God and Man, Christians and Katrina
Monday September 12th, 2005. This is show # 181.
BEST QUOTE OF THE SHOW
Monday September 12th, 2005. This is show # 181.
BEST QUOTE OF THE SHOW
God and Man, Christians and Katrina
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aharvey
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Yeah, I wasn't expecting a human-chimp diatribe either. With respect to the topic of the post, if not the thread,allsmiles said:
"Humans and chimps have evolved separately since splitting from a common ancestor about 6 million years ago, and their DNA remains highly similar -- about 96 percent to almost 99 percent identical, depending on how the comparison is made.
Still, the number of genetic differences between a human and a chimp is about 10 times more than between any two humans, the federal genome institute says. It's the differences -- some 40 million -- that attract the attention of scientists." Not the magnitude of that difference, mind you; the article goes on to say that these guys are looking to see which genetic differences might be responsible for the morphological differences we see.
This last number is no doubt the number that's got Bob so excited. 40 million differences, in base pairs, that is. I'm intrigued by the previous number, though. You pick any two humans and they are likely to differ by some 4 million base pairs. What does that mean, exactly? Perhaps it means that "40 million differences" does not quite mean what Bob thinks it means.
Oy... my father, with a degree in biology, always reminds me that when the clich'e came out that we use only 10% of our brains, he was skeptical (and this was in the late 60's, or perhaps the early 70's). As I understand it, it comes from a quote from a famous brain scientist that was cut short. In fact, the quote is more like "we use 10% of our brains at a time." Wow, that's a lot of neurons working in parallel. And I think, if I remember what my dad said correctly, that we use almost all of our brain every 2 minutes or so. That's even more amazing!
Anyhow, I guess I'll call Bob and mention that he needs to correct that point.
Oh, and aharvey back me up on this if I'm right, the entire human genome hasn't been decoded, but only the parts that scientists consider matters. Lots of the "junk DNA" is ignored.
Of course, aharvey doesn't have to back this up; I'll make a bold prediction that we have barely scratched the surface on really decoding the human genome. I think Bob should amend his remarks about that statement as well.
Anyhow, I guess I'll call Bob and mention that he needs to correct that point.
Oh, and aharvey back me up on this if I'm right, the entire human genome hasn't been decoded, but only the parts that scientists consider matters. Lots of the "junk DNA" is ignored.
Of course, aharvey doesn't have to back this up; I'll make a bold prediction that we have barely scratched the surface on really decoding the human genome. I think Bob should amend his remarks about that statement as well.
aharvey
New member
The Human Genome Project, to the best of my knowledge, did not deal with non-coding DNA (aka "junk" DNA: regions of DNA that do not code for genes). I do not know if they expanded their scope as it became clear that noncoding regions often do something, but I kinda doubt it.Yorzhik said:
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