Kosh

I was having a cival evolution/creation conversation with my wife's YEC cousin the
other day (he's a rebellious SDA) and was
trying my best to remember all the arguments
I've heard here (to counter the typical YEC
arguments he was spewing)... and he makes this
claim:

The Neanderthal genome is much more complex than
that of H. Sapiens.

Was wondering if anyone knew anything about this
claim? Never heard that one. A couple things came
to mind:

1. I don't recall any claims that H. Sapiens is
descended from Neanderthal. Last I heard, they
were unable to find any traces that the Neanderthals bred with modern humans (or
whichever H. XXXX was contemporary with N.)

2. I find it unlikely that we have decoded the
Neanderthal genome. We just finished with ours,
and that was a huge (and first time) effort. Is
it even possible to recover N. DNA?

3. So what? What does a differing level of
complexity have to do with disproving evolution?
All it could prove is that we aren't closely
related to the species.

Thanks.

Orpheous99

It could be because they are older than we are, or that they had more evolutionary pressure on them, or it is totally irrelevant that their genetic code is more complex and what do you mean by more complex?

gallo

I could be wrong, but as I recall the only Neandertal DNA that has been extracted was mitochondrial. Three samples of it have been extracted from three different fossils, one from the Neander Valley, one from Croatia and one from the Caucasus Mountains just north of the east end of the Black Sea. The fossils were separated in time also. The same sequences were isolated from all three. The conclusions were that Neandertals are not ancestral to modern man, but did show a relationship to each other.

I haven't heard of any nuclear DNA that has been isolated, so any statements about genome complexity are hogwash.

Do a web search. I'm sure you can find information on this.

[ February 09, 2002: Message edited by: gallo ]</p>

ps418

As Gallo says, although a small bit of Neanderthal DNA has been sequenced, there is no evidence that the Neanderthal genome was any more 'complex' than that of H. sapiens. SOunds like an creationist myth to me.

theyeti

Even if there were nuclear DNA isolated and sequenced, it would say nothing about genomic "complexity". An enitre chromosome or more would have to be isolated and rigorously studied to know if the Neandertal's intron/exon structure, number of open reading frames, and regulatory sequences were more "complex" than ours. In reality, they would have been identical.

theyeti

BLoggins02

Isn't there a species of bacteria who has something like 1 trillion more base pairs than we do? I read that somewhere (I think in Lewin's Genes) but I can't find it anywhere.

Anyone care to (re)educate me?

Thanks

tronvillain

There are organisms with genomes that dwarf ours, but I am almost certain none of them are bacteria. The largest bacterial genome I can remember is somewhere around ten million base pairs, while humans have around three billion. I did a search, and you may have been thinking of Amoeba dubia which has a genome of around 670 billion base pairs, a single celled eukaryote.

[ February 09, 2002: Message edited by: tronvillain ]</p>

Gringo

Could it not be possible that Neandertal is ancestral to modern humans? I know the Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA is spoken for, but that is only two lines in many millions. Unless there was that much genetic drift that the two couldn't possibly produce fertile offspring, I would think there would be a high probability that we have Neandertals sitting in some of those ancestral branches.

tronvillain

Well, we share a common ancestor anyway. Anything more than that is fairly speculative.

Boro Nut

The only thing neanderthal is your pronunciation. You don't pronounce the gee. It's gnome (pronounced nome). They have white beards, wear red hats, and tend to fish more than pixies.