When are people gonna wake up and stop poisoning themselves and their children with toxic vaccines? I stand firm by my stance that
there is no such thing as a safe vaccine. Just read the books
Vaccine Epidemic, Dr. Mary's Monkey, and the related portions of
Behold A Pale Horse, and it should not be difficult to grasp the notion that
we are being sold lies surrounding vaccines.
Again, who is behind such a genocidal plot? You guessed it: the Edomite bloodline.Folks,
Ive gotten a bunch of hatemail responses from my continued reporting of Dr. Ott's research into the Edomite bloodline and how it all ties to the illuminati, the NWO, and the ruling power structures behind most nations and certainly behind the central banks. As Ive said all along, I dont serve to promote any agenda, am not bought out by any interests, and stand at the helm of my own blog retaining complete editorial control of what I publish - and that for the most part what I choose to publish is FOLLOWING THE EVIDENCE - wherever it may lead.
I strive to publish only those findings which can be properly vetted - in most cases by anyone with a computer an internet connection and half a brain. I do have my opinions and hunches, which I state clearly as such, but in the case of fact-based evidence I simply choose to put it out there and encourage you the reader to do your own homework to see for yourself if it checks out or not.
So far
my winning track record has yielded much international praise and readership, and zero rebuttals - save for those maniacal rants from the brainwashed minions who serve only to attempt to discredit and "debunk" to change public perception without actually addressing the facts, instead hurling insults and jesuitical arguments to change the topic.
All I can say is,
if any of you got off your lazy asses and did as much homework as I have done to piece this thing together, you too would clearly see what I do: that
the man behind the curtain is no man, instead it is a luciferian soldier of the Edomite bloodline, pushing forward an agenda centuries old to ultimately wipe out just about everyone but them -
especially Christians.
Have we forgotten our true history that we were founded as a Christian nation by patriots who clearly understood the Edomite agenda and went so far as to state on record the dangers inherent within? The answer. sadly. is
yes, thanks to the masonically-controlled "education" system we have in place which preaches adulterated and redacted history to gullible youth in expensive "ivy league" institutions who then adopt their memorized fluff as
"truth".
Try to park your programmed kneejerk reactions, and just humor me and
think for a moment like
everything you spent all that money on
"learning" was indeed
a massively concocted crock of feces.
Then, roll up your sleeves and go back to autodidactic school for yourself, and read a few things they certainly will NOT teach you in any
"school".
Then draw your own conclusion: all those years in "schools" and your "degrees" - was it indeed "education"?
Or perhaps something else? You decide.[on the megapuke channel: im watching an old B/W episode "Nemesis" {part 1 part 2} of The Fugitive with a 10-year-old Kurt Russell who does very well at suggesting NAMBLA innuendos throughout his frosted closeups. He plays Phil Gerard Jr., the son of the federal lieutenant detective in charge of hunting Dr. Richard Kimball, and there's an awful lot of touchy-feely going on between him and his dad character; gives me the creeps. Also features Slim Pickens. You dont see shows today showing that kinda stuff.] fyi: TSBTS archives now current. Armenian GolgothaPolio: 47,500 paralysis cases after polio vaccineCalifornia AB2109: Government Takeover of the SheepleThe Latest Official Morgellon Paper: Please do not be misled.Hidden Towers Radio Frequency & Radar Mind ControlChemical complex had second explosion, radiation measurement is nearly impossibleIsraeli military ready for action in Iran: militaryIsrael's Key Energy Provider, Egypt, Cuts Off All Natural Gas SuppliesIreland: Narcolepsy rate 13 fold higher after Pandemrix/Irish Times etc.4/22/2012 — Circle and Sawtooth Sweeps, also Scalar Square activity = 72hr watch CA, OR, WA, ID, CO, TX, MN, WI, AL, GA, FLAP: 2 years later, fish sick near BP disaster -- Sores, parasitic infections, gashes, mysterious black streaks -- Fish, coral, seaweed, dolphins, mangroves, moreGulf Seafood Deformities Raise Questions Among Scientists -- Eyeless shrimp, lesioned fish and other mutated and underdeveloped marine life“We Do Not Live In a Free Country”: NSA Has Copies of Emails of Most Americans, More Powerful Than Obama DNA, The Ultimate Oopart!....Page 1
Copyright 2004 s8int.com and C. St.James
"At that moment, when the DNA/RNA system became understood, the debate between Evolutionists and Creationists should have come to a screeching halt"....... I.L. Cohen, Researcher and Mathematician; Member NY Academy of Sciences; Officer of the Archaeological Inst. of America; "Darwin Was Wrong - A Study in Probabilities"; New Research Publications, 1984, p. 4
After having taken the time here on these pages to examine all the varied and various "out of place artifacts" left by man, DNA stands out as the ultimate unexpected artifact; one left not by man but by God Himself.
The book of Romans, the first chapter, says that God essentially showed Himself and His "Divine Nature" by all the things He had made, by providing the necessities of life and for life; food, water heat,light etc. etc..The very laws of the universe itself have been tailored for our life and comfort.
Many have refused to recognize Him for Whom and What He is as He acknowledges.
For those who have eyes and ears to see, this is exactly what is happening (the creator showing Himself) as science learns more and more about DeoxyRibonucleic Acid.
When Darwin began advocating his infant idea that the world could be explained by naturalistic means, the prevailing view of the cell was that it was as simple as a Hostess Ho Ho; chocolate icing on the outside, chocolate cake on the inside and a creamy filling. It was the kind of thing those predisposed to do so could imagine could arise by accident --either the single cell or the HO HO.
It was this belief in naturalistic explanations for ourselves and the universe that Famous Atheist, Dawkins said permitted him to be an "intellectually fulfilled Atheist." Atheists needed a story, or an explanation, no matter how improbable, that they could believe that did not include God. What Darwin didn't know about the cell and what scientists didn't know about DNA but are learning, is decimating the idea that the world was created through naturalistic means.
The cell is not a simple lifeform containing merely a little protoplasm and a nucleus; it's as complicated as a modern factory--and it can replicate and repair itself.
If Darwin had known what we now know about the cell he might have gone in another direction. Unfortunately, materialists, having gone this far with naturalistic explanations are loathe to give up the idea of random chance, impossibly high (im)probabilities and billions and billions of years as the inventor of the cell.
They still want to be "intellectually fulfilled" in the way Dawkins has suggested.
The truth is, man with all his science and technological ability has not yet created anything as complex as the single living cell.
The simplest single cell is infinitely more complex than are the Pentium 4, the G5, K8, or Athlon 64 microchips--arguably the highest technological achievements yet attained by man.
It appears as though God has reserved for Himself the ability to create or destroy matter (1st law) or to create life (biogenesis).
An entity is considered to be alive if it contains DNA. DNA is the SINE QUA NON of life. Is it alive? That's the same as asking the question; "does it contain DNA"? Information theory and molecular science have made it possible to make some amazing new discoveries about DNA.
Among the more incredible things about DNA, is the amount of information that can be imparted in the tiniest single cell. Hundreds and even thousands of these single cells could fit on the head of a pin and yet the amount of information in every one of these cells is nothing short of astounding; more than a sentence, more than a paragraph, more than a page, more than a chapter, more than a book.
In fact, in the simplest single cell of bacteria, there is as much information as there is in every book in each of three metropolitan libraries combined.
"If all the DNA in your body were placed end-to-end, it would stretch from here to the Moon more than 500,000 times! In book form, that information would completely fill the Grand Canyon more than 75 times! Yet,if one set of DNA (one cell's worth) from every person who ever lived were placed in a pile, the final pile would weigh less than an aspirin!.....Center for Scientific Creation
Understanding DNA is just one small reason for believing you are "fearfully and wonderfully made." (Psalms 139:14)...Center for Scientific Creation
Think about the implications of that for a moment; inside of every cell of everything alive is a language called DNA which gives explicit instructions to the cell detailing every phase of its existence!
DNA is a Language, Complete with an Alphabet!
"This development is highly significant for the modern origin of life discussion. Molecular biology has now uncovered an analogy between DNA and written human languages. It is more than an analogy, in fact: in terms of structure, the two are "mathematically identical." (In other words, its not analogous to a language--it is a language).
In the case of written messages, we have uniform experience that they have an intelligent cause. What is uniform experience? It simply means that people everywhere observe a certain type of event always in association with a certain type of cause.
When we find evidence that a similar event happened in the past, it is reasonable to infer it had a similar cause. As I shall argue, based on uniform experience there is good reason to accept an intelligent cause for the origin of life as well."
Thaxton, DNA, Design and the Origin of Life. Is it reasonable to believe that this amount of information, imparted in a language that every cell can read and implement, for the specific purpose of directing the activity of All life on earth came about by "natural" means? That such a complex and powerful language evolved?
How could that happen? Trial and error and random combinations, natural selections would have destroyed any mythological early life forms before they could have had a chance to "evolve".
When an artifact as simple as an arrowhead is found, we understand that someone with intelligence made it--indeed we understand that to be the case for all "complex" or "non-natural" artifacts. We have here in DNA an artifact that we cannot duplicate, a technology that we cannot imagine and yet; we can believe that it came about by a totally random process over billions of years?
The truth is, once the nature of DNA became known, all naturalistic explanations for the universe and for life on earth were dead--except for those whose "thinking had become futile and whose foolish hearts were darkened"--(Romans 1 paraphrase). --Those who would rather be "intellectually fulfilled as Atheists".
