Information theory and genetics may prove to be the two most valuable fields of science in the war against Darwinism. The first demonstrates that creatures never gain genetic information, they only lose it. The second is proving how little we know about the vast complexity and potential for variation built into the DNA of every living creature. In fact, long held assumptions about human evolution and genetics are being challenged by the new research.
Future research into the implications of epigenetic factors on DNA may provide rich insights into the reasons why variation takes place within kinds of animals, but macro-evolution never takes place. It may also decisively resolve questions about why diverse animal groups appear to adapt so rapidly to unusual environments. Why, for example, do all non-feral animals on the Galapagos Islands appear to have lost the gene giving them a fear of man? Why is the flightless cormorant flightless, but no other cormorants are flightless? Why do so many different types of arctic mammals get white fur?
{For the best introductory book to this subject see The Mystery of the Human Genome: Genetic Entropy and the Human Genome, by Dr.John Sanford.)
One of the long-held assumptions of genetics which is being challenged is the notion that twins are genetically identical. Research on epigenetic factors appears to have proven this assumption false. No two human beings are alike—not even identical twins.
The New York Times reports:
It is a basic tenet of human biology, taught in grade schools everywhere: Identical twins come from the same fertilized egg and, thus, share identical genetic profiles. But according to new research, though identical twins share very similar genes, identical they are not...
It has long been known that identical twins develop differences that result from environment. And in recent years, it has also been shown that some of their differences can spring from unique changes in what are known as epigenetic factors, the chemical markers that attach to genes and affect how they are expressed — in some cases by slowing or shutting the genes off, and in others by increasing their output.
These epigenetic changes — which accumulate over a lifetime and can arise from things like diet and tobacco smoke — have been implicated in the development of cancer and behavioral traits like fearfulness and confidence, among other things. Epigenetic markers vary widely from one person to another, but identical twins were still considered genetically identical because epigenetics influence only the expression of a gene and not the underlying sequence of the gene itself.
“When we started this study, people were expecting that only epigenetics would differ greatly between twins,” said Jan Dumanski, a professor of genetics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and an author of the study. “But what we found are changes on the genetic level, the DNA sequence itself.”
The specific changes that Dr. Dumanski and his colleagues identified are known as copy number variations, in which a gene exists in multiple copies, or a set of coding letters in DNA is missing. Not known, however, is whether these changes in identical twins occur at the embryonic level, as the twins age or both...
In the meantime, a lot of biology textbooks may need updating.
Dr. Dumanski pointed out, for example, that as his study was going to press, the following statement could be found on the Web site of the National Human Genome Research Institute, the group that financed the government project to decode the human genome: “Most of any one person’s DNA, some 99.9 percent, is exactly the same as any other person’s DNA. (Identical twins are the exception, with 100 percent similarity).”
That, we now know, no longer appears to be the case.