Human Genetics:Discovery to Change the Understanding of our DNA?

From Independent online UK.

Scientists have discovered a dramatic variation in the genetic make-up of humans that could lead to a fundamental reappraisal of what causes incurable diseases and could provide a greater understanding of mankind.

This is being touted as a huge breakthrough in the understanding of the Human Genome. And a better understanding of what makes one human different than another.
It also states that we are far more different than Chimpanzees, at least by a larger percentage than previously believed.
I'd love to hear some comments on the Article, There are a few things that bother me in the article as well. Only because of the way they can be construed, and possibly become misused knowledge..
Human Genome discovery


edit to add link:

[edit on 22-11-2006 by spacedoubt]

What ? Shows that different races evolved together ? Not surprising to me, really. Native Indians here know this.

Lex

Read the article. It does appear to be a pretty major breakthrough. Not sure of the ramifications of it though.

Where is the link???????

news.independent.co.uk... ce

Originally posted by sardion2000
Where is the link???????

ah, the missing link...Sometimes I am a fool, sorry.

and thanks pavil!

Really, it's difficult to know what the implications of this are. Honestly the science of genomics is so new, that we really can't say what we're going to find. Until we've sequenced the genomes of a larger sample of individuals we won't really know how much variation there really is between individuals of the same species.

Also, we won't really know how different the composition of human genomes and chimp genomes are until we've got a larger sample size. It's always been assumed that similar organisms, and in fact related organisms have similar genomes.

For example: Voles demonstrate that this is distinctly NOT true.

Indeed genomics may undermine many of our assumptions. Personally, I love it.

Interesting link about the Voles.
It's like their genetic material has been passed around in a haphazrd way.
Almost as if that in itself is an adaptation. The ability to evolve quickly.

The mystery about the Voles kind of makes sense. What if creatures like these were some of the few survivors during the lass mass extinction? This ability would account for the survival of the Mammalian line.

This discovery is HUGE on several fronts. First, this could be the first scientific evidence of a human soul. It's saying that each individual in the world is totally different rather than what some believed that we were 99.9% alike. This could tie in to human behavior and explain why one person is dominant and another person is timid. Say I have 20 copies of a gene but you have 5 copies of the gene and I'm more dominant and your more timid. This would tie in to what Biblical and Religious circles have been saying for years. That we each have a unique soul and this discovery could show this to be true.

Secondly, it's a huge blow to the materialist point of view. I believe that evolution occured but from the standpoint of Intelligent Design. The materialist would say that a species survives together until a mutation occurs that's beneficial to the species and the new group eventually replaces the old group. This finding totally debunks that notion. If the materialist viewpoint is correct, that would mean every individual in the world is a seperate group unto themselves. From a materialistic standpoint of evolution it just doesn't make sense but from a Metaphysical view it does.

Third, it does tell you were certain diseases originated and why people from these regions develop a resistent gene to them. What it doesn't tell you is why I would have 10 of these genes and the guy next to me would have 3 and everyone within the group would be different from each other.

Lasty, I think in the future this will help with diseases both mental and physical. I think that within introns of what's called Junk DNA is an operating system that tells genes how to structure themselves. This is just like computer software communicating with hardware. Bill Gates said that,"DNA is like a software program, only much more complex than anything we've ever devised." Listen to this, Professor John Mattick of Queensland University's Institute of Molecular Bioscience argues that scientists have been too focused on the protein-production role of DNA and ignored its role in helping to put all the proteins together at the right time and place. (the operating system, my words). He also said Junk DNA is actually the software that allowed complex organisms to evolve. Professor Paul Davies said about Junk DNA,."If ET has put a message into terrestrial organisms, this is surely where to look." Although written thousands of years ago, King David's words about our marvelous human bodies still ring true. He wrote: "For You formed my inward parts, You covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and WONDERFULLY made . . . My frame was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret, and SKILLFULLY WROUGHT. ." (Psalm 139:13-15, emphasis mine). If you look at a car, you can tell it was made by an intelligent being for a purpose. I think when you look at the human body you can tell it was Created for a purpose and one of those reasons was to be a tabernacle for Awareness in order for Awareness to be conscious of itself. That's another discussion for another time and it's quite fascinating when see how the two work hand in hand.

THANK YOU, LORD JESUS!!

