I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made:
Psalm 139:14
"As a biochemist and a skeptic of the evolutionary paradigm, people often ask me two interrelated questions:
For many people, the genetic comparisons between the two species convince them that human evolution is true. Presumably, the shared genetic features in the human and chimpanzee genomes reflect the species’ shared evolutionary ancestry.
One high-profile example of these similarities is the structural features human chromosome 2 shares with two chimpanzee chromosomes labeled chromosome 2A and chromosome 2B. When the two chimpanzee chromosomes are placed end to end, they look remarkably like human chromosome 2. Evolutionary biologists interpret this genetic similarity as evidence that human chromosome 2 arose when chromosome 2A and chromosome 2B underwent an end-to-end fusion. They claim that this fusion took place in the human evolutionary lineage at some point after it separated from the lineage that led to chimpanzees and bonobos. Therefore, the similarity in these chromosomes provides strong evidence that humans and chimpanzees share an evolutionary ancestry.
Yet, new work by two separate teams of synthetic biologists from the United States and China, respectively, raises questions about
this evolutionary scenario. Working independently, both research teams devised similar gene editing techniques that, in turn, they used to fuse the chromosomes in the yeast species, Saccharomyces cerevisiae (brewer’s yeast). Their work demonstrates the central role intelligent agency must play in end-on-end chromosome fusion, thereby countering the evolutionary explanation while supporting a creation model interpretation of human chromosome 2.
Each species has a characteristic number of chromosomes that differ in size and shape. For example, humans have 46 chromosomes (23 pairs); chimpanzees and other apes have 48 (24 pairs).
In the early 1980s, evolutionary biologists compared the
chromosomes of humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans for the first time. These studies revealed an exceptional degree of similarity between human and chimp chromosomes. When aligned, the human and corresponding chimpanzee chromosomes display near-identical banding patterns, band locations, band size, and band stain intensity. To evolutionary biologists, this resemblance reveals powerful evidence for human and chimpanzee shared ancestry.
The most noticeable difference between human and chimp chromosomes is the quantity: 46 for humans and 48 for chimpanzees.
I describe the challenges to the evolutionary explanation in some detail in a previous article:
evolutionary processes. But why would these chromosomes appear to be so similar, if they were created?.....I think the similarity between human and chimpanzee chromosomes reflects shared design, not shared evolutionary ancestry.
Recent work by two independent teams of synthetic biologists from the US and China corroborates my critique of the evolutionary explanation for human chromosome 2....
Both teams reduced the number of chromosomes in stages by fusing pairs of chromosomes. The first attempt reduced the number from 16 to 8. In the next round they fused pairs of the newly created chromosome to reduce the number from 8 to 4, and so on.
To their surprise, the yeast seemed to tolerate this radical genome editing quite well—although their growth rate slowed and the yeast failed to thrive under certain laboratory conditions. Gene expression was altered in the modified yeast genomes, but only for a few genes. Most of the 5,800 genes in the brewer’s yeast genome were normally expressed, compared to the wild-type strain.
Specifically, the work with brewer’s yeast provides empirical evidence that human chromosome 2 must have been shaped by an Intelligent Agent. This research also reinforces my concerns about the capacity of evolutionary mechanisms to generate human chromosome 2 via the fusion of chimpanzee chromosomes 2A and 2B.
Both research teams had to carefully design the gene editing system they used so that it would precisely delete two distinct regions in the chromosomes. This process affected end-on-end chromosome fusions in a way that would allow the yeast cells to survive. Specifically, they had to delete regions of the chromosomes near the telomeres, including the highly repetitive telomere-associated sequences. While they carried out this deletion, they carefully avoided deleting DNA sequences near the telomeres that harbored genes. They also simultaneously deleted one of the centromeres of the fused chromosomes to ensure that the fused chromosome would properly replicate and segregate during cell division. Finally, they had to make sure that when the two chromosomes fused, the remaining centromere was positioned near the center of the resulting chromosome.
