snippy: Thats why its good to do your own research. its a very complicated subject and the last 5 years has been break-thru after break-thru on the subject laying waste to all previous understanding of RNA DNA. its intelligent design. and what would that mean?

Maynard: Facepalm

snippy: read this Maynard if you're interested in proving to yourself you aint ignorant. https://www.techtimes.com/articles/228798/20180530/massive-genetic-study-reveals-90-percent-of-earth-s-animals-appeared-at-the-same-time.htm

Maynard: that took me all of about 20 minutes to find loads of papers debunking what you think that paper means.

Maynard: In other words, the genetic diversity observed in mitochondrial genomes of most species alive today can be attributed to the accumulation of mutations from an ancestral genome within the past 200,000 years. Their conclusions are interesting (and to some extent unexpected) but they are not shocking, nor do they defy evolutionary theory. To see why, let’s unpack what the authors have claimed. First, it is important to note that the authors never claim that most “species” came into existence within the past 200,000 years. Rather, what has come into existence within that time frame is the genetic variation observed in one gene in the mitochondrial genome. By tracing the mutations in that one gene, we can trace the origin of the gene back to the last common female ancestor of all living members of a certain species (the so-called “mitochondrial Eve”). But this discovery, at best, tells us the minimum age of the species. It tells us little to nothing about the maximum age of a species.

Maynard: Those headlines give the impression that science has produced evidence to support the story of Adam and Eve. But the study they rest on does not demonstrate anything of the kind, and other lines of evidence strongly suggest that past human populations were always much larger than two. The study is about DNA barcoding: the technique of reading a small chunk of an organism's DNA and using that to identify its species. To identify an animal, geneticists usually look at a gene called cytochrome oxidase 1 (CO1). This gene is not part of the "main" genome held in the nucleus of animal cells, but instead is carried in the mitochondria: tiny sausage-shaped organelles that swarm inside animal cells and provide them with energy. DNA barcoding is not a perfect method of identifying species, but it works pretty well. That's because, as the study observes, animals belonging to one species tend to have near-identical CO1 genes, which reliably differ from animals of other species. Because CO1 genes are so similar within species, regardless of how many individuals there are, Stoeckle and Thaler argue that something must have made them that way. Either evolution is somehow pushing each species to have its own version, which seems unlikely, or each species has had almost all its genetic diversity purged - which implies that its population was once very small. What's more, these population bottlenecks seemingly all occurred between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago. The idea of humans being reduced to a population of two, who then had to repopulate the planet, has understandably drawn people's attention. But this idea is almost certainly wrong, for a host of reasons. First, we should always be hesitant about drawing big conclusions from mitochondrial DNA, and especially from a single gene - even if that gene has been examined in hundreds of species. Mitochondrial DNA is only inherited from one's mother, so it necessarily only tells us about the female line. More importantly, because there is so little of it, it often misleads us. When the mitochondrial genome of Neanderthals was sequenced, it showed no sign that humans and Neanderthals had interbred. The interbreeding was only revealed when the Neanderthal nuclear genome was read.

snippy: i hope you didnt copy and paste that from forbes! what horseshit!

Maynard: I hope you didn't post a link to techtimes! What horseshit!

snippy: and your brilliant 20 minutes of research! JOKE! you remain ignorant. 20 minutes!!! you see why i think explaining something over your head is akin to banging ones head against the wall!!

Maynard: Butthurt by your beliefs being blasted?

Maynard: It's telling that the personal attacks come out when your worldview is threatened.

snippy: whatever you got to tell yourself Maynard. what a joke!

Maynard: The joke is on you. In the future take a more nuanced approach to your science reading and possibly don't believe everything you read on techtimes.

Maynard: we do share 50% of our genes with many plants including bananas. Genes – the regions of DNA that code for proteins – only make up about 2% of your DNA. So sharing 50% of our genes with bananas means we only actually share 1% of our DNA with them – not 50% or 72%. Even though genes only make up 2% of our DNA, it’s still surprising that half of the genes we have are also found in bananas. But animals and plants share a common ancestor – a single-celled life form which probably lived about 1.6 billion years ago. The genes that we share with bananas would have been present in that ancestor, and have been passed down to all animals and plants alive today. And the reason that we’ve kept these genes, is that they’re involved in fundamental cell processes – like making energy and repairing damage. Just like that single-celled ancestor, and our banana relatives, we need these processes to survive – and so we share half of our genes, but not half of our DNA with bananas. On the other hand, we share more than 98% of our DNA and almost all of our genes with our closest living relative, the chimpanzee. although recent studies suggest that figure is up to 99.4% when studying critical DNA. Also, we share more than 97% with our next closest living relative, the Gorilla.