The important part of this thread is below the bold, so ignore this if you want: I don't like the way they say that mulitple copies or losses of genes cause disease, because there can many different causes beyond the genes, it may only show that the number of copies predetermines our likelihood of contracting some diseases. For example, I don't think Muhammed Ali would suffer as badly now had he been a train driver rather than a boxer. I'm not a doctor so I could be way off the mark. If there are genetic causes to disease then what can be done about it other than telling someone their cause of death before the disease is even upon them.

Originally posted by polomontana
This discovery is HUGE on several fronts. First, this could be the first scientific evidence of a human soul. It's saying that each individual in the world is totally different rather than what some believed that we were 99.9% alike.... That we each have a unique soul and this discovery could show this to be true.

There are just under 30,000 genes in the human genome, which consists of about 3 billion "letters" of the DNA code. The scientists found that more than 10 per cent of these genes appear to be multiplied in the 270 people who took part in the study.
Source

It means that we are not as similar as before but theres still over 20,000 genes that are. I don't see what scientific evidence could be found in regards to the soul, but I suspect it would come from research into conciousness rather than genetics.

Originally posted by polomontana
Secondly, it's a huge blow to the materialist point of view. I believe that evolution occured but from the standpoint of Intelligent Design. The materialist would say that a species survives together until a mutation occurs that's beneficial to the species and the new group eventually replaces the old group. This finding totally debunks that notion.

Let's just concentrate on evolution for a second, as their is no scientific evidence for ID.

Your idea of the 'materialist' is Darwinian evolutionary theory. If you've read the Selfish Gene (wikipedia) by R. Dawkins then you'll understand that instead of having the individual animal as the basic bit of evolution (Darwinian), evolution can be better understood if we place the gene as the basic bit of evolution.

So here is the importance of this research:

As I see it this is proof that Dawkins was correct to place the gene as the main bit of evolution. IMO Dawkins is saying that genes strive against each other, therefore it would be in their interest to replicate themselves many times in a strain of DNA inorder to improve their chances of being carried on through reproduction.

What do people think about this?

Polomontana, look at all the variation in the dog species, all those dogs can interbreed, but they aren't species unto themselves, there all part of the dog species. What metaphysical view explains anything to do with the focus of this thread? I studied ID at school, it was total bunk then and it still is, here's the wikipedia article about it. I hope to see you try and edit the article to fit your view.

[edit on 23/11/06 by byhiniur]

[edit on 23/11/06 by byhiniur]

I don't think this has anything to do with a selfish gene or gene survival. These genes get reproduced. What they are talking about is that 3 people can have different numbers of the same gene. I could have 4 copies, the next person 3 and the next person 2. The gene variation between human to human is a BOMBSHELL. Were not talking about gene reproduction but the copying of a gene from human to human.

This has implications for Quantum computing. This is a theory of mine that can be tested. Thermodynamics, information theory and chaos can all tie into this. I will start with an example, say you have a puzzle that has 2 pieces that's not in place. The puzzle is in an ordered state and there's a low information content that can be achieved so less energy input is needed when completing the puzzle. On the flip side, if the puzzle pieces are scattered all over the floor then it's in a less ordered state but the information that's available is much higher and it will take more energy imput to complete the puzzle. Say you go back 2000 years if my theory is correct there should be a greater gene variation between humans from that time period. That's because things like planes, cars and computers were not invented yet so they were in a less ordered state than we are but more information was present because the more chaos in a system means there's more information to be processed. This would show that are genes are actually behaving like a Quantum computer and constantly processing information. This would explain why there's a variation between each individual and this would also suggest that we are one. Many people in Spiritual circles have said we are one but we seem as though we are seperate. I think are genes are constantly computing. Also this is something to think about. Say we go back 2,000 years and there's a 30% variation between each human and now there's a 10% variation between each human. This would suggest that every thousand years we compute 10% of our information capacity. That would mean our species is 10,000 years old and we have 1,000 years before there's not any gene variation between humans. Maybe at this point we will transition from a type 0 to a type 1 civilization as theoretical physicist Dr. Michio Kaku talks about or we will reach an Omega Point that Frank Tipler suggest and a universal computer that can simulate all of the information that has existed in our universe. This is just an example, if we were to verify that humans had a wider gene variation 2,000 years ago then there is today. Then we can calculate the rate that we process our information capacity and we can even calculate when there will not be any gene variation between us.


[edit on 24-11-2006 by polomontana]

[edit on 24-11-2006 by polomontana]

That would be something to look forward in science, curing diseases way earlier.

