americans and evolution

[schmichael]

Originally Posted by Arch Enemy

Well, shmicheal, since I've taken a huge, steaming crap on everything else you've said, you seem to want to stick to three specific subjects:

2. You don't understand common descent, yet say you do (another lie).

i still have an issue with this statement. you have not responded to my earlier post, which totally exposed your lack of understanding about common descent. i.e that evolution claims all life evolved from a single common ancestor.

Originally Posted by schmichael

archie, now you've done it. i wish i had thought of this two weeks ago when you first posted this nonsense.

posted from http://www.actionbioscience.org/newf...learticle.html

What is the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA)?
By Anthony M. Poole LUCA gave rise to all life on earth.

Editor's Note: A comprehensive, original paper on LUCA by A.M. Poole is also provided on this website as a supplement to this article.

In the study of early life on Earth, one name towers above the rest: LUCA. LUCA is not the name of a famous scientist in the field; it is shorthand for Last Universal Common Ancestor, a single cell that lived perhaps 3 or 4 billion years ago, and from which all life has since evolved. Amazingly, every living thing we see around us (and many more that we can only see with the aid of a microscope) is related. As far as we can tell, life on Earth arose only once.




so to recap,

1. you posted this
Quote:
Originally Posted by Arch Enemy
Evolution does not, nor has it ever stated, that all life descended from the first simple reproducing organism

2. you then posted this
Quote:
Originally Posted by Arch Enemy
An introduction to evolution

The definition

Biological evolution, simply put, is descent with modification. This definition encompasses small-scale evolution (changes in gene frequency in a population from one generation to the next) and large-scale evolution (the descent of different species from a common ancestor over many generations). Evolution helps us to understand the history of life.

The explanation

Biological evolution is not simply a matter of change over time. Lots of things change over time: trees lose their leaves, mountain ranges rise and erode, but they aren't examples of biological evolution because they don't involve descent through genetic inheritance.

The central idea of biological evolution is that all life on Earth shares a common ancestor, just as you and your cousins share a common grandmother.



3. i pointed out that you had contradicted yourself
4. you denied this stating
Quote:
Originally Posted by Arch Enemy
I posted it; I also happen to understand what it means. YOU do not.

5. the article i posted above agreed with me

[Arch Enemy]

Originally Posted by schmichael

hardly! what i said was that mutations have never been observed to increase info (go read my post again). i did not deny that there are beneficial mutations. there are beneficial mutations, they just don't increase genetic information which is requred for evolution from goo to you.

so the problem is not me lying, it is you lacking understanding of what other peolpe are saying.

It is hard to understand how anyone could make this claim, since anything mutations can do, mutations can undo. Some mutations add information to a genome; some subtract it. Creationists get by with this claim only by leaving the term "information" undefined, impossibly vague, or constantly shifting. By any reasonable definition, increases in information have been observed to evolve. We have observed the evolution of:

increased genetic variety in a population (Lenski 1995; Lenski et al. 1991)
increased genetic material (Alves et al. 2001; Brown et al. 1998; Hughes and Friedman 2003; Lynch and Conery 2000; Ohta 2003)
novel genetic material (Knox et al. 1996; Park et al. 1996)
novel genetically-regulated abilities (Prijambada et al. 1995)

If these do not qualify as information, then nothing about information is relevant to evolution in the first place.

A mechanism that is likely to be particularly common for adding information is gene duplication, in which a long stretch of DNA is copied, followed by point mutations that change one or both of the copies. Genetic sequencing has revealed several instances in which this is likely the origin of some proteins.

For example:

Two enzymes in the histidine biosynthesis pathway that are barrel-shaped, structural and sequence evidence suggests, were formed via gene duplication and fusion of two half-barrel ancestors (Lang et al. 2000).
RNASE1, a gene for a pancreatic enzyme, was duplicated, and in langur monkeys one of the copies mutated into RNASE1B, which works better in the more acidic small intestine of the langur. (Zhang et al. 2002)
Yeast was put in a medium with very little sugar. After 450 generations, hexose transport genes had duplicated several times, and some of the duplicated versions had mutated further. (Brown et al. 1998)
The biological literature is full of additional examples. A PubMed search (at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi) on "gene duplication" gives more than 3000 references.

