A reader who has access to the professional Gemini 1.5 AI was kind enough to ask it several of the questions concerning MITTENS that I requested from its dumbed-down public version; one thing that was interesting was that it included the actual observed distance in DNA between humans and chimpanzees, not just the protein-encoded sections of the genomes. He sent me a link to the results, a portion of which I’ve pasted here:
When you say that there is a 4 percent difference in DNA between humans and chimpanzees, approximately how many genetic fixation events are required to account for that difference?
It’s challenging to give an exact number of fixations corresponding to a 4% genetic difference between humans and chimpanzees. Here’s why:
- Not just single base changes: The 4% difference encompasses various genetic alterations:
- Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs): These are single base pair changes.
Insertions and deletions (indels): Where segments of DNA are added or removed.
Structural variations: Larger-scale rearrangements, duplications, or losses of DNA segments.
Varying impact: Each type of change has a different impact. A single SNP in a critical gene might have a large effect, while many SNPs in non-coding regions might have little functional consequence.- Unknown ancestral state: Reconstructing the exact genome of the CHLCA is difficult, making it hard to trace the precise number of changes on each lineage.
However, we can make a rough approximation:
- Genome size: The human genome is roughly 3 billion base pairs.
- 4% difference: This equates to 0.04 * 3,000,000,000 = 120,000,000 base pair differences.
- If we assume, for simplicity, that most of these differences are due to single nucleotide fixations, then 120 million fixations would be a crude estimate.
Important caveats:
- Oversimplification: This ignores indels and structural variations, which contribute significantly to the 4% difference.
- Non-uniform distribution: Changes aren’t evenly distributed. Some regions have higher variability, while others are highly conserved.
- Functional impact varies: Not all fixations have the same functional impact.
In conclusion: While a precise number is elusive, the 4% difference likely translates to millions of genetic changes, including fixations, indels, and structural variations. This highlights the complexity of the evolutionary process and the multitude of genetic changes contributing to the differences between humans and chimpanzees.
Given the maximum possible number of fixation events since the Chimpanzee-Human Last Common Ancestor is 204 according to your earlier reply, is it rational to assert that evolution by natural selection has accounted for 120 million fixation events in the last nine million years?
You’re right to question that! It indeed seems contradictory. Here’s why the two numbers don’t match up and what we can learn from it. The 204 fixations figure was a highly simplified calculation. It assumed:
- A constant rate of fixation (1,600 generations per fixation).
- Only single gene fixations, ignoring other types of genetic changes.
Why the huge discrepancy?
We underestimated the complexity of genetic change. The 4% difference between humans and chimps includes many types of changes beyond single gene fixations. Structural variations, indels, and changes in gene regulation are crucial and likely account for a large portion of the genetic divergence.
Now, what’s important here is that even as the minimum possible number of generations has been reduced from 1,600 observed for the e. coli bacteria to 64 for the Lambda virus, the genetic difference has been rising from 30 million to 120 million due to the need to account for the fixation of the full range of the observed differences in the DNA, not just those observed in protein-coding DNA.
Furthermore, my estimate of 20 years per generation was apparently too minimal, the professional AI views a standard generation as being 27.5 years. Thus, the original equation needs to be revised as follows:
CHLCA
Years: 9,000,000
Years per generation: 27.5
Generations per fixed mutation: 64
Years per fixed mutation: 1,760
Maximum fixed mutations: 5,114
Mutations required: 120,000,000
% attributable to evolution by natural selection: 0.00004 or four-thousandths of one percent.
All that switching from the bacteria to the simpler structure of the virus accomplishes is to remove one decimal point from the improbability, from one in 240,000 to one in 23,465. However, it is obviously not even possible for a genetic mutation to fix in the entire breeding human population in 27.5 years, or any faster than that. This is the hard place that none of the evolutionists feverishly attempting to find faster mutational fixation rates have realized is there; the number of generations per fixed mutation is almost certainly closer to the 8,170 suggested by the Genghis Khan heritage than the 64 observed for the Lambda virus, although it’s probably even higher than that.
But regardless, even with the faster observed fixation rate, claiming that you believe evolution by natural selection can explain the differences between chimpanzees and humans is mathematically akin to saying that you believe your friend who says he drove the 2,790 miles that separate New York City from Los Angeles in six seconds.