Originally posted by polomontana
I don't think this has anything to do with a selfish gene or gene survival. These genes get reproduced. What they are talking about is that 3 people can have different numbers of the same gene. I could have 4 copies, the next person 3 and the next person 2. The gene variation between human to human is a BOMBSHELL.

This discovery doesn't really 'change' scientists views of DNA because I think many would have excepted we didn't know everything before this finding, leaving nothing to be changed. I don't see how gene variation is a "bombshell", it's clearly obvious we have different genes or else we'd be clones.

Why am I wrong to link the finding to the concepts outlined in the selfish gene? It is clearly stating that the number of copies of an individual gene change between different people, and as I said before, this could be scientific evidence that we should view evolution in terms of genes.

Originally posted by polomontana
Were not talking about gene reproduction but the copying of a gene from human to human.

How are genes copied from person to person?

Through reproduction.

If there are more copies of a gene in a length of DNA, there is more chance that it will be passed on when the male and female DNA is mixed.

Originally posted by polomontana
This is just an example, if we were to verify that humans had a wider gene variation 2,000 years ago then there is today. Then we can calculate the rate that we process our information capacity and we can even calculate when there will not be any gene variation between us.

In the beggining, the available DNA must have been very similar, becoming more and more varied through sexual reproduction. DNA will only become more varied, not less. Going back to my example of dogs, at first there was one type and now there are hundreds of different types in the same species. There DNA becoming more and more varied.

Your metaphor of the puzzle is explaining entropy, which holds that things become more disordered as time goes on, not more ordered as you suggest. A cigarette has high entropy because its ordered, but smoke it and the entropy is decreased as the particles can't be pushed back to form the original cigarette. Consequently, your suggestion than DNA is becoming more ordered seems, to me, absurd; although I understand it could fit into some sort of ID theory that you might want to advocate.


It seems that you want to use science to prove spiritual theories, whereas the aim of science is use it to discover the objective nature of the world as it is.

Originally posted by polomontana
This discovery is HUGE on several fronts. First, this could be the first scientific evidence of a human soul. It's saying that each individual in the world is totally different rather than what some believed that we were 99.9% alike.

The difference between 99.9% and 99% is less than 1%. In any regime this corresponds to practically identical.

Where is the link between a human soul and a 1% change (at best) in DNA between two organisms?

I have been reading alot lately about DNA and micro-nano technology. Including liqued polymer chips and holographic encoding. Silica is mentioned frequently. I remember reading something about silica a while back and how certain "controllers" were unable to mess with silica based bodies.

Anyway the DNA is becoming pretty much not sacred anymore and is subject to manipulation quite easily, IMO.

I honestly don't see what the big deal is. Unless it's the shear number of allelic variances that they are referring to.

It has been known for decades that different numbers of alleles played a role in disease states such as breast cancer (BRCA1 and BRCA2 for example).

For example, a company I worked for several years ago was developping genetic tests based on the different number of allelic repeats on the CYP2D4 gene. This would cause variations in the cytochrome P450 liver enzymes of an individual and predict whether or not they were a fast or slow metaboliser of certain drugs. A slow metabolizer would run a higher risk of accumulating a toxic dose in their body etc.
.



[edit on 11/24/2006 by Gools]

I'm talking about entropy as it pertains to information theory or Shannon Entropy. Entropy when it comes to information always increases. Let me give you a couple of examples. Say you have the idea to build an airplane. The information available about the airplane is in a less ordered state because it hasn't been built. Over time the information processed about the plane increases and it advances to a more ordered state. This is an increase of entropy when it comes to information. Say you have a set of dice that you are about to roll. You have 12 possible outcomes so lets say there's 12 bits of information available. When you roll the dice and it lands on a 6 and a 1 then the entropy has increased from 12 to 0 and there's 0 bits because the uncertainty has decreased.

So this is an excellent way to test intelligent design. If we were to go back 2000 years and find that the variation between genes was at 30% then we would know that we were designed to work as a vast Quantum Computer and are genes are actually processing information. We would go from 30% 2000 years ago to 10% today. We would be designed to go from a less ordered state to a more ordered state while we processed information.

Now the thermodynamic entropy will actually decrease. So when you roll the dice the energy it takes to process the information will cause the entropy in biological systems to decrease and we know that the increase of information corresponds to the entropy in a biological system. This is what will make it so fascinating. Biological system are supposed to decrease and become less ordered over time, but if are genes were designed to actually process information and become more ordered over time that would show Intelligent Design.

