….Since the discovery of DNA in 1869 by the Swiss biochemist Johann Friedrich Miescher, and the tremendous amount of information that is captured inside protein molecules, scientists have been intrigued by the thought of transcribing the entire human genome. In September 2003, The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) launched a public research consortium named ENCODE, the Encyclopedia Of DNA Elements, which was set out to find all functional elements of the human genome. Obviously, the research members of this consortium were mostly molecular biologists, specialised in genetics, strong believers of a gradual evolutionary process to form the DNA as we see it today without any intervention of a divine intelligence who designed or better said “encoded” the advanced biological machines we call humans. Most of them were atheists at the beginning of the project. While gaining a deeper understanding of the human genome and its daunting complexity, some scientists started to believe that something had to be out there who had constituted this system of complex molecular processes that have formed us into the way we are. Some of them were convinced atheists yet turned into Christian believers of a divine creator. Recent conclusions have brought evolutionists into a tremendous dilemma for what is currently seen in the human DNA does not support a gradual evolutionary process over billions of years. All kinds of theories are being developed to accord with the scientific evidence. However, at this point evolutionists don’t concur on a single supporting theory to match the scientific evidence. It does, however, yield evidence that is in accordance with the events described in the Genesis account. Let’s look a bit closer to what the scientific evidence is currently telling us. Ironically, most of this evidence stems from an attempt to find a scientific basis for evolution.
A Galaxy of Design and Complexity
What is a Genome?
Now what is a genome? A genome constitutes all genetic material inside the human cell. Most of that material can be found within the cell nucleus, but a small part of that also lives outside the nucleus (e.g. mtDNA). It forms the blueprint of who we are. At cell division, the genome is carefully replicated and checked for errors that occurred during the replication process. Half of this material (23 chromosomes) is transferred during conception to recombine with the other half of the part to form a complete set of 46 chromosomes, which start dividing and reproducing.
Roughly 90% of the human genome has been transcribed into about three billion of letters, nucleotides grouped in base pairs. It can literally be compared with multiple sets of encyclopaedias with detailed instructions. It is the most sophisticated computer operating system that dwarfs any human designed computer technology. Contrary to earlier beliefs that most of non-protein encoding genes (human DNA has about 20.000 protein encoding genes) in the human DNA is simply junk DNA with no particular function, recent discoveries have demonstrated that the entire human genome is amazingly functional. The following sections will scratch the surface on some of the recent discoveries on the human genome and DNA.
Amazing Structure
Although the existence of DNA was discovered in the 19th century, the exact chemical structure of DNA wasn’t established until halfway the 20th century (1953). I won’t describe the detailed biochemical structure in this article as it will reel most readers without a biochemical background. Yet, I will try to explain in layman terms the advanced structure of the human genome.
At the basis of each DNA sequence are nucleotides. Nucleotides are formed out of ordered sequences of amino acids. They form the basis of each DNA and RNA molecule. A nucleotide consists of three parts: a nitrogen containing nucleobase, a sugar group (deoxyribose), and one or more phosphate groups. Nucleotides can contain five distinct bases: adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G), thymine (T), and uracil (U). DNA nucleotides will only contain the ACGT bases. The nitrogen base gives the nucleotide its unique identification. Nucleotides are chained together to form a single strand of the DNA molecule. This strand is called the polynucleotide strand. Another polynucleotide strand is connected to form a double helix. Nucleotide bases are connected via a hydrogen “bridge” to the opposing nucleotide base to form base pairs, like a rung that connects to the two sides of the ladder. Not all nucleotide bases can pair at random with each other. A ‘G’-base can only bind with a ‘C’-base, and an ‘A’-base can only bind with a ‘T’-base. It’s this sequence of base pairs (e.g. CGAT, TAGC, ATGC, CGTA, etc.) that contains the instructions to produce RNA. This RNA, once moved out of the cell nucleus, will be used to produce a specific protein for a particular purpose. Particularly sequences of this DNA to form a particular function are called genes. Variations in genes are called ‘alleles’ and will result in different ‘genetic expression’. For example, the gene that controls hair color is identified as the ‘MC1R’gene. Variations in this gene (alleles) will determine whether a person has dark, blond or red hair. Same goes for skin color and other visible features of the human body. However, racial differences are actually determined by a very small part of the human genome. Genetically, human beings are very much the same but more of this later. Genes are packed into chromosomes. Each cell nucleus has 46 chromosomes (23 pairs). All but one pair are identical. The chromosome that determines gender varies for male human beings, where there is an X and Y chromosome. The Y chromosome is passed on from father to son and therefore only propagates in the paternal lineage.
