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Part 8: Did Human Beings Really Share an Ancestor with Chimpanzees?
According to some people, the research on DNA further proves the correctness of the Theory of Evolution, for the 98.77% of genetic similarity proves that human beings and chimpanzees share the same ancestor. In fact, this is a big mistake. Rather than 98.77% of genetic similarity between human beings and chimpanzees, but chimpanzees have “Indeed, 83% of the 231 coding sequences, including functionally important genes, show differences at the amino acid sequence level.” from human genes. (Reference 4)
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I: How do people arrive at the Conclusion That Human Beings and Chimpanzees have 98.77% Similar? .
1. Human Chromosomes’ genes and “Junk DNA”
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In human genome there exists 3.1 billion DNA “base pairs” (DNA codes). In human genome there exists 3.1 billion DNA “base pairs” (DNA codes). Among about 3% of DNA codes was found with “a specific segment, which can produce protein or functional RNA”, namely the genes.
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The genes express the genetic information they carry through instructing protein synthesis, thereby controlling the occurrence of physiology and even appearance of every person. Therefore, they have the effect of physiological genetics.
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The about 97% of DNA codes beyond the genes are temporarily known as “junk DNA”, since their functions have not been identified yet. However, they are possibly the undiscovered treasure rather than the graveyards of the genes. It has been found that many genetic marks of molecular anthropology exist in this area as the historical archives.
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2. Segmental Comparison Methods to Assess the Similarity between Human Beings and Chimpanzees
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Through over a decade of efforts, the DNA sequences of the human genome have been deciphered and entered into the database available free to people from all over the world.
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However, such a DNA sequence is too huge. If one “base pair” (e.g. the two letters of “A-T”) is expressed by one square centimeter of mosaic, the total length of “base pair mosaics” as the 3.1 billion DNA codes will cover 31,000km. Meanwhile, they can almost cover 60 middle-sized football fields. Since the genome of chimpanzees is even larger, their mosaics can almost cover 63 football fields. One can imagine the degree of difficulty if one wants to compare the similarity of these two sets of mosaics.
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As a result, a computer program has been designed to solve such a problem. The most commonly used software is Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST). That is, one selects from the “chimpanzee mosaic football fields” a string of mosaic segment with the length of about 300-500 DNA codes, scans and matches with a mosaic segment from the “human mosaic football fields”. Then, comparison is made according to the preset standard error, e.g. within one thousandth. When a DNA segment of the chimpanzee is found in the human DNA sequences as largely accord, this DNA segment is considered qualified.
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Please note that it is a comparative result of search “at random and blindly” among the DNA base pair strings of human genome and not specifically aimed at comparison of the “gene DNA sequence”. Therefore, rather than the rate of gene similarity, it is just the rate of “similarity of small DNA segments” by blind comparison.
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3. The Source for the 98.77% of DNA Similarity between Human Beings and Chimpanzees
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In January 2002, Science published a paper entitled “Comparison and Analysis of DNA Sequences between Human Beings and Chimpanzees” (Reference 1). An international research group composed of scientists from mainland China, Taiwan, the United States, Germany, South Korea, Japan and other countries compared the DNA sequences between human beings and chimpanzees and discovered that the difference of DNA sequences between the two is only 1.23%, i.e. their similarity is 98.77%.
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Subsequently, the above conclusion was quoted by many researchers. Therefore, we must examine how this conclusion was arrived at:
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In this study, the researchers acquired 64,116 DNA segments from the chimpanzee gene pool with each segment containing 300 bases. When compared with the DNA sequences from the human gene pool according to the quality control error rate standard of not exceeding one thousandth, 19,813,086 sites passed the comparison, including 19,568,394 sites being the same. Hence, that is how we get the similarity rate 19568394/19813086=98.77%.
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The comparison method they used is abbreviated NCBI-BLAST. NCBI refers to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, and BLAST refers to the Basic Local Alignment Search Tool. That is, BLAST is used to search and compare DNA segments in NCBI to get the above result. Many other similar research reports have also adopted this research method and arrived at similar number (mostly about 98.6%).