I think the Bible is correct in this. The Bible says that information will increase over time and that men will become more wicked. Think about it, as we process information and become more ordered man will become more primitive and chaotic as they become less ordered. We can see that in the world today with the beast(man) fighting against the increase of information. This is why Stephen Hawking said we will have to colonize other planets in order to survive and Dr. Michio Kaku says there's a 50/50 chance that we will be able to transition from a typ 0 to a type 1 civilazition. Look at the terrorist, they don't want us to advance because as information increases we are on a path to the most ordered state but at the same time entropy in biological systems are decreasing and mankind is becoming more wild and chaotic and someone like the leader of Iran or North Korea will pull the trigger on a nuclear weapon because the battle is between entropy. It's between Good and evil or Order and chaos.

So nobody has any views on this information being constructively related to evolution?

Originally posted by polomontana
...if are genes were designed to actually process information and become more ordered over time that would show Intelligent Design.

I think your understanding of entropy is completely miguided. Information only leads to more questions; as Socrates implied, the more you know the more questions there are. If biology was following the path you want there would be less diversity, not more, over time.

As I understand your opinions you're starting from a biased foundation, you want to prove God exists, that there is intelligent design etc. That isn't science, it's psuedoscience. If you look hard enough you'll always find what you want to find. The problem you're faced is is whether you want to find the truth or not.

Originally posted by polomontana
I'm talking about entropy as it pertains to information theory or Shannon Entropy. Entropy when it comes to information always increases. Let me give you a couple of examples. Say you have the idea to build an airplane. The information available about the airplane is in a less ordered state because it hasn't been built. Over time the information processed about the plane increases and it advances to a more ordered state. This is an increase of entropy when it comes to information. Say you have a set of dice that you are about to roll. You have 12 possible outcomes so lets say there's 12 bits of information available. When you roll the dice and it lands on a 6 and a 1 then the entropy has increased from 12 to 0 and there's 0 bits because the uncertainty has decreased.

So this is an excellent way to test intelligent design. If we were to go back 2000 years and find that the variation between genes was at 30% then we would know that we were designed to work as a vast Quantum Computer and are genes are actually processing information. We would go from 30% 2000 years ago to 10% today. We would be designed to go from a less ordered state to a more ordered state while we processed information.

Now the thermodynamic entropy will actually decrease. So when you roll the dice the energy it takes to process the information will cause the entropy in biological systems to decrease and we know that the increase of information corresponds to the entropy in a biological system. This is what will make it so fascinating. Biological system are supposed to decrease and become less ordered over time, but if are genes were designed to actually process information and become more ordered over time that would show Intelligent Design.

I think the Bible is correct in this. The Bible says that information will increase over time and that men will become more wicked. Think about it, as we process information and become more ordered man will become more primitive and chaotic as they become less ordered. We can see that in the world today with the beast(man) fighting against the increase of information. This is why Stephen Hawking said we will have to colonize other planets in order to survive and Dr. Michio Kaku says there's a 50/50 chance that we will be able to transition from a typ 0 to a type 1 civilazition. Look at the terrorist, they don't want us to advance because as information increases we are on a path to the most ordered state but at the same time entropy in biological systems are decreasing and mankind is becoming more wild and chaotic and someone like the leader of Iran or North Korea will pull the trigger on a nuclear weapon because the battle is between entropy. It's between Good and evil or Order and chaos.

Remember the Irish Potato Famine? Know what caused it? Homogeneity of the species--specifically the potatoes. Almost all the individuals (in this case, and from now on, I use the term to reference potato plant individuals, not people) were clones of the original few individuals that were imported into Ireland from South America (where there has never been such a disaster due to the enormous amount of diversity).

Homogeneity is very bad for any species including ours. Cheetahs are endangered and will continue to be endangered for a long time due to their lack of genetic diversity (I won't go into the details, but suffice it to say, human treatment of cheetahs over the last few hundred years has wiped out much of their genetic material--although, we didn't really know that was happening). Homogeneity creates a haven for bacteria and viruses--especially viruses.

Bacteria and viruses are the most successful species on this planet and will continue to be so for as long as there is life on this planet, and it's all due to their genetic diversity. Ever heard of super-germs? Super-germs are bacteria and viruses that evolve resistances to whatever we throw at them. Somewhere, some individual(s) just so happen to have the gene that makes the germ resistant, and as soon as it has the chance, it propagates that gene to the rest of the population.