Advanced Packaging Technology
When the entire human genome is strung out into a straight line it results in six feet of extremely thin and sticky material, which is proportionally similar to 40 kilometers of thin wire tucked into a tennis ball. Imagine this thin wire folded and shaped to fit inside a tennis ball in such a way that every segment of the wire can be easily accessed. Now scale this back to the six feet of sticky material folded in such a way it fits inside the cell nucleus where every part of the DNA can be easily accessed. This basically describes metaphorically how the human DNA has been organised inside the cell nucleus. It is simply the most advanced packaging system ever discovered. Geneticists agree that the human genome is highly structured and organised. The question that everyone should ask is whether this complexity can be explained by an evolutionary process where random and uncontrolled events were the cause of what we currently see.
Multi-dimensional
Human beings are used to process data in a linear fashion. While reading, they process character symbols, left to right (western languages), right to left (Arabic, Hebrew) or top to bottom (Chinese) but still one-dimensional. There is also one way to interpret the information that is read. Read Arabic text left to right and it becomes meaningless. Also, in computer science data is lied out into a one-dimensional sequence of zeroes and ones (binary system) to represent numbers or text. Although the data can represent something with multiple dimensions, the way the data is organised in memory or device is still one-dimensional. This is different with the human genome. The human genome can contain multiple overlapping messages, depending on the way you look at the ‘data’. Back to the reading analogy, for example, a sentence can be read left to right and right to left yielding different message or instructions depending on which way you read the text. In summary, the human genome is multi-dimensional in the way instructions are organised. This makes it a form of data compression at the most sophisticated level vastly superior to any human invented compression algorithm.
Multiple Overlapping Messages
We know that DNA sequences on the DNA strand are used, through a very complex mechanism involving messenger RNA (mRNA), to produce proteins to carry out a particular function (e.g. producing enzymes). Geneticists have identified 22.000 protein encoding genes. However, there are well over 100.000 unique proteins being generated from RNA. This alludes to a higher degree of complexity in the human genome than originally thought. What has been discovered is that a single DNA sequence can hold multiple overlapping coding regions to produce different types of proteins. This is what is called alternate splicing. A DNA sequence is made up of functional parts (exons) and non-functional parts (introns). When DNA is transcribed into RNA, a reading frame determines what exons are used to generate a unique protein. What the Encode project discovered is that these exons are not necessarily coming from the same DNA sequence. They could come from different genes and different chromosomes. Genes that are used together tend to be clustered together in 3D space even if they are in different chromosomes. Part of that information is built into the three-dimensional configuration of the genome. This is a complete mystery to the evolutionists community in answering the question how these multiple overlapping messages could have evolved over time. The chances that this happened by accident are virtually nil and thus points us to a supreme intelligence who has made it to function this way.
Interacting DNA
Certain regions on the DNA string communicate and interact with other regions of the DNA string. Specified shape interactions are interactions where proteins interact with other proteins in many different ways. This is called the interactome or also called the protein-to-protein interaction (PPI) network. This is a very delicately balanced system. If any of those links are broken in, for example, a fruit fly, it will get deformed or dy. If protein with a single and harmless mutation connects to another mutated protein it will result in the death of the cell. The human interactome is at least ten times more complicated than in a fruit fly. We don’t know how many proteins we produce yet. We know that we produce over a hundred thousand different proteins that interact with each other. This makes the genome the most complex operating system in the universe.