Again, H.P. Yockey notes in the Journal of Theoretical Biology: "It is important to understand that we are not reasoning by analogy. The sequence hypothesis [that the exact order of symbols records the information] applies directly to the protein and the genetic text as well as to written language and therefore the treatment is mathematically identical."(DNA IS A LANGUAGE)
How is it that the death of naturalistic explanations for cells, life, DNA etc. has gone unnoticed by much of the "scientific community"?. One reason is the fear of looking silly before colleagues by appearing to accept the notion of a God who created the universe--despite the evidence. Another is that vaunted need to be fulfilled atheists. Atheists got to believe too!
Another important reason is that scientists know only that tiny bit of the puzzle that makes up their specialties. If one points out to the biologist advocating evolution, that life has not been shown ever to come from non-life, or that matter can neither be created or destroyed (1st law), he may well tell you that the way in which matter came to be or how life came to be is not his/her field---he/she is only studying the "process" of evolution itself.
Is this science? Anything can be proven logically, once the premise has been accepted. Are scientific fields supposed to exist like this in a vacuum so that biology can contradict physics, laws of probability can be trumped by biology, Cosmology supercedes the 1st and second laws of physics without anyone really noticing? Incredible!
SETI Could Be More Aptly Named:
Search for Elusive Terrestrial Intelligence
Quote From The SETI Institute:-- ""SETI" is an acronym for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. It is an effort to detect evidence of technological civilizations that may exist elsewhere in the universe, particularly in our galaxy.
There are potentially billions of locations outside our solar system that may host life. With our current technology, we have the ability to discover evidence of cosmic habitation where life has evolved and developed to a technological level at least as advanced as our own."
Researchers expect to be able to ascertain whether a signal is artificial (created by intelligence) or created by natural means. A single word or perhaps a modulated sentence (though in an unknown language)sent out in a narrow band signal would presumably prove that the senders of the information are intelligent.
What these researchers "apparently" don't know is that such signals have already been detected (though not narrow band radio) and much more than a single sentence has been sent. Incredibly, despite these findings from scientists in this other field, Molecular Biology; evolutionists/materialists have concluded that although this "signal" (DNA of course)contains voluminous information, it nevertheless comes from nature, from natural sources and is not the product of intelligence.(Hence our seti search for elusive terrestrial intelligence continues).
Dumb and Dumber?
Materialists have to talk fast. They've got to have their voices either raised or dripping with sarcasm. Else, it would be impossible to sustain the idea that what they are touting makes any sense at all given that it conflicts with basic science. One oft proffered refuge is time--vasts amount of it.
This appeal to time is supposed to solve all the logical problems that materialistic explanations present. They have no concept of impossible--no matter how high the odds, they believe that they can be overcome.
It reminds me of that Jim Carrie Movie; where Jim's dumber character asks the beautiful lady what she thinks the odds are of the two of them getting together. She replies not a little sarcastically "about a million to one".
Jim's character smiles and hugging himself says "so you're telling me there's a chance"!
The truth is odds over 1 in 10 to the 50th power are considered "impossible" by statisticians. The Odds of single bacterium forming from "pre-existing soup" have been estimated to be at least 1 in 10 to the 100,000,000,000th power!
Evolutionist/Materialist: "1 in 10 to the 100,000,000,000th power (hugging himself/herself?) So you're telling me there's a chance!"
(Photo: not even they evolved from monkeys) If only the scientists from the SETI (extraterrestrial)project could get their hands and their analytical ability on the same information that these other scientists are desperately ignoring for the purposes of establishing intelligence outside of man in the universe.
While on the left hand, scientists are looking for just the tiniest bit of information, a word, a number, a sentence or a paragraph from some distant star to prove intelligent life exists, scientists on the right hand have discovered that DNA, which is right here on this planet, in every living cell, consists of four "letters", and is absolutely as much a Language, as German, English or Spanish!
CONCLUSION
There is a language, a language similar to human languages, which is embedded in every living thing, and it gives very intricate instructions to the cell concerning, reproduction, cell growth, formation, the exact timing of these processes and everything else concerning the cell.
It is proof that someone with infinitely higher technical ability than ourselves, is responsible for implanting a DNA message into the cell of everything alive in the universe which says "Hello, I am your Creator".
Yet many biologists (if aware) and other scientists who are blinded by science, and their A Priori adherence to naturalistic explanations of creation have decided that all this information has come about by natural means; i.e. it evolved completely by accident! This is entirely opposite the experience true science, not obscured by the "religious" faith and zeal of materialists, has observed. "Complex" artifacts of this type are artifacts of intelligence.
The precedent has been set. Even if someone should send them a message containing as much as an entire language, there can no longer be any assurance that the scientific community will recognize that as proof that the source isn't nature itself, just as they believe the case to be with DNA, the ultimate artifact.
Human Genome Map Has Scientists Talking About the Divine --
Surprisingly low number of genes raises big questions ...PAGE 2
San Francisco Chronicle, Monday, February 19, 2001
by Tom Abate
Aftershocks of the human genome announcement rippled through San Francisco all weekend as the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science brought thousands of thinkers here to mull the surprising fact that humans have only a few more genes than mice.
But to my mind, the most memorable moment in these last few weeks of genetic astonishments came during an interview with computer scientist Gene Myers at the Maryland headquarters of Celera Genomics, just a few days before the genome maps were made public.
I reached Rockville exhausted from overnight travel and bug-eyed from poring over the maps that I had been given in advance. In return I promised to keep the findings hush-hush while I spent several days interviewing the mapmakers about their findings.
Celera was a frenzy of activity when I arrived. Television crews were shooting interviews. Phones were ringing off the hook. Myers, pressed for time, grabbed a salad from the company cafeteria and managed a few mouthfuls in between sound bites. Celera spokeswoman Heather Kowalski popped in and out of the room where Myers and I met, but paid us little mind, her nose glued to the pager that inundated her with messages and e-mails.
I mention all this because it is in such settings that people like me -- your eyes and ears -- are supposed to plumb the mysteries of our time. In this case, everyone who had seen the map realized that our gene deficit raised enormous questions: If we had roughly the same gene count as mammals that never flew across country on the red eye, or took notes on a steno pad, what interplay of inanimate molecules could possibly explain our complex and curious selves?
Of course, even obnoxious types like me find it tough to barge in and broach such issues in the first breath, but as I kept asking questions and Myers slowly finished his salad, we gradually warmed up to the mystery of how this incredible genetic code came into being.
"We're deliciously complex at the molecular level," Myers said, gesturing with his fork. "We don't understand ourselves yet, which is cool. There's still a metaphysical, magical element."
Myers was the guy who put together Celera's genome map. Celera's sequencing machines had broken the 3 billion chemical letters in a strand of DNA into millions of fragments, each a few hundred letters each.
His software put the fragments back in order just days before Celera and the leaders of the Human Genome Project shared a stage with former President Clinton, last June, to say that they knew the sequence of the genome from end to end. Talk about deadline pressure!
Now, with the pressure off, this former University of Arizona professor waxed philosophical on the code his team had cracked. "What really astounds me is the architecture of life," he said. "The system is extremely complex. It's like it was designed."
My ears perked up.
Designed? Doesn't that imply a designer, an intelligence, something more than the fortuitous bumping together of chemicals in the primordial slime?
Myers thought before he replied. "There's a huge intelligence there. I don't see that as being unscientific. Others may, but not me."
About that time, Kowalski popped in to move Myers to a TV interview and told me she had rearranged things to make sure I interviewed Celera President Craig Venter early enough for me to catch my flight home.
Since that hurried exchange, Myers' words have rattled around in my brain. It's not the sort of sentiment one puts in an article, unless it's being written for one of those papers with screaming headlines sold in supermarket checkout lines: "Genome Mapper Sees Hand of God!"
Myers' sentiment reminded me of another mystery I'd encountered a little over a year ago, during a weeklong "boot camp" at the Knight Center for Science Journalism in Cambridge designed to indoctrinate civilians like me on the genome.
It was our last day and the hard disk between my ears was darn near full when David Bartel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology walked in and explained how scientists were trying to show how RNA might have been the origin of life. He said DNA was too complex to have been formed by the random encounters of chemicals back when the earth was barely cool.
I remember sitting in class stunned to think that scientists, who could track the origin of the species through the fossil record, and trace genes jumping from organism to organism over time, had lost the scent at the primordial pool.
What Bartel had described was the concept of the RNA world, and if all life had started with RNA that would have been fine with me. Unfortunately, scientists aren't yet sure how RNA came into being.
I recently traded e-mails with Andre Brack, a biologist at the Centre de Biophysique Moleculaire in France and president of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life. "The direct formation of RNA is not a generally accepted model for the origins of life," he wrote. Synthesizing RNA out of chemical scraps has turned out to be a problem so far. Brack postulates that a more primitive molecule evolved into RNA, but as for what it might be, "We don't know yet."
A Web search for the term "RNA world" also turned up some interesting writings by Leslie Orgel, a researcher at the Salk Institute in San Diego, about the chicken and egg issue involving proteins.
In modern cells, proteins help make RNA and DNA -- just as DNA and RNA help make proteins. So it turns out science still can't explain the chemical interactions that gave rise to the DNA, RNA and protein molecules that form the triumvirate of life. So scientists can't explain the chemical genesis of the DNA, RNA and protein molecules that form the essential trinity of life.
But such scientific uncertainty lay outside my purview. My job was to cover the race between Celera and the publicly funded Human Genome Project, to explain what the genome told us about ourselves, and not to ruminate on mysteries best left to chemists.
So I kept evolution's big unknowns locked in my mind for months, until Myers' comment and the surprising news about the gene count emboldened me to ask aloud: Could science tell us for certain whether life arose randomly or resulted from a directed design?
"It's a wonderful, big, deep question," said Harvard professor Wally Gilbert, whose 1986 essay titled "RNA World" started scientists thinking about how disorderly molecules might suddenly have snapped to attention and formed the long, self-replicating chains that are the hallmarks of life as we know it.