According to Shannon-Weaver information theory, random noise maximizes information. This is not just playing word games. The random variation that mutations add to populations is the variation on which selection acts. Mutation alone will not cause adaptive evolution, but by eliminating nonadaptive variation, natural selection communicates information about the environment to the organism so that the organism becomes better adapted to it. Natural selection is the process by which information about the environment is transferred to an organism's genome and thus to the organism (Adami et al. 2000).

The process of mutation and selection is observed to increase information and complexity in simulations (Adami et al. 2000; Schneider 2000).

Nope; the problem is that you ARE lying.

so what do those experiments prove that is helpful to your arguement that pond scum turned into people??

Nobody has ever made the argument that we evolved from pond scum. Except you. And you alone. Until you understand that we evolved from apes, you (as usual) are adding nothing whatsoever to the conversation.

Get with it.

nothing. the fruit flies were still fruit flies! they had not evolved into birds or bats or anything else.

That is because evolution does not state that fruit flies evolve into birds (which are birds, not insects like fruit flies) or bats (which are mammals, not fruit flies).

I had hoped (in vain, apparently) that you understood this basic tenant of evolution. I guess not.

I'm also guessing you lack any understandibng of speciation whatsoever. It is not uncommon for creationists to hear the term 'speciation' and immediately assume that speciation refers to a dog evolving into a cat, when it has nothing to do with any such thing.

Speciation refers to the evolutionary process by which new biological species arise. There are three main ideas concerning the emergence of new species (Modes of Speciation), each based on the degree to which populations undergoing this process are geographically isolated from one another (allopatric speciation, sympatric speciation, parapatric speciation, polyploidy speciation).

this is not an example of evolution but of speciation, exactly as the creation model predicts.

Genesis 1.24
And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.

Except that 'kinds' have nothing whatsoever to do with speciation, and you know it.

Speciation refers to the evolutionary process by which new biological species arise. There are three main ideas concerning the emergence of new species (Modes of Speciation), each based on the degree to which populations undergoing this process are geographically isolated from one another (allopatric speciation, sympatric speciation, parapatric speciation, polyploidy speciation).

i'm afraid that other leading evolutionists would disagree with this statement.

Somehow I knew you would bring up Ruse.

You said 'other leading evolutionists'.

You mentioned one.

And didn't bother to read all of what Rue had to say, either.

How surprising.

Ruse's point was that two kinds of evolution exist side-by-side. There's the powerful scientific theory of evolution which is well-evidenced and one of the crowning achievements of science, and there's the quasi-religious evolution which promotes particular moral or social theories. His purpose is to prevent the two from being confused. Unfortunately, creationists have misused his essays on the subject to promote their own purposeful confusion of the two.

Ruse specifically pointed out several times that evolution (including common descent) is scientific. There are, however, other things called evolution which are not. For example, in Is Evolution a Secular Religion, he writes: ". . . if the claim is that all contemporary evolutionism is merely an excuse to promote moral and societal norms, this is simply false. Today's professional evolutionism is no more a secular religion than is industrial chemistry."

still think it's not a religion?

I still know it's not a religion.

your one and only lie that you have been able to quote me on, quite simply, was not a lie but was due to your misunderstanding. i have never denied beneficial mutations but i have denied that any mutations add genetic info. there is a difference.

Look up, sparky. Ya' lied. Ya' got caught.

come back when you can prove that mutations add the required info for goo to evolve into you.

Come back when you find a source that claims that humans evolved from goo. Thanks.

[Arch Enemy]

And I only have one thing to say about LUCA:

The Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA), is a hypothetical organism supposed to be the most recent common ancestor of all living organisms on Earth. The existence of such a life-form has come into doubt as mounting scientific evidence points to a picture of a primordial community of organisms exchanging hereditary information. It is also believed that multiple endosymbiotic events would distort the cladistic representation of such an organism if it were to ever have existed.

Evolution is a THEORY.

LUCA is a HYPOTHESIS.

There is a difference.

As such, LUCA is not part of the evolution THEORY; it is a HYPOTHESIS within the evolution THEORY, one of SEVERAL HYPOTHESES concerning common descent.

Not only that, but mounting evidence suggest that LUCA is WRONG.

[Arch Enemy]

I have more to say on common descent, but before I go to bed I'd like to touch on one more thing concerning your lies about increases in genetic information:

Beneficial mutations, being what they are, can either mean a LOSS or GAIN in genetic information. It depends on how it BENEFITS the organism.

So whether or not you call it "incease in information" or "beneficial mutations," it all amounts to the same thing.

If you don't deny benficial mutations, you don't deny increases in genetic information.

