{"id":93,"date":"2008-03-25T10:39:13","date_gmt":"2008-03-25T09:39:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yellowhousehomeschool.net\/?p=93"},"modified":"2008-03-25T10:39:13","modified_gmt":"2008-03-25T09:39:13","slug":"the-chimpanzee-genome-project-is-pretty-cool-actually","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yellowhousehomeschool.net\/?p=93","title":{"rendered":"The chimpanzee genome project is pretty cool, actually"},"content":{"rendered":"

These people<\/a> said:<\/p>\n

“Evolution \u201ccannot be subjected to a test\u201d because it is something that supposedly occurred in the past and is not occurring today. And before you jump all over that, natural selection (changes within a species that are occurring at present) is not evolution, and there is no recorded instance of a new form or function being observed to have developed through natural means.”<\/em><\/p>\n

I thought I would jump all over them.\u00a0 Even though I wasn’t smart enough to figure out how to leave a comment at their blog, I can understand this one.\u00a0 People who expect to see radical visible changes in organisms in a handful of human generations, e.g. since we discovered evolution, are missing something.\u00a0 A grip on timescales possibly?<\/p>\n

Approximately 500,000 generations (about 250,000 each, from our common ancestor) are estimated to separate us from chimpanzees, our closest relatives, a process that took about 6 million years.\u00a0 Whether this has produced significant differences in form or function is bound to be a subjective judgement. So check out the chimpanzee genome sequencing project, for something a bit more precise.\u00a0 Wikipedia <\/a>gives quite a nice summary, and there’s about a million other things on the net.\u00a0 It’s a fun thing to research and it underlines the fact that a grasp of genetics is absolutely essential to anybody hoping to understand evolution.<\/p>\n

Personally, I’m impressed by just how many genes have changed in so short a time, how few of the changes are visible, and how few changes you need to create visible differences (like chihuahuas from wolves).<\/p>\n

For evolution happening today, see here<\/a>.\u00a0 It mostly concerns nasty little things like resistance in organisms we can’t see and would rather be without. So as well as getting a grip on large time scales, you need to get familiar with small spatial ones, and with processes as well as morphology.<\/p>\n

For the rest of this little discussion, see here <\/a>and here<\/a>. I have to go and teach my kiddie something before lunchtime now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

These people said: “Evolution \u201ccannot be subjected to a test\u201d because it is something that supposedly occurred in the past and is not occurring today. And before you jump all over that, natural selection (changes within a species that are occurring at present) is not evolution, and there is no recorded instance of a new … Continue reading The chimpanzee genome project is pretty cool, actually<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[38],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yellowhousehomeschool.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yellowhousehomeschool.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yellowhousehomeschool.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yellowhousehomeschool.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yellowhousehomeschool.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=93"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.yellowhousehomeschool.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yellowhousehomeschool.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=93"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yellowhousehomeschool.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=93"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yellowhousehomeschool.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=93"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}