neutral.There are also changes in the frequency of alleles in populations over time. This in its simplest form, is evolution in the Darwinian sense.That is to say, a population will have variation of the frequency of traits within it at any given time.An easy way to look at it is to look at something like eye color in a population. If a community has a generation with 90 blue eyed people and 10 brown eyed people in one generation and the next has 100 blue eyed people and no brown eyed...that is evolution. The frequency of the genes has changed. (It would be safe to say that the blue eye allele has become fixed in this case.)The above case only would involve genetic drift.In a case involving Natural Selection, take a look at the number of people that now are carriers for Sickle Cell Anemia. The numbers are growing because of the presence of the Malaria parasite.You also may wish to consider The Red Queen Hypothesis where a species has to continuously adapt to the selective pressures brought about by the pathogens and parasites or become extinct. (We have to keep "running" just to stay in the same place.)The human race is constantly evolving and so are the pathogens that prey upon us. Evolution happens...