"No matter what example is offered as evidence that mutations can generate an increase in information, Creationists naturally have rationales for regarding that example as a case of loss of information. But every time Creationists "prove" another mutation to be an example of information loss, they add one more item to the list of biological changes which don't require a gain of information! If this pattern continues, Creationists will eventually "prove" that no biological change requires an increase in information; hence, they will have destroyed their own argument."

I can go on and on about increases in information. There's a plethora of sources about it. The INCREASE IN INFORMATION is practically endless, there's so much information about increases in information.

Are you ready to admit you're lying about increases in genetic information, or do you want to try and twist words around? Maybe make a last-minute change to what "information" means? To what "increase" means? Do you plan to invent your own language?

[Jetty3]

Originally Posted by Arch Enemy

7. Evolution cannot explain how life first appeared on earth.

The origin of life remains very much a mystery, but biochemists have learned about how primitive nucleic acids, amino acids and other building blocks of life could have formed and organized themselves into self-replicating, self-sustaining units, laying the foundation for cellular biochemistry. Astrochemical analyses hint that quantities of these compounds might have originated in space and fallen to earth in comets, a scenario that may solve the problem of how those constituents arose under the conditions that prevailed when our planet was young.

From your first post "you" agree that ultimately origin is a mystery.
After all, there's still the issue of then explaining where the compounds, space, earth, and comets, etc. came from.

Science can attempt to explain the observable but it still all comes back to personal belief

[howardalex]

Originally Posted by BUFFLURP

If evolutionism is correct, where did these particles of matter come from that became a single celled micro-organism?

Dude, a scientist can answer that question, but as mere humans, all we understand of their explanation is that it's called the big bang theory, and that it's something to do with Hydrogen becoming helium, lol, after that bit gets very boring...

[Arch Enemy]

Originally Posted by Jetty3

From your first post "you" agree that ultimately origin is a mystery.
After all, there's still the issue of then explaining where the compounds, space, earth, and comets, etc. came from.

Science can attempt to explain the observable but it still all comes back to personal belief

Yes and no.

Science explains the observable. Evolution is observable. That's beyond argumenbt, though some people try their damndest to make it seem like it's not.

Apparently, not personally observing evolution is proof enough for them that it does not exist, but not observing an invisible man in the sky and his man-child son who they never saw live, die, or rise from the dead and ascend bodily to the clouds is proof enough that they do exist.

Pardon me for finding that more than a little hypocritical and narcissistic.

God is not observable. God is not measurable, recordable, or repeatable.

While science cannot ultmately explain the origin of the universe, that is no excuse for accepting personal belief as truth above what is observable.

[sonicbum]

Originally Posted by howardalex

Dude, a scientist can answer that question, but as mere humans, all we understand of their explanation is that it's called the big bang theory, and that it's something to do with Hydrogen becoming helium, lol, after that bit gets very boring...

LoL, and where did the hydrogen and helium come from...


[rolls eyes]

[Jetty3]

Originally Posted by Arch Enemy

While science cannot ultmately explain the origin of the universe, that is no excuse for accepting personal belief as truth above what is observable.

I see science lacking definitive answers to the origin question the way you see personal belief as lacking merit in answering the same question. It may feel more real to cling to what you can see but ultimately it does come down to personal belief whichever side you come down on.

Originally Posted by Arch Enemy

God is not observable. God is not measurable, recordable, or repeatable

You're using the wrong yardstick.
A god that could be fully measured within the finite bounds of time and space would be no god at all.

IMO

[Arch Enemy]

Originally Posted by Jetty3

I see science lacking definitive answers to the origin question the way you see personal belief as lacking merit in answering the same question. It may feel more real to cling to what you can see but ultimately it does come down to personal belief whichever side you come down on.

Which means very little when someone with a personal belief claims that they can prove their belief, or that their belief is provable in the same sense that something scientific is. Thats' where the problem lies. When someone makes that claim, or makes the claim that their belief is true, in the same way that a used car salesman makes a claim concerning the mileage, performance or quality of a used car, I expect proof, or at the very least, evidence.

I have no problem with personal beliefs. Well . . . not entirely. I have problems with the rampant paranoia, narcissism and self-worship that charaterizes some personal beliefs (especially the Abrahamic personal beliefs), but above all else, I have a problem with liars.

Liars that say there is evidence for their belief in an invisible man in the sky when there is none whatsoever.

You're using the wrong yardstick.

How is that?

