Posted on 10/01/2009 8:25:14 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
Percentage differences are not credible comparators when dealing with an information carrying media like DNA. All DNA strands, whether for a gnat or a human contain the same four complimentary bases; adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine. In this respect they are 100% similar. All DNA strands are comprised of two long chains of nucleotides twisted into a double helix and joined by hydrogen bonds between the complementary bases. Again 100% similar.
Consider the preamble to the constitution. It is 52 words comprised of 330 characters. If the word "not" was added to the end of it the meaning would be significantly different with 99% similarity.
Here is the proper is a link commenting upon a sort of
Who was it that was crying "heretic" whenever research indicated that *some* ideas that could be linked to aspects of Lamarckism were correct? Who is it that is scared that they might be linked with such an ancient departure from dogma?
I did PCR in the mid 90s and it was a real bitch to avoid contamination. I had to bleach almost everything used, even the interior of the pipettes to get rid of the contamination.
Back in 94 the databases were orders of magnitude smaller. Yeast wasn't even sequenced (the first entire genome sequenced- would have made my thesis work easier).
Sequencing was totally different then. The associated paper used radio-labeled nucleotides and ran it on a gel. The sequencing gels were read by hand. Now fluorescent tagged nucleotides are used and the sequence is read directly off the gel by machine. In fact you send off your DNA and primers by FedEx or other courier and the next afternoon you are e-mailed your sequence. Much faster and accurate.
Doesn't prove anything except that dinosaur DNA hasn't been cloned.
I keep hearing posters say they've done this and that or have a degree in some field yet prove to be strangely ignorant about that very field.
A simple search of papers on the subject would be helpful to you but I'm not going to do it for you.
Exactly what am I ignorant about in relation to the post you responded to. ?
This was 15 years ago. I was describing how things have changed since the 1994 paper.
I’ve done PCR, sequencing, cloned DNA, and even got a patent on a modified DNA sequence I constructed. I have done these things myself, so I know what I’m talking about.
Do you have a background in molecular biology?
I read the paper and did the blast comparison. Mostly human and chimp cytochrome came up. Probably came from all the people that handled the bone before it got to the molecular biology lab. DNA from them probably got into the little nooks and crannies of the fossilized bone. The primers they used were human cytochrome. Reptile cytochrome primers would have been better to use, but the sequence probably was not known then (1994).
What is your education in? I want to know, because then I can put more weight behind what you say when you discuss that field. Mine is in molecular biology.
GGG said his is in religious studies. I don’t argue with him about what the bible literally says (by literally I mean what is written down, not the meaning). I disagree about his interpretation of it though.
I did a Pubmed search of dinosaur and DNA and didn’t get any references that showed the cloning of dinosaur DNA. How about listing them or at least the terms you used in your search.
Is there a point to this and your other comment?
Yes, that your post and the premise of this thread are wrong.
It shows that they made a mistake, that was shown to be a mistake a long time ago. Pure and simple.
Plus you called me ignorant.
ok, I’ll check it out. My apologies if I was wrong!
If you take that to mean yourself, so be it.
Woodward claimed to have sequenced dinosaur DNA and other researchers criticized his work as faulty due to contamination.
Maybe it was, I didn't suggest otherwise but provided a link since he was mentioned in the posted article.
As you say that was fifteen years ago and the methods not so refined as now but your self proclaimed education was also from that same time so presumably you learned what was current at the time.
However you did say you knew what you talking about.
“The primers they used were human cytochrome. Reptile cytochrome primers would have been better to use, but the sequence probably was not known then (1994).”
It appears at least one reptile cytochrome was being sequenced thiry years earlier.
From: “Biochem. J. (1991) 274, 825-831 (Printed in Great Britain)
Rattlesnake cytochrome c
A re-appraisal of the reported amino acid sequence
R. P. AMBLER and M. DANIEL
Department of Molecular Biology, University of Edinburgh, Mayfield Road, Edinburgh EH9 3JR, Scotland, U.K.
The amino acid sequence of rattlesnake cytochrome c was originally reported in 1965, and was one of the earlier sequences
to be studied. When compared with other mitochondrial cytochromes c, the snake sequence was soon seen to be
anomalous. There were several positions in which the snake protein resembled human cytochrome c, although comparable
anomalies were not reported for the protein from other reptiles such as lizard and turtle. Explanations of these results have
included accelerated evolution in the snake lineage, paralogy rather than orthology, and faulty determination of the
sequence, and the rattlesnake is now often omitted from cytochrome c phylogenetic trees. We have re-investigated the
sequence of the snake protein, and believe that the correct sequence differs in nine places from that used for evolutionary
theorizing since 1965. Four of these differences are near the haem-attachment site, in a region that was only analysed for
amino acid composition in the original investigation. The other five differences are towards the C-terminus of the
molecule, and can be explained as being due to the wrong ordering of amino acids within peptides that had been
satisfactorily purified. Despite these corrections, the rattlesnake cytochrome c sequence still more closely resembles human
cytochrome c than it does that of any other protein we know. We believe that this is an example of convergent evolution,
although it does appear that there has been accelerated change in the line connecting the rattlesnake to the ancestral
vertebrate line. Detailed evidence for the amino acid sequence of the protein has been deposited as Supplementary
Publication SUP 50162 (16 pages) at the British Library Document Supply Centre, Boston Spa, Wetherby, West
Yorkshire LS23 7BQ, U.K., from whom copies can be obtained on the terms indicated in Biochem. J. (1991) 273, 5.”
What???!! Rattlesnake cytochrome c more closely resembles human cytochrome c than any other know protein?
It's an anomaly! Best leave the serpent out of the tree.
Maybe it's a good thing reptile cytochrome wasn't used as a primer.
That’s the amino acid sequence, not the nucleotide sequence that was found in 1965.
DNA sequencing was not invented until the later 1970s.
Two proteins can have identical amino acid sequences (I’m not saying the rattlesnake and human do) and have many nucleotide sequence differences. The genetic code uses 64 3-base codons to code for 20 amino acids and a stop codon (which designates the end of the protein). There are ambiguities in the third position of the codons for some of the amino acids.
Yes I learned what was current and did a few of the radionucleotide based sequencing gels in school, but by the mid 1990s, I “cloned by phone” and sent them out to be sequenced using the ABI Prism apparatus.
The amino acids of the active sites don’t vary much in all cytochrome c proteins.
The function of cytochrome c is a very basic one in the cell and once an efficient molecular structure arose for the function, there hasn’t been much selective pressure to change it.
Where’s your comeback?
You seem to be quiet since I showed that you don’t know the difference between amino acids and nucleotides.
But since I didn’t say one is the same as the other why do feel I don’t know the difference?
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