Craig Venter debunked by his own DNA, once again

Posted by tc on June 08, 2010, 06:29 PM | #

I unnerstand. Honest boss, just shakin’ the tree, little ol’ Luke here boss…

But honestly, boss…

Is THAT what our argument rest on? 98.4 instead of 99.5?

Are we serious? Is that the breakthrough we are workin’ to transcribe to the ...who? The academia? Ya mean the ones, responsible for the Frankfurt school against all odds in the beginning?

Please, don’t reply. I don’t want to belittle. I don’t intend to ridicule.

98.4 instead of 99.5. my oh my…I thought it was all or nuttn’.

No wonder they call me a toothless freak…I mean fuck me, they have the facts behind them…all 1.1% of it.

Me, just an anti-intellectual, ignorant rebel…a genuine 1 percenter…:-)

Posted by Guessedworker on June 08, 2010, 07:48 PM | #

tc,

It is three times as much genetic diversity as Venter - a liberal - initially claimed.  Which, to quote Das, puts the variation “in the range of previous estimates of human/chimpanzee similarity”.

And you want more?

Posted by Søren Renner on June 08, 2010, 09:20 PM | #

tc, as a genuine 1 percenter, you are eligible to wear the diamond patch.

Posted by ben tillman on June 09, 2010, 12:29 AM | #

If you find someone with a little extra Neanderthal DNA, you can depress that 98.4% figure further.  Still, as long as it’s not R = 1, the Venters are proven wrong.

Posted by seawolf on June 09, 2010, 12:43 AM | #

Please correct me if I’m wrong, but from what I’ve read, the human genome has not been decoded.  There are still vast stretches of genome (over 800) that have not been deciphered.  All the focus has been on protein-coding gene sections, and little attention has been paid to the importance of non-coding (junk) DNA.  Little is known about epigenetic controls and other factors such as indels, CNV, etc.  In summation, no one has a compete picture of the human genome nor a complete understanding of its function.  For Venter to state that humans populations (races) are so closely related is simply political ideology, not science.

Posted by Dasein on June 09, 2010, 03:16 AM | #

98.4 instead of 99.5?

Most people today still think it’s 99.9%.  Even people who know a lot about racialist arguments (e.g. Silver) were not aware that after the 2007 paper the number was 99.5%. 

three times as much genetic diversity as Venter

It’s actually closer to 25 times more.  Venter initially claimed that there were 2 million nucleotides (SNPs) that differentiate 2 genomes.  He was only off there by about 1.3 million.  But with structural variation, the current estimate is more than 50 million nucleotides difference between 2 genomes.

seawolf, you are correct.  There are still stretches of repeats that have not been sequenced.  It’s technically very difficult and may require new technologies before it’s truly finished (there were also design flaws).  And what you say about ‘junk’ DNA is also true.  It turns out that most of the genome is transcribed and these non-coding regions are likely involved in very complex regulatory networks.  The picture is much more complicated than was imagined even 10 years ago.  We’re a long, long way from understanding what it all means. 

For Venter to state that humans populations (races) are so closely related is simply political ideology, not science.

Yes, and that’s part of the reason for this blog entry.  I think it’s important to point these things out and to debunk destructive memes, like the ‘99.9% identical.’  That one is an especially invasive meme.  Almost any discussion of racial differences is sure to bring it up.  I also have evangelical friends who recite garbled versions of Lewontin’s results as arguments against race.

I understand that for some, like tc, the science is seen to be pointless or uninteresting.  We’ll have to disagree on this.

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their
final, most essential command. His heart sank as he thought of the enormous
power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party intellectual would
overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments which he would not be able
to understand, much less answer. And yet he was in the right! They were
wrong and he was right. The obvious, the silly, and the true had got to be
defended. Truisms are true, hold on to that! The solid world exists, its laws do
not change. Stones are hard, water is wet, objects unsupported fall towards the
earth’s centre. With the feeling that he was speaking to O’Brien, and also that
he was setting forth an important axiom, he wrote:
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted,
all else follows.