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Message Subject What is the main reason so many do not believe in a Creator...and choose evolution?
Poster Handle Anonymous Coward
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evolutionary biologist Richard Sternberg asked about his take on the ERV question. He writes,

Now, the story that these seemingly defunct retroviruses provide compelling evidence for common descent on the one hand, and support for the notion of non-designed junk on the other, is based on an interpretation that is almost thirty years old and contradicted by recent data.
For one thing, ERVs are markedly taxon-specific and they all have non-random chromosomal distributions.
The mouse and rat have different ERV families and yet many of them occupy similar genomic sites.
This is explained by the insertion machineries having preferences for specific DNA targets or chromatin profiles.
So while one can find some retroviral sequences occupying a position shared between by two species, it cannot be ruled out that such similarity is due to constraints on integration.
In yeast, for example, the ERV Ty repeatedly inserts into the promoters of transfer RNA genes.
And human and mouse “jumping genes” such as Alu and B1/B2, respectively, are not homologous and yet they have the same linear pattern of placement.
Such genomic profiles look like inherited accidents from afar but close inspection reveals that they are independent events. Appearances can be deceiving.

[…]

I could continue in this vein for some time. My point is that a tenebrific spin has been given to ERVs by the Darwinians.
The spin works only as long as one superficially reviews old literature.
But it dissipates as soon as one delves into the wealth of data that we now have available to us.

 Quoting: chauchat


Only orthologous ERVs are a part of this evidence for evolution. "similar" is not orthologous, they have nothing to do with the evidence.

Target-site preference is not locus specific. Its still random. This also ignores that they share the same mutations, and the same LTR mutations. The 2 LTRs are completely identical at insertion in the same ERV. The same mutations in LTRs in multiple species show they came from a single insertion event in a common ancestor of those species.

If its not orthologous its not part of the evidence. 99.9% of our ERVs with chimps are orthologous. Its not talking about the ones that are not orthologous. There are orthologous ERVs shared with all humans, chimps, gorillas, orangutans, gibbons, old world monkeys. Less than 100 ERVs are human specific, chimps have 300 that are chimp specific. The 99.9% of the other ERVs are orthologous in humans and chimps.
 
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