[Boogieman]

I wonder if the standard line we hear about having “98% of the same genes as a chimpanzee” is based on the entire genome, or if they excluded this “junk dna” from that assessment?

[zeugma]

I wonder if the standard line we hear about having “98% of the same genes as a chimpanzee” is based on the entire genome, or if they excluded this “junk dna” from that assessment?

Largely the latter from what I understand. I've never bought the idea of "junk DNA". It's all just stuff they didn't know about yet. God's creation is wonderful. Talk to an information theorist sometime about the information density of DNA sometime. It's amazing.

[muawiyah]

The 98% commonality ~ which is now more like 94%, was based on GENES ~ not the entire DNA strands in our genome. The epigenetic studies have already shown us to be less entangled with chimps than is comfortable for some. Actually, the orangutangs are making a far better showing these days than some other lines of apes.

This work will lead eventually to several things:

(1) The disestablishment of Darwinian evolution entirely,

(2) The replacement of current evolution discussion that focuses on genes and their variations with something else that probably doesn't even sound like evolution (as if current "change" stuff does) ~ probably more like how our immune systems attack bugs, and

(3) A way into controlled gene resetting or modification ~ so if you get a bad mutation "they" can fix it!

I'm expecting that at some point someone will figure out how to wire up a chromosome so that we can communicate with it directly ~ see what it's thinking of ~ where it's going ~ why it "did that" instead of "this" ~ and so forth.

[muawiyah]

The "junk DNA" assessment was some science writer's imagination running rampant ~ that didn't come out of any formal study.

At some point we need to quit using the term.