A mutation in DNA will affect multiple RNA transcripts. This leads to the conclusion that natural selection can’t operate. It can’t select for the ability to digest garlic, your heat tolerance or whether you like the smell of roses. Splicing code. Exons are part of the genes that code for protein. Other parts are called introns. They don’t code for proteins. When the messenger RNA are cut out from that part of DNA, the introns are actually thrown away. The protein RNA are joined together to make the messenger RNA for the protein. There are also untranslated regions. This is where the DNA polymerase lands. This is where the enhancers, repressors and activators bind. Sometimes this part codes for independent RNA. Question:? The encode project discovered alternate splicing. A single exon can be spliced with any other exon in the human genome to form new proteins. There’s tiny words in the end of the exon and the beginning of the intron tell exactly, depending on the cell type, depending on the gene, and depending on which state of development, 12 to 19 little words that tell the cell when to use that exon, under what conditions and for which cell type and under what time of development.
DNA is three-dimensional of shape. Each chromosome has a specified location in the nucleus 3D space, so part of the genomic information is where to put the chromosome and that has influence on what genes are next to each other. which influence genetic expression. In fact, genes that are used often tend to be on the outside of the chromosome to make them easily accessible. The alleged randomness of gens all over the place led to the belief that those genes were actually junk. Since the encode project discovered alternate splice it became clear that sequences of DNA are recombined from different parts of the genome.
Epigenetics. Effects on DNA that are seen two or three generations later. For example, mothers that were starved in the Dutch hunger winter, depending on the stage of pregnancy, were carrying embryos with a profoundly influenced genome. Baby’s that were born after this have come out with a whole suite of metabolic disorders and they’re hardwired. They don’t turn off very easily. Female baby in the woman’s womb has her eggs already finished.
Mutation
If you take an original, a picture or page with some text on it, and you copy it and then use the copy instead of the original to copy the next and you repeat this process over a thousand times you can rest assured that information from the original has been distorted or has completely disappeared. Every copy yields an imperfect copy of the original, which is amplified by each next copy of the imperfect original. The same happens at every cell division. It is scientifically proven that every cell division carries a number of mutations at the micro level. This fact was taken by evolutionists to explain the gradual process of transforming into a different species, a step up on the evolutionary ladder. These micro-mutations would be triggered by the environment. A series of micro-mutations would lead to a single macro step in evolution that in turn would lead to a different species. Those species who would be able to adapt would survive and those who couldn’t would become extinct. This is the process which Darwin called ‘natural selection’. However, there are two significant problems that evolutionists see themselves confronted with given recent research on cell mutation.
‘The Princess and the Pea‘
Most of us know the story of the princess and the pea from Hans Christian Andersen. If a girl claiming to be a princess could sense the presence of a pea underneath a stack of mattresses she would be a considered a real princess and should be allowed to marry the prince. The queen (mother of the prince) used this as a means to discern royalty from any other ordinary human being. Of course, the story is parabolic, for no human senses are so well-developed that it could sense a pea under a stack of mattresses. Some geneticists tend to compare a cell mutation with a pea under a stack of mattresses in that the majority of mutations have no significant effect on the human genome in terms of loss of function and gladly so (I will explain the reason for that later). Since these mutations are so small and occur at random places in the human genome, a series of these random mutation in time will not result into a macro mutation that in turn will to an increase in fitness. In other words, the mechanism called ‘natural selection’ will simply not see them to be able to weed them out and preserve the fittest. Conversely, a set of mutations can lead to loss of function and damage the cell to the extent it either change its behavior (tumor cells) or die.
Mutations are mostly Deleterious
In recent reports of the human genome, mutations are classified as either ‘deleterious’ or ‘functional’. Functional mutations are mutations that are neutral in nature in that they will not lead to any observable loss of function. Deleterious mutations are mutations leading to loss of function in that information in the DNA sequence becomes corrupted or damaged. None of the discovered mutations have been classified as ‘beneficial’. About 30% of all mutations are functional. 70-80% of the mutations are deleterious of which half is lethal. More simply put, most mutations destroy information leading to disease, aging and eventually death. Rather than spiraling up to a higher life form, what is observed today is a steady spiraling down towards a degenerated DNA. This would not at all be alarming if the mutation rate would be relatively small. Recent discoveries, however, have indicated that cell mutations take place at an alarmingly high rate. Worst of all, mutations are passed on from generation to generation. Michael Lynch, Professor (PhD) in Biology at the University of Minnesota and specialized in cell biology, admitted in his article the The Evolution of the Mutation Rate, that the human cell degenerates 1-5% per generation. It is considered a trade secret among population geneticists that mankind is in fact degenerating. In the near future we will see significant impairment of human functionality.