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The 98.77% is the rate of DNA similarity and a comparison result obtained under the condition of using “about 300 bases on each segment”. Since the segments under comparison are very short, their significance is limited. In addition, due to the small percentage of genes to the total number of DNA codes, the percentage should not be interpreted as 98.77% of similarity genes between human beings and chimpanzees. All we can say that is the similarity rate obtained by BLAST from genome or DNA codes.
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In the abstract of the report, the following comment was neglected by many people:
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“We detected candidate positions, including two clusters on human chromosome 21 that suggest large, nonrandom regions of difference between the two genomes.”
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Though “similarity by 98.77%” has been quoted frequently, almost no one has mentioned the aforementioned comment.
II: Who Proved That Human Beings and Chimpanzees shared a common ancestor?
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1. Who Scientifically Proven That Human Beings and Chimpanzees shared a common ancestor?
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The answer is that no one has shown any scientific evidence to prove that human beings and chimpanzees shared a common ancestor.
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(1) Tracing to the source, it must be considered a hypothesis: the African apes are evolved from monkeys in the ancient world and “humans having evolved from a common ancestor shared with apes.” The hypothesis was proposed by the Darwin and Huxley over one hundred years ago, who certainly failed to prove it.
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(2) One hundred years later in 1967, Professor Allan Wilson from the University of California, Berkeley, (one of the discoverers of Mitochondrial Eve) and his students published a paper entitled “Immunological Time Scale for Hominid Evolution” (Reference 2). This article mentions their research and comparison of animal proteins and their discovery that “there is an extremely close immunological resemblance between the serum albumin of apes and man.”
They also believe that the albumin molecule has evolved at a steady rate. Their conclusion is that “if man and Old World monkeys last shared a common ancestor 30 million years ago, then man and African apes shared a common ancestor 5 million years ago.”
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(3) In 1991, Charles G. Sibley and Jon E. Ahlquist, the American ornithologists, published a book and proposed the concept of “DNA molecular clock”. According to speed of the molecular clock, the rate of DNA transformation is approximately 1% every 4.5 million years. In 2002, the aforementioned authors (Asao Fujiyama, et al.) (Reference 1) proposed the result of their analysis by BLAST and found the difference to be 1.23% between human beings and chimpanzees. Thereby, the theory is established that human beings and chimpanzees shared the same ancestor at about 6 million years ago.
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Grafting by mixing the above 1,2,3 items, then subsequent news releases reported this: By 1960s, the biochemists from the University of California at Berkeley proved by molecular biology that human beings and chimpanzees shared a common at about 6 million years ago.
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As a result, peoples around the world say in unison, “Human beings and chimpanzees shared a common ancestor.”
From the above processes, we cannot tell who should be responsible for the idea that “human beings and chimpanzees shared a common ancestor at about 6 million years ago”. Darwin and Huxley would not be responsible, for it is only a hypothesis. Wilson and his students would also be not responsible, for they had mentioned a prerequisite that “if ” human beings and the monkeys from the ancient world shared a common an ancestor 30 million years ago. “If” is the key word, which exempted them from any responsibility.
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Even of greater interest is that the Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany states in a report that Neanderthals and modern human beings should have separated with each other about 7.93% × 6.5 million years (516,000 years) ago “if” we suppose human beings and chimpanzees separated 6.5 million years ago. Here is another “if”, so their result is based on multiple “if”. (Reference3)
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Most people do not know that there are so many “if”. All they heard is that “human beings and chimpanzees separated 6.5 million (or 6 million) years ago”, and “Neanderthals and modern human beings separated with each other about over 500,000 years ago”.
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Who is going to check the prerequisite of the first “if”, i.e. “if human beings and the apes from the ancient world share the same ancestor 30 million years ago”. The evolutionists become mute about how to bridge the gulf of chimpanzee’s 24-pairs of chromosome and human beings’ 23-pair of chromosome. How many people have questioned the possibility that chimpanzees suddenly became human beings as proposed by saltation?
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2. “Molecular Evolution” Research Conducted on the Basis of “Human beings and chimpanzees shared a common ancestor”
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Now there is a very new theory - “Molecular Evolution”, which is the application and development of the Theory of Evolution in Molecular Biology. It is very meaningful when applied to research on difference of intracellular molecules between different varieties of species. However, when applied in research on human beings and chimpanzees, it often has the prerequisite of “ancestor sharing” between “human beings and chimpanzees”.