Gilbert and I had a brief, fun telephone chat. I mentioned the new creationist critique of evolution embodied in books like Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe's Darwin's Black Box. Behe celebrates the fact that science cannot demonstrate how the molecules that are the foundation of life came into being spontaneously.
Gilbert listened kindly and didn't make me feel a fool for asking whether, in the absence of proof to the contrary, people shouldn't be free to consider the code of life the handiwork of God.
"Of course one is free to believe that for any little piece of the detail, God did it," Gilbert said, untroubled by the absence of proof at the root of evolution.
"From the viewpoint of science, we're surrounded by uncertainty," he continued. "The parts we look at are the parts we don't understand . . . But the scientific belief is that in due course, an explanation will be found."
I thanked Gilbert and said goodbye, and somehow it made me feel better to know that no matter what I chose to believe about the origin of life, that it was faith that would drive my decision, whether it was faith in a maker or faith in our ingenuity to puzzle out the mystery of from whence we came.
Copyright 2001 San Francisco Chronicle Page B - 1. All rights reserved. International copyright secured.
Thanks to:
Access Research Network Precious Gems in Junk DNA? .....PAGE 3
�The existence of large amounts of non-coding DNA (up to 97% in humans) in the genomes of eukaryotes has been used as an argument against intelligent design (and the role of a Creator) and as an argument for the random process of evolution.
Two evolutionary theories attempted to explain the reason for the existence of non-coding DNA.
One theory stated that non-coding DNA was "junk" that consisted of randomly-produced sequences that had lost their coding ability or partially duplicated genes that were non-functional.
The second theory stated that non-coding DNA was "selfish", in that it consisted of DNA that preferentially replicated more efficiently that coding DNA, even though it provided no selective advantage (in fact was somewhat detrimental since it was parasitic).
There have always been problems with these arguments, which have been ignored by many of those making these claims. The main question presented by proponents of the "junk" or "selfish" DNA theories is,
"Why would a perfect God create flawed DNA which is primarily composed of useless, non-coding regions?" The definitive answer has finally arrived, although for many years there have been strong suggestions of what the non-coding DNA is doing in our genomes.�
Source:
God and Science.orgLanguage in Junk DNA
You've probably heard of a molecule called DNA, otherwise known as "The Blueprint Of Life". Molecular biologists have been examining and mapping the DNA for a few decades now.
But as they've looked more closely at the DNA, they've been getting increasingly bothered by one inconvenient little fact - the fact that 97% of the DNA is junk, and it has no known use or function!
But, an usual collaboration between molecular biologists, cryptoanalysists (people who break secret codes), linguists (people who study languages) and physicists, has found strange hints of a hidden language in this so- called "junk DNA".
Only about 3% of the DNA actually codes for amino acids, which in turn make proteins, and eventually, little babies. The remaining 97% of the DNA is, according to conventional wisdom, not gems, but junk.
The molecular biologists call this junk DNA, introns. Introns are like enormous commercial breaks or advertisements that interrupt the real program - except in the DNA, they take up 97% of the broadcast time. Introns are so important, that Richard Roberts and Phillip Sharp, who did much of the early work on introns back in 1977, won a Nobel Prize for their work in 1993. But even today, we still don't know what introns are really for.
Simon Shepherd, who lectures in cryptography and computer security at the University of Bradford in the United Kingdom, took an approach, that was based on his line of work. He looked on the junk DNA, as just another secret code to be broken.
He analysed it, and he now reckons that one probable function of introns, is that they are some sort of error correction code - to fix up the occasional mistakes that happen as the DNA replicates itself. But even if he's right, introns could have lots of other uses.
The next big breakthrough came from a really unusual collaboration between medical doctors, physicists and linguists. They found even more evidence that there was a sort-of language buried in the introns.
According to the linguists, all human languages obey Zipf's Law. It's a really weird law, but it's not that hard to understand. Start off by getting a big fat book. Then, count the number of times each word appears in that book.
You might find that the number one most popular word is "the" (which appears 2,000 times), followed by the second most popular word "a" (which appears 1,800 times), and so on. Right down at the bottom of the list, you have the least popular word, which might be "elephant", and which appears just once.
Set up two columns of numbers. One column is the order of popularity of the words, running from "1" for "the", and "2" for "a", right down "1,000" for "elephant". The other column counts how many times each word appeared, starting off with 2,000 appearances of "the", then 1,800 appearances of "a", down to one appearance of "elephant".
If you then plot on the right kind of graph paper, the order of popularity of the words, against the number of times each word appears you get a straight line! Even more amazingly, this straight line appears for every human language - whether it's English or Egyptian, Eskimo or Chinese! Now the DNA is just one continuous ladder of squillions of rungs, and is not neatly broken up into individual words (like a book).
So the scientists looked at a very long bit of DNA, and made artificial words by breaking up the DNA into "words" each 3 rungs long. And then they tried it again for "words" 4 rungs long, 5 rungs long, and so on up to 8 rungs long.
They then analysed all these words, and to their surprise, they got the same sort of Zipf Law/straight-line-graph for the human DNA (which is mostly introns), as they did for the human languages!
There seems to be some sort of language buried in the so-called junk DNA! Certainly, the next few years will be a very good time to make a career change into the field of genetics.
So now, around the edge of the new millennium, we have a reasonable understanding of the 3% of the DNA that makes amino acids, proteins and babies. And the remaining 97% - well, we're pretty sure that there is some language buried there, even if we don't yet know what it says.
It might say "It's all a joke", or it might say "Don't worry, be happy", or it might say "Have a nice day, lots of love, from your friendly local DNA".
Source:
GREAT MOMENTS IN SCIENCE Genetic Differences Between Man and Chimp Greater Than Expected .....PAGE 4
Chromosomes reveal surprise human-chimp differences
18:00 26 May 04
NewScientist.com news service
Humans and their closest relatives, chimpanzees, may be more different than geneticists have realised.
�Previously, scientists have estimated that humans and chimps differ in about 1.5 per cent of the DNA letters that spell out their genomes. However, these estimates have been based on studies of only small subsets of the two genomes, because the chimp genome has not been sequenced precisely enough to allow a large-scale, base-by-base comparison.
That has now changed, thanks to the International Chimpanzee Chromosome 22 consortium, a team of researchers based in Asia and Europe that has sequenced a single chimpanzee chromosome in unprecedented detail.
The group then compared this sequence against its human counterpart, chromosome 21. They found that the two differ at only 1.44 per cent of the DNA bases that the two chromosomes have in common - a minuscule difference that confirms earlier estimates.
However, each gene contains hundreds or thousands of bases. This means even the tiny difference seen is enough to change the amino acid sequence of 83 per cent of the proteins generated by the 231 genes on the chromosome.
Lost and found
"Simple math probably says the 80 per cent is not surprising," says Asao Fujiyama, a consortium member at the Japanese National Institute of Informatics in Tokyo.
Also, because most of these proteins differ by only a handful of amino acids, they should still be very similar in function.
However, the group also found nearly 68,000 places where genetic material -usually just a few bases - had been gained or lost in one of the species. These changes were enough to cause major differences in the structure of over 20 per cent of the proteins - a much larger difference than previously suspected.
"Since chimps are our closest kin, we thought that protein structures would be highly conserved," says Fujiyama. It is not yet clear, though, how these changes help explain the unique biology of humans.
"We don't have a good understanding of how much of the difference really matters to what makes us human," says Tarjei Mikkelsen, a bioinformaticist at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who is involved in analysing the chimpanzee genome.
Journal reference: Nature (vol 429, p 382)
Bob Holmes
'Junk' Throws Up Precious Secret .....PAGE 5
Simple Solution to the Mystery: One Designer!
'Junk' Throws Up Precious Secret
By Julianna Kettlewell
BBC News Online science staff
Humans and rats share large amounts of DNA A collection of mystery DNA segments, which seem to be critical for the survival of many animals, are causing great interest among scientists.
Researchers inspecting the genetic code of rats, mice and humans were surprised to find they shared many identical chunks of apparently "junk" DNA.
This implies the code is so vital that even 75 million years of evolution in these mammals could not tinker with it.
But what the DNA does, and how, is a puzzle, the journal Science reports.
Excess baggage?
Before scientists began laboriously mapping several animal life-codes, they had a rather narrow opinion about which parts of the genome were important.
According to the traditional viewpoint, the really crucial things were genes, which code for proteins - the "building blocks of life". A few other sections that regulate gene function were also considered useful.
The rest was thought to be excess baggage - or "junk" DNA. But the new findings suggest this interpretation was somewhat wanting.
David Haussler of the University of California, Santa Cruz, US, and his team compared the genome sequences of man, mouse and rat. They found - to their astonishment - that several great stretches of DNA were identical across the three species.
To guard against this happening by coincidence, they looked for sequences that were at least 200 base-pairs (the molecules that make up DNA) in length. Statistically, a sequence of this length would almost never appear in all three by chance.
Not only did one sequence of this length appear in all three - 480 did.
Vital function
The regions largely matched up with chicken, dog and fish sequences, too; but are absent from sea squirt and fruit flies.
"It absolutely knocked me off my chair," said Professor Haussler. "It's extraordinarily exciting to think that there are these ultra-conserved elements that weren't noticed by the scientific community before."
DNA: THE CODE OF LIFE The double-stranded DNA molecule is held together by chemical components called bases Adenine (A) bonds with thymine (T); cytosine (C) bonds with guanine (G)
These letters form the "code of life"; there are close to 3 billion base pairs in mammals such as humans and rodents Written in the DNA of these animals are 25,000-30,000 genes which cells use as templates to start the production of proteins; these sophisticated molecules build and maintain the body.