In addition to the high-precision gene editing, they had to carefully construct the sequence of donor DNA that accompanied the CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing package so that the chromosomes with the deleted telomeres could be directed to fuse end on end. Without the donor DNA, the fusion would have been haphazard.
In other words, to fuse the chromosomes so that the yeast survived, the research teams needed a detailed understanding of chromosome structure and biology and a strategy to use this knowledge to design precise gene editing protocols. Such planning would ensure that chromosome fusion occurred without the loss of key genetic information and without disrupting key processes such as DNA replication and chromosome segregation during cell division.
The researchers’ painstaking effort is a far cry from the unguided, undirected, haphazard events that evolutionary biologists think caused the end-on-end chromosome fusion that created human chromosome 2. In fact, given the high-precision gene editing required to create fused chromosomes, it is hard to envision how evolutionary processes could ever produce a functional fused chromosome.
A discovery by both research teams further complicates the evolutionary explanation for the origin of human chromosome 2. Namely, the yeast cells could not replicate unless the centromere of one of the chromosomes was deleted at the time the chromosomes fused. The researchers learned that if this step was omitted, the fused chromosomes weren’t stable. Because centromeres serve as the point of attachment for the mitotic spindle, if a chromosome possesses two centromeres, mistakes occur in the chromosome segregation step during cell division.
It is interesting that human chromosome 2 has two centromeres but one of them has been inactivated. (In the evolutionary scenario, this
inactivation would have happened through a series of mutations in the centromeric DNA sequences that accrued over time.) However, if human chromosome 2 resulted from the fusion of two chimpanzee chromosomes, the initial fusion product would have possessed two centromeres, both functional. In the evolutionary scenario, it would have taken millennia for one of the chromosomes to become inactivated. Yet, the yeast studies indicate that centromere loss must take place simultaneously with end-to-end fusion. However, based on the nature of evolutionary mechanisms, it cannot.
Of course, there are a number of outstanding questions that remain for a creation model interpretation of human chromosome 2, including:
But, at this juncture the fusion of yeast chromosomes in the lab makes it hard to think that unguided evolutionary processes could ever successfully fuse two chromosomes, including human chromosome 2, end on end. Creation appears to make more sense."
ReasonsToBelieve
Psalm 139:14
"As a biochemist and a skeptic of the evolutionary paradigm, people often ask me two interrelated questions:
- What do you think are the greatest scientific challenges to the evolutionary paradigm?
- How do you respond to all the compelling evidence for biological evolution?
For many people, the genetic comparisons between the two species convince them that human evolution is true. Presumably, the shared genetic features in the human and chimpanzee genomes reflect the species’ shared evolutionary ancestry.
One high-profile example of these similarities is the structural features human chromosome 2 shares with two chimpanzee chromosomes labeled chromosome 2A and chromosome 2B. When the two chimpanzee chromosomes are placed end to end, they look remarkably like human chromosome 2. Evolutionary biologists interpret this genetic similarity as evidence that human chromosome 2 arose when chromosome 2A and chromosome 2B underwent an end-to-end fusion. They claim that this fusion took place in the human evolutionary lineage at some point after it separated from the lineage that led to chimpanzees and bonobos. Therefore, the similarity in these chromosomes provides strong evidence that humans and chimpanzees share an evolutionary ancestry.
Yet, new work by two separate teams of synthetic biologists from the United States and China, respectively, raises questions about
Each species has a characteristic number of chromosomes that differ in size and shape. For example, humans have 46 chromosomes (23 pairs); chimpanzees and other apes have 48 (24 pairs).
In the early 1980s, evolutionary biologists compared the
The most noticeable difference between human and chimp chromosomes is the quantity: 46 for humans and 48 for chimpanzees.
I describe the challenges to the evolutionary explanation in some detail in a previous article:
- End-to-end fusion of two chromosomes at the telomeres faces nearly insurmountable hurdles.