Especially when said adherents make the claim that their god CAN be measured with said yardstick, and apply the same principles of buying a used car to their god, and not the other way around?

A god that could be fully measured within the finite bounds of time and space would be no god at all.

Why not?

What's so wrong with expecting something to show itself if it's really there?

[Jetty3]

Originally Posted by Arch Enemy

Why not?

What's so wrong with expecting something to show itself if it's really there?

"Looking for God--or Heaven--by exploring space is like reading or seeing all Shakespeare's plays in the hope that you will find Shakespeare as one of the characters..."

"A creature revolting against a creator is revolting against the source of his own powers--including even his power to revolt...It is like the scent of a flower trying to destroy the flower."

"When you are arguing against Him you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all."

“It is in the process of being worshipped that God communicates His presence to men."

"Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning..."

[schmichael]

Originally Posted by Arch Enemy

I have more to say on common descent, but before I go to bed I'd like to touch on one more thing concerning your lies about increases in genetic information:

perhaps you should start by explaining your theory of common descent? how can there not be a single common ancestor? are you proposing that for each species there was a seperate ancestor?

Originally Posted by Arch Enemy

Beneficial mutations, being what they are, can either mean a LOSS or GAIN in genetic information. It depends on how it BENEFITS the organism.

you have yet to actually provide an example of a mutation increasing genetic info.

Originally Posted by Arch Enemy

So whether or not you call it "incease in information" or "beneficial mutations," it all amounts to the same thing.

If you don't deny benficial mutations, you don't deny increases in genetic information.

why do you say that. beneficial mutations can arise from either no change in the genetic info or from a loss of info.

example. shrivelled-eyed cave fish or flightless beetles on windswept islands, where the changes still involve loss of sight or flight.

Originally Posted by Arch Enemy

"No matter what example is offered as evidence that mutations can generate an increase in information, Creationists naturally have rationales for regarding that example as a case of loss of information. But every time Creationists "prove" another mutation to be an example of information loss, they add one more item to the list of biological changes which don't require a gain of information! If this pattern continues, Creationists will eventually "prove" that no biological change requires an increase in information; hence, they will have destroyed their own argument."

ah, a classic arguement. use a hypothetical situation where you have actually provided some evidence (like that's ever going to happen!), and then assume what my response will be. very clever.

Originally Posted by Arch Enemy

I can go on and on about increases in information.

no kidding?!! too bad nothing you have posted in any way backs up your claim of evolution of apes to humans.

sure you can show that fruit flies have evolved into fruit flies with slightly different characteristics, but it's a very long stretch to extrapolate that into humans evolving from apes.

whats next, you'll say that finches have evolved into different types of finches!!!

Originally Posted by Arch Enemy

There's a plethora of sources about it. The INCREASE IN INFORMATION is practically endless, there's so much information about increases in information.

Are you ready to admit you're lying about increases in genetic information, or do you want to try and twist words around? Maybe make a last-minute change to what "information" means? To what "increase" means? Do you plan to invent your own language?

no. it seems that only you resort to that tactic. especially since you don't even read or understand what others post. i may as well be talking in another language, given your track record of ignoring my posts and avoiding my rebuttals.

[schmichael]

Originally Posted by Arch Enemy

It is hard to understand how anyone could make this claim, since anything mutations can do, mutations can undo. Some mutations add information to a genome; some subtract it. Creationists get by with this claim only by leaving the term "information" undefined, impossibly vague, or constantly shifting. By any reasonable definition, increases in information have been observed to evolve. We have observed the evolution of:

increased genetic variety in a population (Lenski 1995; Lenski et al. 1991)
increased genetic material (Alves et al. 2001; Brown et al. 1998; Hughes and Friedman 2003; Lynch and Conery 2000; Ohta 2003)
novel genetic material (Knox et al. 1996; Park et al. 1996)
novel genetically-regulated abilities (Prijambada et al. 1995)

If these do not qualify as information, then nothing about information is relevant to evolution in the first place.

here's fighting fire with fire. a rebuttle of Dawkins response to the problem of information.

http://trueorigin.org/dawkinfo.asp

it is long but, hey, you've been posting stuff you haven't read or don't understand the whole time!

[Arch Enemy]

Originally Posted by schmichael

perhaps you should start by explaining your theory of common descent? how can there not be a single common ancestor? are you proposing that for each species there was a seperate ancestor?

There is far more evidence to suggest that all life came from a gene pool of species rather than a single organism.

you have yet to actually provide an example of a mutation increasing genetic info.