The really interesting thing is that many of these "ultra-conserved" regions do not appear to code for protein. If it was not for the fact that they popped up in so many different species, they might have been dismissed as useless "padding".
But whatever their function is, it is clearly of great importance. We know this because ever since rodents, humans, chickens and fish shared an ancestor - about 400 million years ago - these sequences have resisted change. This strongly suggests that any alteration would have damaged the animals' ability to survive.
"These initial findings tell us quite a lot of the genome was doing something important other than coding for proteins," Professor Haussler said. He thinks the most likely scenario is that they control the activity of indispensable genes and embryo development.
Nearly a quarter of the sequences overlap with genes and may help slice RNA - the chemical cousin of DNA involved in protein production - into different forms, Professor Haussler believes.
The conserved elements that do not actually overlap with genes tend to cluster next to genes that play a role in embryonic development.
"The fact that the conserved elements are hanging around the most important development genes, suggests they have some role in regulating the process of development and differentiation," said Professor Haussler.
Rethinking "junk" DNA
The next step is to pin down a conclusive function for these chunks of genetic material. One method could be to produce genetically engineered mice that have bits of the sequences "knocked out". By comparing their development with that of normal mice, scientists might be able to work out the DNA's purpose.
Despite all the questions that this research has raised, one thing is clear: scientists need to review their ideas about junk DNA. Professor Chris Ponting, from the UK Medical Research Council's Functional Genetics Unit, told BBC News Online: "Amazingly, there were calls from some sections to only map the bits of genome that coded for protein - mapping the rest was thought to be a waste of time.
"It is very lucky that entire genomes were mapped, as this work is showing." He added: "I think other bits of 'junk' DNA will turn out not to be junk. I think this is the tip of the iceberg, and that there will be many more similar findings."
Rogue Weeds Defy Rules of Genetics
Here at s8int.com, we don't know how many of you really want to read through two articles on a weed to get to the crux of the problem that these findings present for Evolutionists. Our eyes did get a little heavy but we never actually nodded off.
Mutation as the mechanism for the process of evolution has already been virtually eliminated as far as we are concerned but this may be the final nail in the coffin. It seems as though contrary to all previous thought, organisms like this plant may have the ability to overcome mutations in their genes and restore their genetic codes back to that of prior generations. In other words, a previously unkown method of error correction exists that overcomes the Medellian processes of inheritance. Can you imagine how the "evolutionary process" could have "created" a backup mechanism for overcoming genetic mutations --using the process of mutation? Neither can we. We think that ability comes from the original designer: GOD.
Cress Overturns Textbook Genetics
Helen Pearson
Surprise finding shows that plants rewrite genetic code.
Arabidopsis plants may posses a genetic backup to deal with faulty parental DNA.
In a discovery that has flabbergasted geneticists, researchers have shown that plants can overwrite the genetic code they inherit from their parents, and revert to that of their grandparents.
The finding challenges textbook rules of inheritance, which state that children simply receive combinations of the genes carried by their parents. The principle was famously established by Austrian monk Gregor Mendel in his nineteenth-century studies on pea plants.
The study, published this week in Nature1, shows that not all genes are so well behaved. It suggests that plants, and perhaps other organisms including humans, might possess a back-up mechanism that can bypass unhealthy sequences from their parents and revert to the healthier genetic code possessed by their grandparents or great-grandparents.
Robert Pruitt and his colleagues at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, hit upon the discovery when studying a particular strain of the cress plant Arabidopsis, which carries a mutation in both copies of a gene called HOTHEAD. In mutated plants, the petals and other flower parts are abnormally fused together.
Because these plants pass the mutant gene on to their offspring, conventional genetics dictates that they will also have fused flowers. Not so: Pruitt's team has known for some time that around 10% of the offspring have normal flowers.
Back to the Future
Using genetic sequencing, the researchers showed that this second generation of plants had rewritten the DNA sequence of one or both of their HOTHEAD genes. They had replaced the abnormal code of their parents with the regular code possessed by earlier generations.
And when the team studied numerous other genes, it found that the plants had often edited those back to their ancestral form too. "It was a huge surprise," Pruitt says.
The discovery has left geneticists reeling. "It's really quite stunning," says Detlef Weigel, who studies plant genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in T�bingen, Germany. "It's a mechanism that no one had any idea existed."
And geneticist Steven Jacobsen at the University of California, Los Angeles, sums it up even more succinctly. "It's really weird," he says.
Hidden Inheritance
Pruitt and other researchers are struggling to explain exactly how the plants could rewrite their genetic code. To do that, they need a template (a version of their grandparents' code) that can be passed from one generation to the next.
One possibility is that the plants use an extra copy of a gene perched elsewhere in their DNA. But this seems unlikely, because the team found that the plants can rewrite the code of genes that have no similar copies elsewhere in the genome.
Instead, Pruitt speculates that the plants carry a previously undiscovered store of the related molecule RNA, that acts as a backup copy of DNA. Such molecules could be passed into pollen or seeds along with DNA and used as a template to correct certain genes. "It's the most likely explanation," Weigel agrees.
Stressed out
Pruitt speculates that this type of gene correction goes on in Arabidopsis under normal conditions, just very rarely. He suggests that it is ramped up when the HOTHEAD gene is mutated, perhaps because the plant becomes stressed.
Indeed, the process could exist because it helps plants to survive whenever they find themselves in difficult condition, such as when water or nutrients become scarce. Such stress could trigger plants to revert to the genetic code of their ancestors, which is perhaps more hardy than that of their parents. To test this, Pruitt is examining whether stressful situations do indeed prompt the same phenomenon.
A similar process might even go on in humans. This is suggested by rare cases of children who inherit disease-causing mutations but show only mild symptoms, perhaps because some of their cells have reverted to a normal and healthier genetic code.
If humans do correct their genes in this way, Pruitt suggests that the procedure might be usefully hijacked by researchers or doctors. They might be able to identify the RNA molecules that carry out the repair and use them to correct harmful mutations in patients.
But for now, Pruitt and other researchers in the field are expecting the paper to prompt a lot of scepticism. "The immediate response is that they must have made a mistake," Weigel says, "but I don't think so."
SOURCE:
Nature.com Rogue Weeds Defy Rules of Genetics
00:01 23 March 2005
NewScientist.com news service
Andy Coghlan
Mendelian inheritance, the central tenet of genetics, is under attack from a few scrawny weeds that have not read the textbooks. The weeds are somehow inheriting DNA sequences from their grandparents that neither of their parents possessed - which is supposed to be impossible.
The orthodox view is that genes are passed down in the form of DNA, and all organisms have to make do with this parental DNA inheritance, mutations and all. Chemical or structural modifications to DNA can switch off genes, and these changes can pass from generation to generation, a phenomenon called epigenesis. But epigenetic changes do not alter the actual sequence of DNA.
Yet that is what seems to occur in the weedy cress Arabidopsis thaliana, the workhorse of plant biologists. Cress with two mutant copies of one gene seem to be able to correct the DNA they pass on, ensuring that at least a few of their offspring revert to normal.
Robert Pruitt, whose team at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, US, made this extraordinary discovery, thinks that the mutant genes are being repaired using RNA templates inherited from earlier generations.
Other biologists are astonished by the findings. "It's amazing," says David Baulcombe, an expert on plant RNA at the John Innes Centre in Norwich, UK. "The notion that RNA carries the information almost seems like the only way it could happen."
RNA Back-ups
It is possible that the phenomenon is limited to this one plant. But in Nature (vol 434, p 505), Pruitt's team speculates that it might be a more widespread mechanism that allows plants to "experiment" with new mutations while keeping RNA spares as a back-up.
If the mutations prove harmful, some plants in the next generation revert to their grandparents' DNA sequence with the help of the RNA. "It does make sense," Pruitt says.
Such a mechanism would be especially useful to plants that self-pollinate and so are not as genetically variable as other plants. But it might happen in all plants and even animals.
Pruitt's team made the discovery after finding that some Arabidopsis refused to "breed true". To Pruitt's irritation as many as 1 in 10 of the offspring grew normally despite their parents having a mutation in both copies of the hothead gene, which causes petals and leaves to stick to one another. He assumed that normal seeds or pollen were contaminating his trials.
But a series of experiments ruled out contamination. They also ruled out other possibilities, including the gene spontaneously mutating back to the normal form, the existence of more than two copies of the hothead gene, or closely related DNA sequences providing a template for repairs.
Eventually, Pruitt was left with one, unbelievable explanation: the normal offspring were somehow acquiring genetic information from ancestors other than their parents.
Hothead Mutants
"It was our view that it was heresy when we started working on it, but we've had time to get used to the idea now," he says. "I'd say I've been the biggest sceptic all the way along, but every experiment has been done to find a conventional explanation and it's as foolproof as we can make it. I have every confidence in the data, but I'll feel better about it when other people have seen similar things."
The team has also found that in hothead mutants, other faulty genes mysteriously revert to the sequence of earlier generations too. It may be that the phenomenon is caused by the hothead mutation and restricted to plants that carry it, says Ottoline Leyser, who studies plant developmental genes at the University of York in the UK. "People have been working on mutants for years, and they all behave in a Mendelian way," she says.
"It's possible it is just related to this one gene," agrees Pruitt. "We can't rule it out, but I think it's unlikely." Other researchers may simply have dismissed mutants that revert to an ancestral form as the product of contamination, Leyser says. "Maybe it has been under the radar."
Pruitt's team is now trying to find the stash of RNAs from earlier generations that might provide the templates for repair, and work out how it is passed down. "My guess is that it is in the nucleus somehow, or hitchhikes on chromosomes, but that's just speculation," he says.
