From: rokimoto557@gmail.com   
      
   https://evolutionnews.org/2025/06/on-human-chimp-genetic-differe   
   ces-the-critics-misstate-my-arguments/   
      
   He is claiming that his critics are not addressing his claims or   
   misstating them.  Luskin is falsely claiming that the 1% difference   
   between chimp and human genomic DNA that had been determined for the   
   sequence that was compared in order to determine the evolutionary   
   relationship between extant life forms is some type of Icon of   
   evolution.  It is just what the sequence difference was.  It wasn't the   
   1% number that determined that chimps are the most closely related   
   species to humans it was how that 1% difference related to all the other   
   species that we had the same sequence for and could compare them.   
      
   Coding sequence is still 0.7% different between chimps and humans, and   
   the sequence around the genes that we can compare are between 1 and 1.8%   
   different.  We can't use a lot of the sequence around the coding   
   sequence to compare extant species to each other because it is so   
   different between species that we can't compare it accurately.  I took   
   around 800 base-pairs of the tyrosinase exon 1 coding sequence and the   
   following 900 base-pairs of the first intron.  Chimps and humans were   
   99% similar by BLAST for this sequence.  Green monkey was 95% similar   
   for the sequence compared to humans, but the coding sequence was less   
   than 3% different and the intron sequence was almost 9% different (there   
   were also a couple of indels in the intron).  I tried the same sequence   
   for mouse and BLAST would not align the intron sequence.  It was just   
   too different.  Even under BLAST for more relaxed conditions it would   
   only align bits of the intron in around 60 base-pair pieces where there   
   was enough similarity where they might be the same sequence (many of   
   these short matches were not the same sequence and were on other   
   chromosomes of the genome assembly).  The 826 base-pairs of coding   
   sequence was 87% similar, but the intron sequence was not matched up.   
   It might be expected to be around 60% similar if you could align it, but   
   any alignment likely would not be that accurate.   
      
   This just means that the sequence that we determined to be around 1%   
   different (coding sequence) is the sequence that would be used to   
   determine evolutionary relationships between mammals.  It is the   
   sequence that can be used to determine that chimps are the most closely   
   related species to humans that exist on this planet today.  But outside   
   of mammals the accuracy of coding sequence decreases because of the   
   degenerate code and multiple substitutions at the third position of   
   codons that you can't tell if they have been mutated multiple times or   
   not.  You can only use noncoding sequence like introns to compare   
   closely related taxa because they change too fast to be useful.   
      
   The additional sequence that Luskin is beefing about was sequence that   
   we could not obtain in all taxa, and it is still sequence that can't be   
   accurately compared between the taxa with complete genome sequences   
   because of the repetitive nature of the sequence and the rapid copy   
   number variations between species and the rapid evolution of the   
   sequence of the heterochromatin repeats.   
      
   Luskin is literally beefing about something that never mattered, and   
   still does not matter.   
      
   The mitochondrial DNA sequence is 8.9% different between chimps and   
   humans and still indicates that chimps are the most closely related   
   species to humans.  In the 1980's mitochondrial DNA was the first   
   sequence used to determine that of the other great apes chimps were our   
   closest relative.  It wasn't the 1% genomic coding sequence difference.   
   For the tyrosinase sequence that I used in the above analysis both   
   gorilla and chimps are 99% similar (16 mismatches with Gorilla and 20   
   mismatches with chimps) by blast alignment.   
      
   Ron Okimoto   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
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