I see you ignored what I posted concerning increases.

How very, very convenient.

So here it is again:

increased genetic variety in a population (Lenski 1995; Lenski et al. 1991)
increased genetic material (Alves et al. 2001; Brown et al. 1998; Hughes and Friedman 2003; Lynch and Conery 2000; Ohta 2003)
novel genetic material (Knox et al. 1996; Park et al. 1996)
novel genetically-regulated abilities (Prijambada et al. 1995)

These are observed instances of an increase in genetic information that led to evolution.

A Japanese bacterium that suffered a frame shift mutation that just happened to allow it to metabolize nylon waste is another example. The new enzymes are very inefficient (having only 2% of the efficiency of the regular enzymes), but do afford the bacteria a whole new ecological niche. They don't work at all on the bacterium's original food - carbohydrates. And this type of mutation has even happened more than once!

In order to make room for new information, there have to be types of mutation which make a genome larger. It turns out that several kinds of mutation do this, notably duplication and polyploidy.

If a bacteria becomes penicillin-resistant, it really does contain new information. We know this because researchers have now got to the point where they have read out (sequenced) every last bit of the DNA in some bacteria. This means that it's possible to do before-and-after measurements.

Here's an example. Take a nice fresh culture dish, and place a single bacteria on it. A colony will grow. This is "before".

Take one bacteria from "before", and start a new culture with it. After the culture is well-started, add some antibiotic. Somewhere in the culture, there may be a mutant who is resistant to the antibiotic. If there isn't such a mutant, they all die. In that case, start over. If necessary, you can encourage mutation, maybe with some radioactivity.

Eventually, you will find such a mutant. You will know it's there because it reproduces, and your culture dish will contain a living colony instead of a dead one. This is "after".

Now get the DNA sequences of "before" and "after". Several researchers have done just this, and the DNA sequences have been published. It is definitely the case that "after" can have new genetic information, which is not present in "before".

In the above example, a beneficial mutation allowed the bacteria to survive a negative thing. It is equally easy to get a mutation that allows a positive thing. For example, give your colony a huge supply of some food which they cannot eat. Eventually some mutant will be able to eat the food, and will have a great many descendants. Then wipe out the normals (by withdrawing the normal food) and you have an "after" colony. As one researcher said:

Here's a tested recipe for isolating successful mutations... Grow a batch culture of Salmonella typhimurium strain SK2979 at 37 deg. C on Neidhardt's MOPS-based minimal medium with 0.4% glycerol as the carbon source and 10 mM L-aspartate as the nitrogen source. Dilute and subculture for several days. L-aspartate fast growing mutants will take over the culture in something under 3 days. These typically have a doubling time of 60 minutes on asparate, compared to about 120 minutes for the parental, wild-type strain.
Even better, starting with the fast-growing strain, one can easily isolate secondary mutation(s) which permit growth on aspartate as the sole carbon and nitrogen source -- which the parental strain simply cannot do. This demonstrates how cumulative mutations can arise.

Basically, techniques involving the natural occurrence of spontaneous, beneficial mutations are commonly used by bacterial geneticists.

The above is from a 1995 Usenet posting by Tim Ikeda (timi@mendel.berkeley.edu), UC-Berkeley Plant Biology.

Some Creationists have argued that these beneficial mutations involve simplification of the bacteria, so that some aspect attacked by the antibiotic is no longer present. That idea would rarely explain the ability to consume a new food, since that usually requires new chemical pathways. Before-and-after genetic analysis says that the "simplification" idea is just not always the case. For example, the malaria parasite has become resistant to chloroquine, by learning to make a new protein. Other examples are known from studies of pesticide resistant insects.

It is also illogical that "simplification" always be the case. A mutation is due to a completely random malfunction of the genetic mechanisms. There is simply nothing to prevent a bacteria from occasionally acquiring increased complexity. If the more complex genetic material happens to be useful, then the bacteria has by definition acquired information. It has "learned" what works. As one scientist put it, "evolution is a transfer of information from the environment to the genome."

You might wonder how a change could fail to be damaging. If all of a bacteria's genetic information is useful, then any change must have removed something useful. This is half-true, because bacteria do indeed run a tight ship. ("Higher" creatures are different, and carry around lots of genetic junk.) However, the chemical mechanisms which use genes do not really understand the idea of dosage. That is, if a creature needs twice as much of one chemical as another, there is no way to tell the mechanism "make twice as much". (I'm simplifying. Actually, hemoglobin has "enhancers" and "promoters".) The obvious trick for solving this problem is to simply have two copies of the gene. Therefore, creatures carry around two or more copies of some genes. If one copy is changed by a mutation, the creature can get along fairly well on the other one(s).

