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Genetic Distances 3
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Humans vs. Chimpanzees. Evolutionists say that the chimpanzee is the closest living relative to humans. For two decades (1984??2004), evolutionists and the media claimed that human DNA is about 99% similar to chimpanzee DNA. These statements had little scientific justification, because they were made before anyone had completed the sequencing of human DNA and long before the sequencing of chimpanzee DNA had begun.

Chimpanzee and human DNA have now been completely sequenced and rigorously compared. The differences, which total about 4%, are far greater and more complicated than evolutionists suspected (g). Those differences include about ??thirty-five million single-nucleotide changes, five million insertions/deletions, and various chromosomal rearrangements (h).? Although it??s only 4%, a huge DNA chasm separates humans from chimpanzees.

Finally, evolutionary trees, based on the outward appearance of organisms, can now be compared with the organisms?? genetic information. They conflict in major ways (i).

g. After sequencing just the first chimpanzee chromosome, surprises were apparent.

??Surprisingly, though, nearly 68,000 stretches of DNA do differ to some degree between the two species?Extra sections of about 300 nucleotides showed up primarily in the human chromosome?Extra sections of other sizes??some as long as 54,000 nucleotides??appear in both species.? Bruce Bower, ??Chimp DNA Yields Complex Surprises,? Science News, Vol. 165, 12 June 2004, p. 382.

??Indeed, 83% of the 231 coding sequences, including functionally important genes, show differences [even] at the amino acid sequence level?.the biological consequences due to the genetic differences are much more complicated than previously speculated.? H. Watanabe et al., ??DNA Sequence and Comparative Analysis of Chimpanzee Chromosome 22,? Nature, Vol. 429, 27 May 2004, pp. 382, 387.

h. Tarjei S. Mikkelsen et al., ??Initial Sequence of the Chimpanzee Genome and Comparison with the Human Genome,? Nature, Vol. 437, 1 September 2005, p. 69.

i. ??Instead, the comparisons [using DNA] have yielded many versions of the tree of life that differ from the rRNA tree and conflict with each other as well.? Elizabeth Pennisi, ??Is It Time to Uproot the Tree of Life?? Science, Vol. 284, 21 May 1999, p. 1305.

In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood - 32. Genetic Distances