- And, if somehow the fusion did occur, it would alter the number of chromosomes and lead to one of three possible scenarios:
- (1) nonviable offspring,
- (2) viable offspring that suffers from a diseased state, or
- (3) viable but infertile offspring. Each of these scenarios would prevent the fused chromosome from entering and becoming entrenched in the human gene pool.
- Finally, if chromosome fusion took place and if the fused chromosome could be passed on to offspring, the event would have had to create such a large evolutionary advantage that it would rapidly sweep through the population, becoming fixed.
Recent work by two independent teams of synthetic biologists from the US and China corroborates my critique of the evolutionary explanation for human chromosome 2....
Both teams reduced the number of chromosomes in stages by fusing pairs of chromosomes. The first attempt reduced the number from 16 to 8. In the next round they fused pairs of the newly created chromosome to reduce the number from 8 to 4, and so on.
To their surprise, the yeast seemed to tolerate this radical genome editing quite well—although their growth rate slowed and the yeast failed to thrive under certain laboratory conditions. Gene expression was altered in the modified yeast genomes, but only for a few genes. Most of the 5,800 genes in the brewer’s yeast genome were normally expressed, compared to the wild-type strain.
Specifically, the work with brewer’s yeast provides empirical evidence that human chromosome 2 must have been shaped by an Intelligent Agent. This research also reinforces my concerns about the capacity of evolutionary mechanisms to generate human chromosome 2 via the fusion of chimpanzee chromosomes 2A and 2B.
Both research teams had to carefully design the gene editing system they used so that it would precisely delete two distinct regions in the chromosomes. This process affected end-on-end chromosome fusions in a way that would allow the yeast cells to survive. Specifically, they had to delete regions of the chromosomes near the telomeres, including the highly repetitive telomere-associated sequences. While they carried out this deletion, they carefully avoided deleting DNA sequences near the telomeres that harbored genes. They also simultaneously deleted one of the centromeres of the fused chromosomes to ensure that the fused chromosome would properly replicate and segregate during cell division. Finally, they had to make sure that when the two chromosomes fused, the remaining centromere was positioned near the center of the resulting chromosome.
In addition to the high-precision gene editing, they had to carefully construct the sequence of donor DNA that accompanied the CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing package so that the chromosomes with the deleted telomeres could be directed to fuse end on end. Without the donor DNA, the fusion would have been haphazard.
In other words, to fuse the chromosomes so that the yeast survived, the research teams needed a detailed understanding of chromosome structure and biology and a strategy to use this knowledge to design precise gene editing protocols. Such planning would ensure that chromosome fusion occurred without the loss of key genetic information and without disrupting key processes such as DNA replication and chromosome segregation during cell division.
The researchers’ painstaking effort is a far cry from the unguided, undirected, haphazard events that evolutionary biologists think caused the end-on-end chromosome fusion that created human chromosome 2. In fact, given the high-precision gene editing required to create fused chromosomes, it is hard to envision how evolutionary processes could ever produce a functional fused chromosome.
A discovery by both research teams further complicates the evolutionary explanation for the origin of human chromosome 2. Namely, the yeast cells could not replicate unless the centromere of one of the chromosomes was deleted at the time the chromosomes fused. The researchers learned that if this step was omitted, the fused chromosomes weren’t stable. Because centromeres serve as the point of attachment for the mitotic spindle, if a chromosome possesses two centromeres, mistakes occur in the chromosome segregation step during cell division.
It is interesting that human chromosome 2 has two centromeres but one of them has been inactivated. (In the evolutionary scenario, this
Of course, there are a number of outstanding questions that remain for a creation model interpretation of human chromosome 2, including:
- Why would a Creator seemingly fuse together two chromosomes to create human chromosome 2?
- Why does this chromosome possess internal telomere sequences?
- Why does human chromosome 2 harbor seemingly nonfunctional centromere sequences?
But, at this juncture the fusion of yeast chromosomes in the lab makes it hard to think that unguided evolutionary processes could ever successfully fuse two chromosomes, including human chromosome 2, end on end. Creation appears to make more sense."
ReasonsToBelieve
