What do creationists make of this?

Question

In a recent issue of the New Yorker there is a fascinating article about current research looking in particular kinds of retrovirii (Dec 3, 2007, Specter, M, Darwin's Surprise.)

I'm curious what creationists think about these developments, particularly those who take issue with the idea of common ancestry shared between apes and humans.

I'll briefly summarize what struck me as important.

1. It is clear that certain types of retrovirii have the ability to both modify the host's DNA and cause that change to be inheritable. In other words there are virii out there that have been shown to "infect" an organism such that future offspring are born with the viral DNA as part of their own. This has been demonstrated, duplicated, observed, and is not in any doubt.

2. It is also clear that our "junk" DNA (the vast majority of our genetic code that doesn't seem to "do" anything) is made up at least in part from old retrovirii, rendered impotent over many generations.

(con't - sorry!)

This is also not in dispute. We have examples of ancient retrovirii which have been sequenced, and large portions exist codon-for-codon in all our DNA, and we know the original retrovirii date back millions of years.

3. Apes and humans also share a very large chunk of this junk DNA.

"Darwin's theory makes sense, though, only if humans share most of these viral fragments with relatives like chimps and monkeys. And we do, in thousands of places throughout our genome. If that were a co-incidence, humans and chimps would have had to endure an incalculable number of identical viral infections over the course of millions of years, and then, somehow, those infections would have had to end up in exactly the same place within each genome."

So the only way for this to have happened is if both chimps and humans inherited this genetic information from a common ancestor.

Seems pretty cut and dry, doesn't it?

(edit - last one!)

The logic is obviously flawless, so I can only anticipate creationists challenging the mechanical side of the argument: all that DNA could have ended up there by chance, or this retrovirus is not the same as that junk DNA. But this stuff is so well documented, and such an excellent explanation for something predicted by the theory of evolution, it seems unfair to dismiss it out of hand, which I fear will happen among the christian right.

I can't think of any valuable predictions made by creationists that have later been shown as valid. Certainly not on the order of this work.

Anyway, thoughts?

...oh, and to the top person wondering why this ended up in the New Yorker, I should add that this material has been circulating in peer-reviewed journals for quite some time. But the New Yorker article serves as a good precis for someone interested in the research, it's widely available, and it's a respected publication in its own right.

Answer 1

I'll have to get that copy of the New Yorker. Interesting they would print it there not in a science magazine.

Answer 2

The full article is here...http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/12/03/071203fa_fact_specter

So called "junk DNA" is not junk or useless...we just don't understand it fully but we are finding out more and more that it does seem to have a purpose.
http://www.psrast.org/junkdna.htm

Quote: "When Haussler and his colleague Gill Bejerano used computers to compare the human genome with the mouse and the rat genomes, they assumed that because humans, mice, and rats look so different, there would be differences in the genome. They did see the expected differences in the shared genes from the common ancestor, but they were surprised to find long stretches of shared "junk" DNA that were exactly the same in humans and rodents. "There were about five hundred stretches of DNA in the human genome that hadn't changed at all in the millions and millions of years that separated the human from the mouse and the rat," says Haussler. "I about fell off my chair. It's very unusual to have such an amount of conservation continually over such a long stretch of DNA."

Long stretches of "junk" DNA are exactly the same in humans and rodents.

Many of these stretches of DNA, called "ultra-conserved" regions, don't appear to code for protein, so they might have been dismissed as junk if they hadn't shown up in so many different species. And if nature has gone to so much trouble to preserve these ultra-conserved regions over all these years, Haussler reasons, then they must be more important than just "junk." "From what we know about the rate at which DNA changes from generation to generation, the chance of finding even one stretch of DNA in the human genome that is unchanged between humans and mice and rats over these hundred million years is less than one divided by ten followed by 22 zeros. It's a tiny, tiny fraction. It's virtually impossible that this would happen by chance."
Source; http://www.sciencentral.com/articles/view.php3?type=article&article_id=218392305

The assumption is made in the article that over millions of years and thousands of generations, these retrovirrii DNA have embedded themselves in our DNA...it could very well have happened in the last 6000 years of human reproduction given the number of base pairs of our DNA, reproduction rates and world population...they are simply "memories" of our previous ancestors efforts to fight off disease and remain with us as a protection against those diseases reoccuring. Our so-called "junk DNA' preserves the information about them for our immune system to use in defense. Sounds like a great design to me....like a library of past problems for our bodies to consult in order to defend themselves. And it probably carries over to animals as well....look at how cow pox was first used to cure small pox.
The vaccine for small pox was the first vaccine ever developed. In fact, the term "vaccine" comes from the Latin word for cow, vaccinus, since the original small pox vaccine was made using the cow pox virus.

Answer 3

First since they DON'T KNOW what it does then they DON'T KNOW that it is made in part or of retrovirus DNA. See Billy you answered you own question. Minute changes are made in plants and animals to ADAPT to the environment they live in.

Answer 4

This information about retroviruses has been around for a long time. I'm not sure what it has to do with shared ancestry.

Answer 5

I think the NY times prints lies everyday. they will do anything to hurt America, Godliness, morals and those who disagree with socialist ideas.