No, you have to start with evidence that intron length is actually higher. So far, the sample you have presented is highly biased towards non-mammals with small genomes.
So? What makes you think all that is functional?
So? More frequently transcribed regions get more insertions.
Not until you show that the Alus are mostly functional.
I look forward to your, no doubt, erudite and informed response which will, of course, be perfectly coherent and compatible with the rest of your argument.
What does that have to do with Sanford’s GE claims which have already been 100% falsified by the fossil and genetic records of species which lived way earlier than 6000 years ago?
Why do you use the first person? The most striking thing about this is that none of the former scientists in the ID movement are lifting a finger to do any identification. Why is that, Bill?
The genomes of humans is 30x smaller than the genomes of some salamanders. So either salamanders are far, far more complex than humans, or your idea should be scrapped.
Which is it?
Btw, no-one is going to be impressed by your idea that junk DNA in humans is junk science when your comments make it immediately obvious that you don’t know enough about the science to evaluate it.
What evidence do you have that there is such a general trend? All we see so far is a few cherry-picked data points. To be fair, the cherry-picking may not have been conscious, as non-mammalian genome projects were historically chosen to use species with small genomes. A better, less biased sample could be pulled from a genome size database. That’s where @Rumraket’s figure came from, and it completely falsifies your notion.
You are assuming that that is the general thread. The plot Rumraket gave upthread is a good indication that the is no such trend.
If you want to claim such a correlation, you’ll need to back that assertion with data.
Oh, and without that additional data, your argument about outliers applies equally well to C elegans. You’re providing (bad) reasons to dismiss your own claims.
It’s not reasonable to think that 90% of the genetic information within a genome would be species specific. The vast majority of biochemical processes are shared with other species.
Isn’t it reasonable to think that a significant amounts of genetic information would be different (note that I am not saying 90% different) in bats and whales?
If the correlation is so broad as to only be present on the level of “bacteria vs eukaryotes” or “unicellular vs multicellular”, do you really think that supports your case? At such broad scales, you could also point out that the number of protein-coding genes also correlates with “organisms complexity” to some extent.
@Giltil, do you think FIg. 1 from that paper could be used to “calculate” or assign organismal complexity for other organisms? For example, if you sequenced a new genome and got an ncDNA/tgDNA ratio of, say 0.97 (I’m eyeballing this, so grant me the value so I can ask the question), would you assign to that organism a level of complexity somewhere between a mice and humans? No other things being considered, of course.
