New Genes Don’t Fit Mr. Darwin

If evolutionists predicted the wealth of new data from genetics was going to fall nicely into an evolutionary picture of Darwin’s tree of life, nature has foiled them again.  Ancestral patterns are blurred by unexpected findings, such as the following:

1. Little giants:  Small, simple.  Large, complex.  That’s the old high-school picture of genetic evolution, but some marine phytoplankton refuse to follow the script.  Science Daily reported about a one-celled phytoplankton named Ostreococcus studied by Scripps Institute of Oceanography.  The genome of this tiny eukaryote has nearly the number of genes of a human being.  It also has nearly the number of selenium proteins as humans – “an enormous number relative to their small genome and microscopic size.”
       Not only that, two very close species of Ostreococcus show large differences in their respective genomes.  One has an extra chromosome.  One shared chromosome shows substantial rearrangements of genes between the two species.  “These are pretty remarkable differences that we didn’t expect,” said one researcher.  “We would expect the DNA to change slowly and see a small number of differences between the two species as they slowly evolve.”
       This organism cells contain about five times the genetic material of comparably sized one-celled organisms.  Ostreococcus exists in enormous numbers in the ocean and is responsible for half the photosynthesis on the planet.  A teaspoon full of sea water can have upwards of 100,000 cells.
2. Coral grief:  How can corals, among the earliest and simplest multicellular organisms in evolution, rival humans in the complexity of their genes?  Oceanographers from the ARC Centre of Excellence in Australia started their press release with a surprise: “The humble coral may possess as many genes – and possibly even more – than humans do.”  These genes are not just taking up space, either.  “And remarkably, although it is very distant from humans in evolutionary terms, it has many of the immune system genes that protect people against disease.”
       Another thing.  While humans manufacture hundreds or thousands of different cell types, these “simple” animals only need to make about 12-14 types.  Yet they possess, here near the base of the assumed evolutionary tree of life, more genes of higher organisms than those nearest neighbors:

   Around 10 or 12 per cent of the known coral genes are in fact shared uniquely with vertebrates – these are genes that have been lost from all other animals so far examined.  These include genes for the development of nerves, vision, DNA imprinting, stress responses and key immune system genes.
       “We actually have quite a lot in common with corals, though it might not appear so,” Professor [David] Miller says.  “For example, we have been amazed at how many of the genes involved in innate immunity in man are present in coral – and just how similar they are.”

   Vertebrates, of course, are thought to be much farther up the tree than the “other animals” that lack these genes.  And just why would corals, of all animals, need genes used by vertebrates for nerves and vision?

Despite these conundrums, the press releases never question the validity of evolutionary theory.  The coral story, for instance, contains this juxtaposition of surprise and faith: “The richness of the coral genome – unexpectedly loaded with genes, many of which were thought to have evolved much later – is also casting new light on evolution.”  How can that be?  Here is the explanation offered:

It appears that all animals lose genes during evolution; those with fast generation turnover times – like fruit flies – shed genes particularly fast.  Corals which take at least 5 years to reach sexual maturity (compared with the laboratory fruitfly whose generation lasts only 3-4 weeks), and which have long and overlapping generation times, may thus be a living ‘museum’ of ancestral animal genes.”

Yet this can be little more than a speculative afterthought, given the complexity found and the contradiction to expectations.  Speaking of the huge difference in number of tissue types between corals and humans, Professor Miller added a possibility that “coral genes may interact with each other in far less complex ways.  Humans, on the other hand, are the product of a continuous and complicated dialogue between thousands of genes.”  If he is proposing this as a law of nature, it should be testable.  No evidence of such a pattern was offered in this article.  It is also unclear why the vast differences in tissue complexities and interactions would converge on comparable numbers of genes.  Further, it does not explain how the complex genes arose in the first place – or how and why they persisted nearly unchanged for 235 million years while the rest of life was transforming itself many times over and apparently got by without them.
    A similar expression of confidence in evolution was exhibited in the first story.  Here, in an article largely perplexed at the findings, one of the researchers again employed the “sheds new light” angle.  He said, “Genomic comparisons are exciting because they allow us not to just document the diversity of the ocean but to start to understand the processes behind that diversity and see all of the changes in the evolution of two species.”
    Evolution always wins – cooperative data or not.

The number of times we have documented the disparity between new evidence and evolutionary faith should leave no doubt.  It is no longer just a hypothesis that evolutionists believe in Darwin despite the evidence.  It is now an established scientific theory – soon to become a law of nature.  The only thing that can rescue an evolutionist from a law of nature is a miracle.  There is one shortcut to the miraculous.  It’s called repentance.