While the search goes on, Pruitt hopes other biologists will hunt for evidence of the phenomenon in plants, animals and even humans. "If we can understand how these templates are used, we might be able to make our own to order," he says. That might help improve existing methods for repairing genes, which are not yet efficient enough to be used to treat genetic diseases.
Journal reference: Nature (vol 434, p 505)
Researchers Predict Infinite Genomes
Rockville, MD -- Ever since the genomics revolution took off, scientists have been busily deciphering vast numbers of genomes. Cataloging. Analyzing. Comparing. Public databases hold 239 complete bacterial genomes alone.
Photo: Bacillus anthracis. (Image courtesy of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)
But scientists at The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) have come to a startling conclusion.
Armed with the powerful tools of comparative genomics and mathematics, TIGR scientists have concluded that researchers might never fully describe some bacteria and viruses--because their genomes are infinite.
Sequence one strain of the species, and scientists will find significant new genes. Sequence another strain, and they will find more.
And so on, infinitely.
"Many scientists study multiple strains of an organism," says TIGR President Claire Fraser. "But at TIGR, we're now going a step further, to actually quantify how many genes are associated with a given species. How many genomes do you need to fully describe a bacterial species?"
In pursuit of that question, TIGR scientist Herv� Tettelin and colleagues published a study in this week's (September 19-23) early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
In the study, TIGR scientists, with collaborators at Chiron Corporation, Harvard Medical School and Seattle Children's Hospital, compared the genomic sequence of eight isolates of the same bacterial species: Streptococcus agalactiae, also known as Group B Strep (GBS), which can cause infection in newborns and immuno-compromised individuals.
Analyzing the eight GBS genomes, the researchers discovered a surprisingly continual stream of diversity. Each GBS strain contained an average of 1806 genes present in every strain (thus constituting the GBS core genome) plus 439 genes absent in one or more strains.
Moreover, mathematical modeling showed that unique genes will continue to emerge, even after thousands of genomes are sequenced. The GBS pan-genome is expected to grow by an average of 33 new genes every time a new strain is sequenced.
"We were surprised to find that we haven't cornered this species yet," says Tettelin, lead author of the PNAS paper. "We still don't know--and apparently, we'll never know--the extent of its diversity."
To interpret this infinite view of microbial genomes, Tettelin and colleagues propose describing a species by its "pan-genome": the sum of a core genome, containing genes present in all strains, and a dispensable genome, with genes absent from one or more strains and genes unique to each strain.
The pan-genome is more than mere syntax. The concept has real implications for molecular biology. Many important pathogens--including those responsible for influenza, Chlamydia, and gastrointestinal infections, all under study at TIGR--contain multiple strains with specific genomes.
By bringing a pan-genome perspective to the study of these organisms, scientists may better learn how new pathogens emerge and better target therapies to specific conditions.
One approach is to spotlight a species's core genome. On the flip side, scientists may eliminate a core genome, hunting instead for fringe genes that explain a specific strain's unique activity.
TIGR researchers say the pan-genome concept also underscores the limits of traditional known genomes. Researchers often refer to a "type" genome to describe a given species. That singular, representative genome is often simply the strain easiest to acquire from nature or grow in the lab.
Yet scientists worldwide routinely tap these known genomes in public databases to hunt for drug targets, explain ecological niches, and chart evolution. How well do these microbial genomes reflect reality?
As comparative genomics itself evolves, Fraser expects TIGR to increasingly focus on pan-genomes. Many questions remain. Although some microbial species, such as GBS, have infinite pan-genomes, for instance, others are more limited.
Comparing eight independent isolates of Bacillus anthracis (the bacterium that causes anthrax), for instance, Tettelin and colleagues found that just four genomes were sufficient to characterize its pan-genome.
That raises interesting questions about rates of evolution, notes Fraser. "We're intrigued to learn more about the diversity within a given species, and how it happens," she says.
The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) is a not-for-profit center dedicated to deciphering and analyzing genomes. Since 1992, TIGR, based in Rockville, Md., has been a genomics leader, conducting research critical to medicine, agriculture, energy, the environment and biodefense.
Why Darwinian Evolution Is Flatly Impossible
Lloyd Pye is not a Christian. Instead, he believes life was planted here by alien intelligences. WE think that criticism of the Darwinian Paradigm by a non-Christian source is interesting. Still, the truth is, we think this particular critique would be of interest no matter who wrote it.
Bio
Lloyd Pye graduated with a B.S. in psychology. He joined the U.S. Army and became an agent for military intelligence. During this time, Mr. Pye began an independent study of human evolution.
At age 30, his studies led him to conclude humans could not possibly have evolved on Earth according to the Darwinian paradigm. He is a lecturer and Author, primarily at "alternative" venues.
by LLoyd Pye
No matter how high evidence was stacked up against evolution in the past, Darwinists could always slip through the "...it COULD have happened..." loophole. As long as genetic mutations and slight physical changes (microevolution) were evident, interspecies transitions (macroevolution) had to be accepted as at least plausible. Not any more. In five brief pages, this article closes the Darwinian loophole, and evolutionary science will never be the same! ...-David Summers, Publisher/Editor
Remembrance of Things Past
1999 was the 140th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin�s On The Origin Of Species. In that landmark volume he postulated that life on Earth had developed into its millions of forms through a long, slow series of fundamental changes in the physical structure of all living things, plants and animals alike.
Though small and gradual, these changes would be relatively constant. Bit by imperceptible bit, gills would turn into lungs, fins would turn into limbs, scales would turn into skin, bacteria would turn into us.
The problem for Darwin, and for all Darwinists since, came when the mechanism behind those changes had to be explained.
Because Darwin�s era was only beginning to understand cellular function (Gregor Mendel�s treatise on genetics did not appear until 1865), Darwin proposed a system of gradual physiological improvements due to small, discreet advantages that would accrue to the best-adapted progeny (his famous �survival of the fittest�) among all living things (a bit stronger, a bit swifter, a bit hardier), making them subtly different from their parents and producing offspring with similar advantages accruing in their physiological makeup.
When enough small changes had compounded themselves through enough generations .... voila! A new species would have emerged, sexually incompatible with the original parent stock, yet inexorably linked to it by a common physiological heritage.
Once cellular function came to be better understood, particularly the importance of DNA as the �engineer� driving the entire train of life, it was quickly embraced as the fundamental source of change in Darwin�s original model.
Darwinian evolution, as it came to be called, was indisputably caused by mutations at the genetic level. Because such mutations were obvious to early geneticists, and could eventually be induced and manipulated in their laboratories, it seemed beyond doubt that positive mutations in DNA sequencing were the key to explaining evolution. That left neutral mutations exerting no effect, while negative mutations afflicted only the unlucky individuals who expressed them but had no lasting impact on a species� collective gene pool.
Darwin's Blackest Box
In 1996 Michael Behe, a biochemistry professor at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa., published a book called Darwin�s Black Box. He defined a �black box� as any device that functions perfectly well, but whose inner workings remain mysterious because they cannot be seen or understood.
To Charles Darwin the living cell was an impenetrable black box whose inner workings he could not even imagine, much less understand. To scientists today the cell box is no longer quite as black, but it is still dark enough to leave them with only a faint understanding of how it works.
They know its basic components and the functions of those components, but they still don�t know how all those pieces fit together to do what cells do--live.
Life is still every bit the profound mystery it was in Darwin�s day. Many additional pieces of the puzzle have found their way onto the table since 1859, but scientists today are not much closer to seeing the whole picture than Darwin or his cronies.
That is an ironic reality which few modern Darwinists will accept in their own hearts and minds, much less advertise to the world in general.
So they supply the media with intellectual swill that the media, in turn, unknowingly palms off as truth, while the scientists edgily cross their fingers and hold their breath in the hope that someday, maybe even someday soon, but certainly before the great unwashed get wise to the scam, they will finally figure out the great secret...they will see into the heart of the universe�s blackest box...they will understand how life actually works, from the first moment of the first creation to evolution itself.
Shall We Gather At The River
Darwinists teach and preach that life began spontaneously in a mass of molecules floating freely in the Earth�s earliest rivers and seas. Those molecular precursors somehow formed themselves into organic compounds that somehow formed themselves into the very first living organism.
This incredible feat of immaculately choreographed bioengineering was, Darwinists insist, accomplished without the aid of any outside agency, such as a Prime Mover (what some would call �God�), and especially not anything extraterrestrial.
It was done using only the materials at hand on the early Earth, and accomplished solely by the materials themselves, with a probable assist from a perfectly timed, perfectly aimed lightning bolt that, in the most serendipitous moment imaginable, swirled tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of inanimate molecules into a living entity.
For as glibly as Darwinists have fashioned and promoted this scenario in schools to this day, the complexity of its mechanics might challenge the creative skills of a busload of Prime Movers.
Countless lipids have to somehow be coaxed to form a membrane that somehow surrounds enough strands of DNA to create a cell that can manage life�s two most basic functions: it must absorb organic and inorganic compounds in its environment and turn them into proteins, which can then be converted into energy and excreta; and it must have the ability to reproduce itself ad infinitum.
If all of those varied factors, each a bona fide miracle in itself, do not occur in the precise order demanded by all living cells for their tightly orchestrated, step-by-step development, then the entire process becomes laughably improbable.
British astronomer Fred Hoyle has offered the classic analogy for this scenario, stating that its actual likelihood of being true and real equals �that of a tornado sweeping through a junkyard and correctly assembling a Boeing 747.� It did not and could not happen then, just as it cannot be made to happen now.
The very best our biochemists can do today is construct infinitesimal pieces of the puzzle, leaving them little nearer to seeing how life truly works than Darwin and his cohorts 140 years ago.
But why? What�s the problem? Haven�t we cracked the atom? Haven�t we flown to the moon? Haven�t we mapped the ocean floors? Yes, yes, and yes. But those things were easy by comparison.