Gene duplication is a fairly common mutation. Having an extra copy doesn't "cost" much, so a creature with such a mutation isn't at any great disadvantage. Extra copies are actually fairly common in the genetic material of "higher" creatures. And of course a mutation that changes an extra copy is not the same problem as a mutation that changes an only copy.

Some idea of what geneticists are up to can be obtained by poking around at BIONET. Or, if you read Usenet newsgroups such as bionet.journals.contents, you can see what's being published in, say, Journal of Molecular Evolution or Molecular & General Genetics.

Evolution of cis elements in the differential expression of two Hoxa2 coparalogous genes in pufferfish (Takifugu rubripes).

Stowers Institute for Medical Research, Kansas City, MO 64110.

Sequence divergence in cis-regulatory elements is an important mechanism contributing to functional diversity of genes during evolution. Gene duplication and divergence provide an opportunity for selectively preserving initial functions and evolving new activities. Many vertebrates have 39 Hox genes organized into four clusters (Hoxa-Hoxd); however, some ray-finned fishes have extra Hox clusters. There is a single Hoxa2 gene in most vertebrates, whereas fugu (Takifugu rubripes) and medaka (Oryzias latipes) have two coparalogous genes [Hoxa2(a) and Hoxa2(b)]. In the hindbrain, both genes are expressed in rhombomere (r) 2, but only Hoxa2(b) is expressed in r3, r4, and r5. Multiple regulatory modules directing segmental expression of chicken and mouse Hoxa2 genes have been identified, and each module is composed of a series of discrete elements. We used these modules to investigate the basis of differential expression of duplicated Hoxa2 genes, as a model for understanding the divergence of cis-regulatory elements. Therefore, we cloned putative regulatory regions of the fugu and medaka Hoxa2(a) and -(b) genes and assayed their activity. We found that these modules direct reporter expression in a chicken assay, in a manner corresponding to their endogenous expression pattern in fugu. Although sequence comparisons reveal many differences between the two coparalogous genes, specific subtle changes in seven cis elements of the Hoxa2(a) gene restore segmental regulatory activity. Therefore, drift in subsets of the elements in the regulatory modules is responsible for the differential expression of the two coparalogous genes, thus providing insight into the evolution of cis elements.

PMID: 16569696 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

Is that enough? I can go on and on. You can continue ignoring what I post, for whatever reasons, and I continue to make you look like a fool while you protest that I have not provided any evidence for increases in information while anyone with a set of WORKING eyes can see that I have.

why do you say that. beneficial mutations can arise from either no change in the genetic info or from a loss of info.

As weel as an INCREASE IN GENETIC INFORMATION. See above. Here's another example:

Diversity and duplication of DQB and DRB-like genes of the MHC in baleen whales (suborder: Mysticeti).

School of Biological Sciences, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand, cs.baker@auckland.ac.nz.

The molecular diversity and phylogenetic relationships of two class II genes of the baleen whale major histocompatibility complex were investigated and compared to toothed whales and out-groups. Amplification of the DQB exon 2 provided sequences showing high within-species and between-species nucleotide diversity and uninterrupted reading frames consistent with functional class II loci found in related mammals (e.g., ruminants). Cloning of amplified products indicated gene duplication in the humpback whale and triplication in the southern right whale, with average nucleotide diversity of 5.9 and 6.3%, respectively, for alleles of each species. Significantly higher nonsynonymous divergence at sites coding for peptide binding (32% for humpback and 40% for southern right) suggested that these loci were subject to positive (overdominant) selection. A population survey of humpback whales detected 23 alleles, differing by up to 21% of their inferred amino acid sequences. Amplification of the DRB exon 2 resulted in two groups of sequences. One was most similar to the DRB3 of the cow and present in all whales screened to date, including toothed whales. The second was most similar to the DRB2 of the cow and was found only in the bowhead and right whales. Both loci showed low diversity among species and apparent loss of function or altered function including interruption of reading frames. Finally, comparison of inferred protein sequence of the DRB3-like locus suggested convergence with the DQB, perhaps resulting from intergenic conversion or recombination.

PMID: 16568262 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]