| DaRev said:
Here’s what your scientist friends say when asked: Is human DNA closer to chimpanzees or pigs?
Answer:
Humans and chimpanzees share a much more recent common ancestor than humans and pigs. This results in humans sharing more of their genome with chimps than they do with pigs.
Even though a human's genetic code is more like a chimp's than it is like a pig's, all eukaryotic organisms share a significant amount of genetic code, vertebrates share even more, and mammals share even more than that; a human's DNA more closely resembles a pig's than it does a lizard's, and it more closely resembles a lizard's than it does a bacterium's.
How close are pigs to humans DNA?
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if you compare humans to almost any other animal on the planet today, you would find that about 99% of the genetic structure is the same.
The simple fact is that not because a Monkey or a Pig or whatever animal’s DNA says it can have legs, eyes, brain etc, doesn’t make it human, nor proves or even suggests an evolutionary process. DNA that closely resembles human DNA doesn’t make it human or prove evolution. Apparently we could have evolved from a fly or a banana giving the evolutionary opportunity. Sharing close DNA makeup does not mean that moss evolved into a rose, a gold fish into a whale nor a monkey into a man – that is just want scientist theorise and have been on a never-ending pursuit to prove it as fact, and until then, calls it fact nonetheless. Anyways, I tire of this discussion. |
Only looking at the code only gives a small part of the picture. We share DNA similarity because most of life codes for very similar proteins, but specialised and vastly different functions. The proteins we use in digestion are very similar in structure and sequence to the proteins bacteria use and have the same chemical mechanism of breaking down other proteins. Therefore the DNA structure is very similar. We can track how these proteins evolved by going from simpler forms of life to more complex forms. We can see how even the smallest of changes in the sequence can lead to radical changes in the activity, function or environmental preference of a protein. Now move that further and go from a simple life form to a more complex one and we see how that leads to integrations of different protein domains to form larger complexes that can have multiple functions. Collectively these then have major physical effects.
There's more to it than just the paragraph above too. We also now know of the effects non-coding RNA can have on how genes are expressed and how that can lead to chemical modification to the DNA without changing the sequence which in turn can shut genes on or off. These can then be passed on from parent to child; small evolutionary changes with no change to the inherent sequence.
The processes of evolution have been observed (mutagenesis, epigenetics, integration of retroviruses in our genome) and even used/manipulated in the lab to create new biopharmaceutical drugs, biofuels and even battery components. You can deny evolution all you want but you'll certainly be using products that have been manufactured by manipulating the theory of evolution (if your diabetic for instance, some insulin producers use a trypsin enzyme that has undergone directed evolution for processing).