Looking For Life In All The Wrong Places
If the Darwinists are so wrong, where are they wrong? What is the fundamental mistake they are making? It has to do with where they are looking, which is the cell, inside the cell, and specifically at the functioning of DNA. Because the twisting double-helix of DNA contains the instructions for all of life�s processes, the assumption has always been that disruptions in the patterns of those instructions are the only logical explanation for how physiological changes at both the micro (small) and macro (large) level must be created and executed.
In other words, changes in DNA (mutations) must be the engine driving all aspects of evolutionary change. Nothing else makes sense.
Sensible or not, however, it is wrong. Why? Because in 1984 a group of British researchers decided to do an experiment utilizing what was then considered to be a universal truth about genes, handed down from Gregor Mendel himself: the idea that genes are sexless.
Mendel had postulated that a gene from either parent, whether plant or animal, was equally useful and effective throughout the lifetime of the individual possessing it. This was taken as gospel until those British researchers tried to create mouse embryos carrying either two copies of �father� genes or two copies of �mother� genes.
According to Mendel�s laws of inheritance, both male and female embryos should have developed normally. After all, they had a full complement of genes, and if genes were indeed sexless they had all they needed to gestate and thrive.
The researchers were stunned when all of their carefully crafted embryos were dead within a few days of being transferred to a surrogate mother�s womb.
How could it happen? What could have gone so wrong in a scenario that couldn�t go wrong? They were completely baffled.
What they didn�t know, and what many refuse to accept even now, fourteen years later, is that they had unwittingly opened their own--and their icon�s--darkest, blackest box.
They had ventured into a region of the cell, and of the functioning of DNA, that they hadn�t imagined was off-limits. By taking that inadvertent journey they ended up forging an entirely new understanding of Mendelian inheritance, while driving a stake through the already weakened heart of Darwinian evolution.
A Time To Live And A Time To Die
Normally, father genes or mother genes control the expression of their own activity. A father gene might give, for example, the signal for a crop of head hair to grow--to �express� itself--and to stop expressing when the follicles had been constructed in their proper places in the scalp. The cessation of the expressing process is called methylation, which is the surrounding of expressing genes with clusters of chemicals that shut them off (picture the cap being put back on a toothpaste tube).
In the same way, a mother gene might express a pair of eyes and then, when they were completed, �methylate� the gene�s growth processes into inactivity.
Until 1984, it was believed that all genetic function operated the same way. If a gene or suite of genes came from Dad�s side of the mating process, then those genes managed their own affairs from birth until death. And the same held true for genes coming from Mom�s side of the mating.
But certain genes turned out to exhibit radical differences, depending on whose side of the mating process they came from. When the female mouse embryos died, it was found that genes vital to their growth had inexplicably never been turned on at all, while still others were never turned off (methylated) and spiraled unchecked into cancers.
Even more baffling, the fatal processes in the all-male embryos were entirely different from those in the all-females. The embryos were dying for reasons that were clearly sex-biased. What could it possibly mean?
Imprinted genes were found to be the culprit. Imprinted genes, it turned out, could be expressed by either parent and, incredibly, methylated by the other parent!
Somehow, someway, by means not clearly imagined, much less understood, genes from one parent had the ability to independently begin or end processes that were critical to the lives of forming embryos.
In the world of genetics as it had always been perceived, that was impossible.
Only a localized (sexless) gene should be able to control its own destiny or purpose, not a separate gene from an entirely different parent.
Cooperating genes broke all the rules of physical inheritance that had been written by Gregor Mendel.
Yet imprinted genes do, in fact, disregard Mendel�s rules; and by doing so they provide the above mentioned stake that will inevitably be driven through the heart of classic Darwinian evolution.
Life's Blueprint Writ Wrong
So far geneticists have identified about 20 imprinted genes embedded within the 80,000 to 100,000 believed to comprise the entire human genome. New ones are discovered on a regular basis, with many geneticists predicting the final tally will reach hundreds, while others suspect the total might reach into the thousands.
But whether hundreds or thousands, any imprinted genes at all means that classic Darwinism can no longer count on mutations in DNA as a plausible mechanism for fundamental physical change.
For mutations to be acceptable as the engine of Darwinian change, they have to be able to occur in isolation and then, as stated earlier, pass themselves intact to succeeding generations. By definition that means they have to be able to regulate their own functions, both to express and to methylate their genetic processes.
Whenever a trait mutates, whether a longer limb, a stronger muscle, or a more efficient organ, it should pass into the gene pool whole and complete, not half of it being expressed from the male side of a pairing and half from the female side.
Why? Because both parents would have to mutate in complementary ways at the same time to the same degree...and then they would have to find each other and mate in order to have even a chance to pass the mutation on!
Natural mutations, while statistically rare, are clearly documented. They can be neutral, negative, or positive. So when geneticists contend that isolated mutations in DNA can occur and be passed on to succeeding generations, they first assume the individual with the mutation has been fortunate enough to have the correct one out of the three possibilities.
They further assume the individual survives the brutal winnowing process Darwin so correctly labeled �survival of the fittest.� But fittest or not, any fledgling animal or plant must contend with an infinite number of ways to miss the boat to maturity.
Assuming that passage is safe, the lucky individual with the positive mutation has to get lucky several more times to produce enough offspring so that at least a few of them possess his or her positive mutation and also survive to maturity to pass it along.
It is a series of events that, taken altogether, are extremely unlikely but at least they are feasible, and they do, in fact, happen.
Imprinted genes, however, neatly sever those threads of feasibility by making it literally impossible for any mutation, positive or otherwise, to effect more than the individual expressing it.
There is certainly no way for it to work its way into a gene pool regulated by imprinted genes. Why? For the reasons just stated above: for a mutation to be implemented, it must be beneficial and it must be paired with a similar change in a member of the opposite sex.
Thus, if only a handful of genes are capable of being turned on and off by different parents, then Darwinian evolution has no place in the grand scheme of life on Earth. Imprinting shoves Darwinists well beyond any hope of feasibility, to a region of DNA where change is incapable of being positive.
Timing Really Is Everything
What we are really talking about with imprinting processes is timing, the most exquisite and incomprehensible faculty any gene possesses. By knowing when--and being able--to turn on and off the millions to billions of biological processes that create and sustain living organisms, genes control the switches that control life itself.
In effect, whatever controls the timing switches controls the organism. If, for example, only one methyl group misses its turn-off signal on an expressing gene, the resultant non-stop expressing will lead to cellular overproduction and, ultimately, cancer.
Conversely, if only one gene fails to express when it should, at the very least a seriously negative event has occurred, and at worst the organism has suffered a catastrophe that will terminate its life.
More important than this, however, is that timing sequences cannot be altered in any way, shape, or form that will not be detrimental to offspring. In other words, the �evolution� of a timing sequence in the development of an embryo or a growing offspring simply cannot be favorable in the Darwinian sense.
Why? Because in terms of results it is already perfect. And how do we know it is perfect? Because the parents both reached maturity.
What is so special about their reaching maturity? It means their own timing sequences performed perfectly in their own embryos, with their initial sperm and egg differentiating in millions of ways to become their bodies. (In plants the same principle holds true).
Then their growing period developed perfectly, with its millions of different timing events leading to their limbs and organs growing to their proper sizes and carrying on their proper functions.
Any alteration of that perfection can be, and nearly always is, devastating. In golf a putt drops or it doesn�t. In timing sequences, they are started and stopped precisely, or not. There is no room for error or improvement (no third condition called �better�).
Thus, no genetic alteration to timing can create the faster legs, larger horns, sharper teeth, etc., called for by Darwin�s theory of piecemeal change.
This is why gills cannot become lungs, why fins cannot become limbs, why scales cannot become fur or skin. No single timing mechanism can �evolve� without altering the perfection that has been passed to offspring by parents through untold generations.
A good analogy is the building of a house. We start with a blueprint. Analogize this with the genetic blueprint provided by DNA. The former outlines the physical materials that go into a house: wood, nails, sheetrock, doors, etc.
The latter outlines the physical materials that go into creating a body: blood, bones, skin, hair, etc. Next, we bring in the carpenters who will build the house.
It is they who, following our carefully drawn blueprint, will determine everything that will be done to create our house. More importantly, they will determine when all parts of the house will be built, when any particular process will start and when it will stop. They will build the floor before the walls, the walls before the roof, etc.
Building our house is thus a two-part project: what to build, and how and when to build it. It is the same with living organisms, whose carpenter genes (the mysterious timing mechanisms that turn growth processes on and off) determine their success.
Now it becomes easy to understand Darwin�s fundamental error. While examining the widely varied houses of living organisms, he saw no trace of the invisible carpenters who have the decisive hand in their creation. Therefore, his theory did not--and so far cannot--account for the fact that carpenter genes invariably prohibit alterations.
If I Had A Hammer
As with a house, DNA contains or provides everything necessary to create a particular organism, whether animal or plant. DNA has the further capacity to define and manufacture the physiological materials needed to create the entirety of the organism, precisely when they are needed and to the exact degree they are needed. And, perhaps most wondrous of all, DNA contains the ineffable carpenter genes that determine when each phase of the organism�s construction will begin and end.
Any organism�s parents will have passed to it a set of DNA blueprints of what to build and how to build it, which are nearly always perfect with respect to timing, but allowing slight variations in what is built. On the occasions when faulty timing does lead to tragedy, the imperfections are due to sperm-egg misconnects, or molecular anomalies in DNA caused by radiation or chemicals.
