RE: You May Have More Genes Than You Thought

Pim van Meurs (entheta@eskimo.com)
Thu, 23 Sep 1999 20:55:14 -0700

Stephen: regarding the possibility that humans may have *twice* as many genes
(140,000) as previously thought (60,000-80,000). If this holds up it makes
the `humans share 98% of their genes with chimps' line even more shaky
(unless of course chimps turn out to have twice as many genes as first
thought too!).

Why are you willing to dismiss this as a possibility before you have the data? It's obvious that chimps are closely related to humans as we share a common ancestor. Whether the overlap is 98% or 90% does not really matter.

Stephen: Following the recent findings of other fully sequenced genomes that they
had a large number of novel genes, it may well be that humans will turn out
to have a large number of novel genes that have no homologue in their
nearest presumed relatives, the apes, and thus cannot be explained solely by
Darwinian ancestral descent.

Well one can always hope. But of course you are merely speculating without any evidence.

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