Well, there have been several partially successful attempts to hijack this thread. I am now going to return to the original subject. Perhaps we can hear some of those alternate explanations for the real data being presented or perhaps we will continue to see a demonstration of the inability of YE to deal with actual data instead of strawmen and misrepresentations.
In my last on topic post [ http://www.baptistboard.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/topic/3/3200/2.html#000019 ] I gave some information about one way in which the genome shows evidence of evolution having actually occurred, how that example gives an example of a mechanism of ways in which the genome evolves and how that example is a problem for a YE paradigm.
I want to spend a few moments further on background for that example and then give another case of the same process.
First off, there was a mention of retroposons. These are segments of DNA which have the ability to copy themselves around the genome. They are sort of like little viruses.
The example discussed a particular retroposons called an Alu. An Alu is a sequence which is copied around primate genomes extensively. The one estimate I remember is that just this one sequence has over 500,000 copies in the human genome. (Just when did that happen in a young earth?) Alu sequences can provide genetic diversity because when they insert themselves, they change the DNA sequence in that location. Hold that thought for a moment.
Genes are generally broken into pieces called exons which must be spliced together to make the actual gene. As it turns out, a given exon can be spliced into more than one gene. Some genes even use just part of a particular exon. So by using a process of alternative splicing or of exon shuffling, new genes can be created simply by alternating which exons are joined together and this can be done without affecting other genes.
Back to the Alu. As it turns out, it is not hard to mutate part of the Alu sequence into the three letter code that signals the end of an exon. So when an Alu sequence is copied into an area of DNA and mutates, it can provide a new exon. This exon can then be alternatively spliced with other exons potentially resulting in a new gene. That is just what happened in the example above.
Here is a different paper that talks about alternative splicing. In this specific case, alternative splicing leads to a variety of genes. In this case, 23 exons form 14 different isoforms. Included here is a variation in the splicing where new sequences are produced by alternatively including or excluding section of DNA from within a given exon as mentioned above. It also provides another method of generating novelty by including expressions of Alu, LINE and MER repeats very similar to the expressed Alu sequence in the previous post.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=11305939&query_hl=1
In my last on topic post [ http://www.baptistboard.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/topic/3/3200/2.html#000019 ] I gave some information about one way in which the genome shows evidence of evolution having actually occurred, how that example gives an example of a mechanism of ways in which the genome evolves and how that example is a problem for a YE paradigm.
I want to spend a few moments further on background for that example and then give another case of the same process.
First off, there was a mention of retroposons. These are segments of DNA which have the ability to copy themselves around the genome. They are sort of like little viruses.
The example discussed a particular retroposons called an Alu. An Alu is a sequence which is copied around primate genomes extensively. The one estimate I remember is that just this one sequence has over 500,000 copies in the human genome. (Just when did that happen in a young earth?) Alu sequences can provide genetic diversity because when they insert themselves, they change the DNA sequence in that location. Hold that thought for a moment.
Genes are generally broken into pieces called exons which must be spliced together to make the actual gene. As it turns out, a given exon can be spliced into more than one gene. Some genes even use just part of a particular exon. So by using a process of alternative splicing or of exon shuffling, new genes can be created simply by alternating which exons are joined together and this can be done without affecting other genes.
Back to the Alu. As it turns out, it is not hard to mutate part of the Alu sequence into the three letter code that signals the end of an exon. So when an Alu sequence is copied into an area of DNA and mutates, it can provide a new exon. This exon can then be alternatively spliced with other exons potentially resulting in a new gene. That is just what happened in the example above.
Here is a different paper that talks about alternative splicing. In this specific case, alternative splicing leads to a variety of genes. In this case, 23 exons form 14 different isoforms. Included here is a variation in the splicing where new sequences are produced by alternatively including or excluding section of DNA from within a given exon as mentioned above. It also provides another method of generating novelty by including expressions of Alu, LINE and MER repeats very similar to the expressed Alu sequence in the previous post.
Lipovich L, Lynch ED, Lee MK, King MC., A novel sodium bicarbonate cotransporter-like gene in an ancient duplicated region: SLC4A9 at 5q31, Genome Biol. 2001;2(4)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=11305939&query_hl=1