Where classic Darwinian evolution completely breaks down is in not allowing carpenter genes to exist separately from end results. Darwinism contends that when any aspect of an organism�s materials change (i.e., a mutation in some strand of DNA which changes some aspect of physical structure), that organism�s carpenter genes smoothly accommodate the change (alter the blueprint) by adjusting the timing sequences (beginning and end) of that structure�s development.
This is not reality.
A Watusi�s thighbone takes just as long to form as a Pygmy�s thighbone (about 18 years), so only the end results--their respective sizes--have changed, not their timing processes. This is one reason why all human beings can so easily interbreed, even the unlikely combination of Watusis and Pygmies.
Our vast array of underlying genetic timing mechanisms, including our imprinted genes, have been handed down intact (unevolved!) since the beginning of our existence as a species. Thus, what is built can be slowly, gradually altered; how it is built cannot.
This obvious fact...this undeniable truth...has the most profound implications: In the carpenter genes of successful organisms, no improvement is possible! And without improvement, via Darwinian change, how could they have evolved? Not just into something from nothing, but into millions of interlocking, tightly sequenced commands that smoothly mesh over extended periods as organisms develop from embryo to birth to sexual maturity? The short answer is, �They can�t.�
What all this means, of course, is that everything we think we know about how life develops on Earth is flatly wrong. It means all of our �experts� are totally mistaken when they tell us that Darwin�s theory of gradual mutations has led to the development of all species of plants and animals on the planet.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Darwinism cannot work now, it has never been able to work, and the time has come for its supporters to stop their intellectual posturing and admit they need to go back to their drawing boards to seek a more plausible explanation for what is surely life�s greatest single mystery.
Lloyd Pye: ESSAY ON CARPENTER GENESExposure Magazine, November 1998
Non Coding DNA; From Junk to "Bling"? Page 9
"Why would a perfect God create flawed DNA which is primarily composed of useless, non-coding regions?" ..Materialists
"Ummm, He didn't"..s8int.com
Salvage prospect for 'Junk' DNA
By Paul Rincon
BBC News April 26, 2006
The genome may possess far more complexity than was imagined.
Photo:DNA; de rigeur!
A mathematical analysis of the human genome suggests that so-called "junk DNA" might not be so useless after all. The term junk DNA refers to those portions of the genome which appear to have no specific purpose.
But a team from IBM has identified patterns, or "motifs", that were found both in the junk areas of the genome and those which coded for proteins.
The presence of the motifs in junk DNA suggests these portions of the genome may have an important functional role.
The findings are reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal. But they will have to be verified by experimenters in the lab, the scientists behind the work point out.
Dr Andrew McCallion, who was not an author on the new paper, commented: "Up until not so long ago, we were under the impression that the vast majority of information in the genome, if not all of it, was encoded in those stretches of DNA that encoded proteins.
"We now understand there is much more complexity involved," Dr McCallion, from the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, US, told the BBC News website.
Lead author Isidore Rigoutsos and colleagues from IBM's Thomas J Watson Research Center used a mathematical tool known as pattern discovery to tease out patterns in the genome.
This technique is often used to mine useful information from very large repositories of data in the worlds of business and science.
Scrapheap Challenge
They sifted through the approximate total of six billion letters in the non-coding regions of the human genome and looked for repeating sequence fragments, or motifs. "One of the things that arises from this paper is that junk DNA may not be junk. But this needs to be verified," Dr Rigoutsos told the BBC News website.
DNA IN HUMAN CELLS
The double-stranded DNA molecule is held together by chemical components called bases Adenine (A) bonds with thymine (T); cytosine (C) bonds with guanine (G) These "letters" form the "code of life".
There are estimated to be about 2.9 billion base-pairs in the human genome wound into 24 distinct bundles, or chromosomes.
Written in the DNA are 20-25,000 genes, which human cells use as starting templates to make proteins. These sophisticated molecules build and maintain our bodies.
The researchers found millions of the motifs in non-coding DNA. But roughly 128,000 of these also occurred in the coding region of the genome. These were also over-represented in genes which are involved in specific biological processes.
These processes include the regulation of transcription - the beginning of the process that ultimately leads to the translation of the genetic code into a peptide or protein - and communication between cells.
Dr Rigoutsos said his team's work suggested, "a connection between a vast area of the genome we didn't think was functional with the part of the genome we knew was functional.
"The average lab does not have the resources to prove or disprove this, so it will need a lot of effort by lots of people," he explained.
Gene silencing
The paper in PNAS suggests that the actual positioning of the motifs is associated with small RNA molecules that are involved with a process called post-transcriptional gene silencing (PTGS).
"A human embryo starts out as a single fertilised cell and rapidly divides into a widely complex series of cells that become a human being," explained Dr McCallion.
"Every cell in that human being contains the same complement of genes and what makes each cell different is the precise way that genes are turned on and turned off."
PTGS turns genes off after the process of transcription has taken place. One way in which this occurs is through "RNA interference", which involves the introduction of double-stranded RNA molecules.
These trigger the degradation of another type of RNA molecule known as messenger RNA (mRNA), "down-regulating" the gene. During transcription, this molecule encodes and carries information from genes to sites of protein synthesis.
These regions may indeed contain structure that we haven't seen before.Dr Isidore Rigoutsos, IBM.
"If indeed one of them corresponds to an active element that is involved in some kind of process, then the extent of cell process regulation that actually takes place is way beyond anything we have seen in the last decade."
'Junk' DNA Now Looks Like Powerful Regulator, Researcher Finds.... Page 10
Famous Atheist Dawkins Snidely Chides Creationists About Imperfect "Junk DNA".
"...And there�s lots more DNA that doesn�t even deserve the name pseudogene. It, too, is derived by duplication, but not duplication of functional genes. It consists of multiple copies of junk, �tandem repeats�, and other nonsense which may be useful for forensic detectives but which doesn�t seem to be used in the body itself.
Once again, creationists might spend some earnest time speculating on why the Creator should bother to litter genomes with untranslated pseudogenes and junk tandem repeat DNA. ...
Can we measure the information capacity of that portion of the genome which is actually used? We can at least estimate it. In the case of the human genome it is about 2% - considerably less than the proportion of my hard disc that I have ever used since I bought it."
- Richard Dawkins, "The Information Challenge." the skeptic. 18,4. Autumn 1998
William A. Dembski predicted in 1998 that Doubters Like Dawkins Would Prove to be As Wrong About "Non_Coding DNA As They Were About Everything Else
But design is not a science stopper. Indeed, design can foster inquiry where traditional evolutionary approaches obstruct it. Consider the term "junk DNA."
Implicit in this term is the view that because the genome of an organism has been cobbled together through along, undirected evolutionary process, the genome is a patchwork of which only limited portions are essential to the organism. Thus on an evolutionary view we expect a lot of useless DNA.
If, on the other hand, organisms are designed, we expect DNA, as much as possible, to exhibit function. And indeed, the most recent findings suggest that designating DNA as "junk" merely cloaks our current lack of knowledge about function.
For instance, in a recent issue of the Journal of Theoretical Biology, John Bodnar describes how "non-coding DNA in eukaryotic genomes encodes a language which programs organismal growth and development."
Design encourages scientists to look for function where evolution discourages it. Subsequent ID theorists repeated this ID prediction that functionality would be found in agenic or "Junk" DNA.
Hubris
"...a certain amount of hubris* was required for anyone to call any part of the genome 'junk'" Francis Collins (2006)
'Junk' DNA now Looks Like Powerful Regulator, Researcher Finds.....PHYSORG April 23, 2007
Large swaths of garbled human DNA once dismissed as junk appear to contain some valuable sections, according to a new study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the University of California-Santa Cruz.
The scientists propose that this redeemed DNA plays a role in controlling when genes turn on and off.
Gill Bejerano, PhD, assistant professor of developmental biology and of computer science at Stanford, found more than 10,000 nearly identical genetic snippets dotting the human chromosomes. Many of those snippets were located in gene-free chromosomal expanses once described by geneticists as "gene deserts."
These sections are, in fact, so clogged with useful DNA bits - including the ones Bejerano and his colleagues describe - that they've been renamed "regulatory jungles."
"It's funny how quickly the field is now evolving," Bejerano said. His work picking out these snippets and describing why they might exist will be published in the April 23 advance online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
It turns out that most of the segments described in the research paper cluster near genes that play a carefully orchestrated role during an animal's first few weeks after conception. Bejerano and his colleagues think that these sequences help in the intricate choreography of when and where those genes flip on as the animal lays out its body plan.
In particular, the group found the sequences to be especially abundant near genes that help cells stick together. These genes play a crucial role early in an animal's life, helping cells migrate to the correct location or form into organs and tissues of the correct shape.
The 10,402 sequences studied by Bejerano, along with David Haussler, PhD, professor of biomolecular engineering at UC-Santa Cruz, are remnants of unusual DNA pieces called transposons that duplicate themselves and hop around the genome.
"We used to think they were mostly messing things up. Here is a case where they are actually useful," Bejerano said.
He suspects that when a transposon is plopped down in a region where it wasn't needed, it slowly accumulated mutations until it no longer resembled its original sequence.
The genome is littered with these decaying transposons. When a transposon dropped into a location where it was useful, however, it held on to much of the original sequence, making it possible for Bejerano to pick out.
In past work, Bejerano and his co-workers had identified a handful of transposons that seemed to regulate nearby genes. However, it wasn't clear how common the phenomenon might be. "Now we've shown that transposons may be a major vehicle for evolutionary novelty," he said.
The paper's first author, Craig Lowe, a graduate student in Haussler's lab at UC-Santa Cruz, said finding the transposons was just the first step. "Now we are trying to nail down exactly what the elements are doing," he said.
Bejerano's work wouldn't have been possible without two things that became available over the past few years: the complete gene sequence of many vertebrate species, and fast computers running sophisticated new genetic analysis software.