Mutation and Disease
One human may carry a gene mutation and still be perfectly healthy. However, when the same same gene mutation is inherited from both parents this can lead to serious disease (autosomal recessive inheritance pattern). An example of this is the sickle cell anemia that is caused by a mutation in the ‘Hemoglobine Subunit Beta’ gene or the HBB gene. This HBB gene contains instructions to make ‘beta-globin’, a sub-unit component of the larger Hemoglobin protein, which is located inside the red blood cells. When both copies of these gene contain the same mutation it will cause the normally circular shaped blood cell to deform into a sickle-shaped blood cell causing it to die prematurely. This in turn will lead to a condition called anemia with typical symptoms such as fatigue, loss of energy, shortness of breath, etc. Other disorders as a result of gene mutation are …
Mutation Rate
In genetics, the mutation rate is a measure of the rate at which various types of mutations occur over time. Again with recent technologies, scientists have been able to deduce the rate of mutations taking place in cells of the human body. It is currently estimated that every cell division will result in 1-3 new mutations. As a result, the accumulation of mutations is strongly correlated with the rate of cell division. Some cells will divide and replicate more often than other cells and will therefore incur more cell mutations. For example, the female reproductive egg cells (ovum) are kept protected in a non-dividing state (after about 50 cell divisions) in the female’s ovary. As they will not continue to divide further they will not accumulate more mutations. This in itself is a miracle of creation for imagine what would happen if these eggs cells would be unprotected and subject to same high mutation rate as within other cell types. The number of mutations at child birth would be even higher causing early death. Male semen will continue to divide and pass on those mutations to the fertilized egg (zygote) that will grow into an embryo. Sperm cells undergo 20 to 30 divisions per year — approximately 600 divisions by the time a man is 40. Studies indicate a higher risk of mental disorders for children born to older fathers (Brain D’Onofrio and Paul Lichtenstein).
Other human tissue will incur higher mutation rates. For example, it is estimated that a 50 year old person will have accumulated 50.000 mutations in his digestive tract that he wasn’t born with. If we take the current mutation rate and map that to evolutionary and geological timescale man would have been extinct a 100 times over. A high and exponential mutation rate combined with the knowledge that 70-80% of the mutations are deleterious have put the evolutionist community for an enormous dilemma. What we observe today in terms of collected scientific evidence points to a from the onset perfect human genome that degenerated generation after generation to its current state of decay in just a couple of thousand years. Furthermore, the human DNA is amazingly consistent and shows little variation. If DNA was developed over a period of 3500 million years, we would expect to see much more variation between populations. This is consistent with the Genesis account, where a perfect couple, Adam and Eve started to have imperfect offspring resulting in mankind carrying imperfectness in their DNA.
Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA)
Mitochondria are structures within cells that convert the energy from food into a form that cells can use. Although most DNA is packaged in chromosomes within the nucleus, mitochondria also have a small amount of their own DNA. This genetic material is known as mitochondrial DNA or mtDNA. The majority of the mtDNA is concerned with producing energy from oxygen and sugars into the cell’s major energy source — adenosine triphosphate (ATP). If we’d consider the cell a piece of land, and the cell nucleus a large capital city, we could compare the mtDNA a nuclear power plant providing the energy for the city. Obviously, no intelligent being would place a nuclear power plant in the center of a city. Mitochondria is doing its work outside the cell nucleus, to avoid damage to the cell’s DNA. Now the immediate question that pops in everyones mind is how such an ingenuous biological energy source migrated away from the cell nucleus. This alone points to intelligent design rather than random mutation in combination with natural selection.
Female DNA
Although males receive and use their mother’s mitochondrial DNA, they cannot pass it on to their children. Mitochondrial DNA is passed on from grandmother to mother to daughter to grand daughter and so on. This is why this type of DNA is sometimes called the ‘the Eve gene’. Every human being, whether male or female has inherited his or her mtDNA from a single great-great-great-…- grandmother. Population geneticists use the mtDNA haplotypes to follow maternal lineages across different population across the world.