The GULO gene is not a “primate sequence”, because it is found in other organisms as well. It is pseudogenized in many organisms including humans and other great apes. You would not ask this question if you understood that Yang paper.
It is the consensus view because available data says so. The signal of common descent is very strong in the pattern of distribution of the pseudogene version among the apes including humans.
The GULO pseudogene in humans, guinea pigs and other primates has lost the ability to make the oxidase enzyme needed to catalyze the last step of vitamin C biosynthesis. Its a pseudogene in these organisms because it has lost that ancestral function.
Look at the molecular phylogenies based on the pseudogene in that paper, it is generally consistent with known primate phylogeny. You just keep confirming my claim that you don’t understand the paper.
First, you don’t understand the paper as shown in your comments on it.
Second, the paper did not assume that primates share a common ancestor, they used the GULO gene (functional and pseudogene) sequence data to reconstruct those phylogenies.
Read the paper again, this time slowly and with the intention to follow the evidence where it leads:
Some people are. Others are actually looking at the data. You appear to belong to the former group, and I find your attempt at intellectual nihilism offensive.
In Sal’s flower, only a very small fraction of the genes do not follow the tree. And the guinea pig pseudogene was an independent event, as can be determined from its sequence and the way in which it was inactivated. I agree that you didn’t understand the paper, as you refuse to understand most of what you read. There is little hope.
I get it both of you think this is ok. It may or not be indication of a problem with the theory but discounting it out of hand is not objectively looking at the data IMO.
Your opinion counts for nothing. It should be obvious that if genes are lost in large numbers over the history of life, occasionally the same gene will be lost twice in different lineages. Even you could probably work up a “model” for that. It’s more important for you to realize that the flower is in no way surprising and is actually evidence for common descent rather than separate creation. And so, to return to the supposed topic, is the sequence of human chromosome 2 evidence of a fusion event, not of its being created that way.
“Model” is apparently your new sovereign buzzword. The model of common descent is that both gene gain and loss happen on particular branches of a branching tree, and so, since the same gene being lost twice is comparatively unlikely, and even more so for gain, we expect most such events to happen exactly once on the tree. There is no such expectation for separate creation. Since the overwhelming majority (over 99%, if I recall) of genes recorded in that “flower” require only one event to explain, that’s support for common descent. Of course you have no model of creation and are unwilling to commit to one, so I had to make one up for you. And you will ignore everything I have just said.
So? There’s plenty of room for unique events in the history of life. I also suspect that the numbers in that figure are inflated, but I have no access to the original data.
That paper is pay-walled, so many of our members will not be able to access it. Could you kindly summarize it for us, in particular the author’s suggested explanations for the existence of these TRG’s? I think we would be particularly interested in whether they consider the option that TRG’s were created with magic by an invisible designer.
also note: " Further advances in genome sequencing have brought new surprises and do not support initial expectations of a gradual increase in complexity and gene number from ‘simple’ to more ‘advanced’ animals".
What aren’t you getting? Gene gain and gene loss happen in evolution. What part of the pattern are you claiming could not be produced by these processes?
Let’s put down “argue” as another word whose meaning you don’t know. What you have there is a claim, and a very silly one. You’re the one who’s unable to create a model, and it’s just evidence that you have no idea what you’re doing.
Obvious quote mine is obvious. The passage continues:
In particular, EST(expressed sequence tag) and genome data from the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis and the anthozoan coral Acropora millepora (all Cnidarians) revealed that basal
metazoans possess most of the gene families found in bilaterians and have retained many ancestral genes that have been lost from Drosophila and C. elegans [4–6,37]. Cnidarians, therefore, are much more ‘human-like’ than flies and worm in terms of their gene content…
So? It was a silly expectation. If you have some kind of point, you had better say what it is. Genes are gained and lost all the time. How is that a problem?