"Right now it's like being a kid in a candy warehouse," Bejerano said. Computer-savvy biologists have the tools to ask questions about how genes and chromosomes evolve and change, questions that just a few years ago were unanswerable.
Bejerano and his colleagues aren't the first to suggest that transposons play a role in regulating nearby genes. In fact, Nobel laureate Barbara McClintock, PhD, who first discovered transposons, proposed in 1956 that they could help determine the timing for when nearby genes turn on and off.... Source: Stanford University Medical Center
Neanderthal DNA "Almost" Identical to "Modern" Human's ..(Oops!)...Page 11
A short time ago (November, 2006,) South African scientists reported finding a supposedly
360 million year old fossil lamphrey. The problem for evolutionary theory is; the fossil lamprey is virtually identical to "present day" lampreys. Just in case some of those pesky creationists were around to ask embarrasing questions, the scientists noted that though the fossil had surprisingly not evolved much, it appeared that the lampreys had "gotten slightly longer"!
What kind of scientist would make such an assumption based on one specimen? An evolutionary scientist who needs to show something for 360 million years of work, that's who.
That brings us to the subject of this article, "Neanderthal Man". The more we learn about Neanderthal, the less primitive he becomes. Recent scientific articles have admitted that modern man and Neanderthal met, interacted and even interbred. Another recent article suggests that Europeans could be
5% NeanderthalOn the other hand, many ruling paradigm scientists are still insisting that Neaderthals couldn't speak and that there certainly was no interbreeding. So, what would happen when scientists were able to isolate Neanderthal DNA, as they have recently actually done with material found in a Croation cave?
Neanderthal DNA is 99.9% identical to "human" DNA! Blockbuster! All over the news, right? 99.9% identical is certainly startling, all right but it's not 100% identical, seemingly preserving something for evolutionary scientists to hang their hats on. Like saying it looks like lamphreys got slightly longer over 360 million years.
What they don't give you is the following fact as quoted from a lecture by Eric Lanser, Ph D; (easily verified elsewhere) "Any two humans on earth are 99.9 percent identical in their DNA sequences".
This kind of puts the data on Neanderthal DNA in a whole new light; their DNA differs from ours exactly as our differs from each other! Neanderthal is/was exactly as different from you as your next door neighbor is, only he/she is not typically depicted hunched over wearing animal skins and carrying a spear.
Given the fact that DNA sequencing shows that "modern humans" and Neanderthal are "identical", the article below really makes no sense, continuing the fiction that the populations remained separate and that we (modern humans) won (in evolutionary terms) and that they lost. Turns out that we're a little shorter, maybe.
By FIONA MACRAE Last updated at 22:00pm on 15th November 2006
Daily Mail
We may like to think we're far superior to the Neanderthals species that us humans beat in the evolutionary battle.
But analysis of DNA from a 38,000-year-old bone has revealed Neanderthal and human DNA is actually up to 99.9 per cent identical.
In contrast, humans and chimps only share 95 per cent of their genetic material.
The discovery came as scientists work on decoding the entire Neanderthal genome from a perfectly-preserved artefact. Found in a cave in Croatia, the bone could hold the key to many of the secrets of evolution.
Dr Edward Rubin, one of the US and German researchers who have started to sequence the ancient DNA, said: 'We are at the dawn of Neanderthal genomics. 'This data will function as a DNA time machine and tell us aspects of biology we could never get from bones or associated artefacts.
Fossil remains have already shown that Neanderthals looked different from us, with heavy brows, low foreheads, and receding chins. They were also much more robustly built than modern humans.
A full blueprint of Neanderthal DNA - due to be produced in two years' time - could provide information on eye colour and hair colour, intelligence and language. The partial sequencing completed so far has confirmed the theory that humans and Neanderthals split from their common ancestor between 400,000 and 500,000 years ago, studies published in the journals Nature and Science report.
The two then co-existed for many thousands of years before Neanderthals became extinct around 30,000 years ago, perhaps beaten by their more innovative cousins in the race for food, clothing and shelter.
It is thought they were unable to compete with the more innovative and adaptable Homo sapiens for food, clothing and shelter. While the studies did not find any evidence that the two populations interbred, the researchers were unable to completely rule out the idea.
Dr Svante Paabo (CORR), of the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany, said: 'While unable to definitively conclude that interbreeding between the two species of humans did not occur, analysis of the nuclear DNA from the Neanderthal suggests the low likelihood of it having occurred at any appreciable level.'
Co-researcher Professor Jonathan Pritchard, of the University of Chicago, said further analysis could provide more evidence of what makes us human.
'Humans went through several key stages of evolution during the last 400,000 years,' he said. 'If we can compare humans and Neanderthal genomes, then we can possibly identify what the key genetic changes were during that final stage of human evolution.'
Professor Chris Stringer, head of human origins at the Natural History Museum in London, said: 'Research can now extend to complete the whole genome of a Neanderthal and to examine Neanderthal variation through time and space to compare with ours.
'Having such rich data holds the promise of looking for the equivalent genes in Neanderthals that code for specific features in modern humans, for example eye colour, skin and hair type, cognitive and language skills.'
He added: 'Having a Neanderthal genome will also throw light on our own evolution, by allowing a three-way comparison of the genetic blueprints that produced Neanderthals, and that today produce us and our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees.
'We should then be able to pin down unique changes in each genome to show how we came to be different from each other.' * In just 50 years' time, we'll live healthily to 100, thanks to full body transplants and a vegetarian diet, leading scientists predict.
Asked to forecast the biggest scientific breakthroughs of the next 50 years, they said the development of anti-aging drugs will allow us to live to a sprightly 100.
Professor Richard Miller, of the University of Michigan, said: 'It is now routine in laboratory mammals to extend lifespan by about 40 per cent. 'Turning on the same protective system in humans should, by 2056, create the first class of centenarians who are as vigorous and productive as today's run-of-the-mill sexagenarians.'
Advances in storing both eggs and ovarian tissue will allow women to give birth into old age, while technology that allows us to read the minds of animals will lead to mass vegetarianism.
New Scientist magazine's 50th birthday issue also predicts whole body transplants will be routine within just 50 years.
DNA Found to Have "Impossible" Telepathic Properties...Page 12
Question?
What theory best explains this mysterious �impossible� phenomenon? The evolution of some type of unknown ability in DNA through Darwinian processes, or the deliberate design-in of this special ability?
What if this ability is necessary for DNA to fulfill its function? How then could it have functioned in that presumed, time expanse prior to �evolution� of these abilities?
Of course, we say special creation is the best answer for the origin of this phenomenon.
DNA has been found to have a bizarre ability to put itself together, even at a distance, when according to known science it shouldn't be able to. Explanation: None, at least not yet.
Scientists are reporting evidence that contrary to our current beliefs about what is possible, intact double-stranded DNA has the �amazing� ability to recognize similarities in other DNA strands from a distance.
Somehow they are able to identify one another, and the tiny bits of genetic material tend to congregate with similar DNA. The recognition of similar sequences in DNA�s chemical subunits, occurs in a way unrecognized by science.
There is no known reason why the DNA is able to combine the way it does, and from a current theoretical standpoint this feat should be chemically impossible.
Even so, the research published in ACS� Journal of Physical Chemistry B, shows very clearly that homology recognition between sequences of several hundred nucleotides occurs without physical contact or presence of proteins.
Double helixes of DNA can recognize matching molecules from a distance and then gather together, all seemingly without help from any other molecules or chemical signals.
In the study, scientists observed the behavior of fluorescently tagged DNA strands placed in water that contained no proteins or other material that could interfere with the experiment.
Strands with identical nucleotide sequences were about twice as likely to gather together as DNA strands with different sequences.
No one knows how individual DNA strands could possibly be communicating in this way, yet somehow they do. The �telepathic� effect is a source of wonder and amazement for scientists.
�Amazingly, the forces responsible for the sequence recognition can reach across more than one nanometer of water separating the surfaces of the nearest neighbor DNA,� said the authors Geoff S. Baldwin, Sergey Leikin, John M. Seddon, and Alexei A. Kornyshev and colleagues.
This recognition effect may help increase the accuracy and efficiency of the homologous recombination of genes, which is a process responsible for DNA repair, evolution, and genetic diversity.
The new findings may also shed light on ways to avoid recombination errors, which are factors in cancer, aging, and other health issues.
Article 2
Genetic 'telepathy'? A bizarre new property of DNA
Scientists are reporting evidence that intact, double-stranded DNA has the �amazing� ability to recognize similarities in other DNA strands from a distance. And then like friends with similar interests, the bits of genetic material hangout or congregate together.
The recognition � of similar sequences in DNA�s chemical subunits � occurs in a way once regarded as impossible, the researchers suggest in a study scheduled for the Jan. 31 issue of ACS� Journal of Physical Chemistry B.
Geoff S. Baldwin, Sergey Leikin, John M. Seddon, and Alexei A. Kornyshev and colleagues say the homology recognition between sequences of several hundred nucleotides occurs without physical contact or presence of proteins, factors once regarded as essential for the phenomenon.
This recognition may help increase the accuracy and efficiency of the homologous recombination of genes � a process responsible for DNA repair, evolution, and genetic diversity. The new findings thus may shed light on ways to avoid recombination errors, which underpin cancer, aging, and other health problems.
In the study, scientists observed the behavior of fluorescently tagged DNA strands placed in water that contained no proteins or other material that could interfere with the experiment. Strands with identical nucleotide sequences were about twice as likely to gather together as DNA strands with different sequences.
�Amazingly, the forces responsible for the sequence recognition can reach across more than one nanometer of water separating the surfaces of the nearest neighbor DNA,� said the authors.
Source: ACS