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Subject to this prerequisite, how the researchers explain DNA codes difference between human beings and chimpanzees? Their answer is that the difference must be interpreted as that once completely the same at the time of the separation, but human beings or chimpanzees had developed difference with one another through evolutions after the separation.
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It is also built on the basis of the “if” in the condition, “if human beings and chimpanzees shared a common ancestor”. Who can prove this “if”? It is exceedingly absurd to build on this research-based. What a waste of research money and the time spent by the researchers!
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III: 83% of the Genes between Human Beings and Chimpanzees are different
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1. DNA codes of Chimpanzees are “Not so Human”
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In May 2004, Nature published the news: Chimp chromosome creates puzzles-First sequence is unexpectedly different from human equivalent.
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The research team was basically staffed by the same researchers who got conclusion “98.77% of similarity.” Their new research report is entitled “DNA sequence and comparative analysis of chimpanzee chromosome 22” (Reference 4).
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Based on the hypothesis that Human Chromosome 2 is formed from fusion of Chimpanzee Chromosomes 12 and 13, it is inferred that Chimpanzee Chromosome 22 is equal to Human Chromosome 21. Following the aforementioned “NCBI-BLAST” research method, researchers analyzed the sequence difference between Chimpanzee Chromosome 22 and Human Chromosome 21 by the BLAST method. The similarity is 98.66% which is very similar to the conclusion of 98.77%.
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However, after further and more detailed gene comparison, the researchers found two chromosomes were not so similar. After carefully analyzing 231 genes, including functionally important genes, they found that 83% of chimpanzee genes were different from human genes (“Indeed, 83% of the 231 coding sequences, including functionally important genes, show differences at the amino acid sequence level.”), of which 20% (or 47 genes) have significant structural changes.
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Chimpanzee genome has about 3.3 billion DNA codes in total. Chromosome 22 has about 50 million DNA codes, accounting for about 1.5% of the total. Therefore, if gene difference has an even distribution on all chromosomes, then “83% of genes are different” between human beings and chimpanzees. Given that “significant difference with 20% of genes”, the total number of genes with significant difference may exceed 6,000 (the sum of genes is about 30,000). The news describes the genetic difference between human beings and chimpanzees as being “not so human”.
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But this specific finding and conclusion in the report are rarely mentioned.
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2. Y-chromosome DNA Comparison Report between Chimpanzees and Human Beings
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In January 2010, the team led by Professor David C. Page from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology published the article in Nature entitled “Chimpanzee and human Y chromosomes are remarkably divergent in structure and gene content”.
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DNA codes content in human Y-chromosome accounts for about one sixtieth of all chromosomes. They are much less than the total chromosome DNA codes. In this way, it is possible to make refined DNA comparison of this single chromosome between human beings and chimpanzees. Rather than selecting at random one segment for comparison, but Page and his team carefully compare for each segments of DNA sequences.
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In fact, the more meticulous the sequence comparison, is the larger DNA differences were found between human beings and chimpanzees. Comparing the chimpanzees in the zoos with human, we will realize that such research results are closer to the truth.
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Their conclusion is that “The chimpanzee and human lineages is that the chimpanzee MSY contains only two thirds as many distinct genes or gene families as the human MSY, and only half as many protein-coding transcription units.” (Reference 5).
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The report also provides a table, stating that there are 78 genes on human Y-chromosome. The Y-chromosome of chimpanzees has only 37 genes. The number of different genes between the two is 53%.
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Could a rapid change occur after human chromosomes parted with chimpanzee chromosomes? Never! In fact, among the 23 pairs (or 46 total) of chromosomes, only the Y-chromosome has no synapsis of the parental chromosomes during the reproductive process. The 729 coding sequence on the ZFY gene as the marker for the Theory of Y-chromosome Adam had no change during the past 100,000 plus years.
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The marker M168 shared by people from Europe, Asia, Americas and Australia have been not changed for about 100,000 years, which is a strong piece of evidence that Y-chromosome has undergone no change.
Figure 8-1 Y-chromosome Comparison between Human beings and Chimpanzees
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