For Jorge, how �just so stories� become testable scientific theories.

[rwatts]

?

just occurred to me, (I admit, I am slow to catch on)

I often am as well, so no worries there.

I hope my list didn't really shake your faith up that much,

It looked more like some odd list you'd thrown together, in which you implicitly denied all science any validity, given that it's all faith, just like any other faith ... faith in anything.

so that if 10 years goes by,
you assume that whatever the research claimed,
is probably superseded by now?

What I'm asking you is why you think that research as stood up for the past 10 years such that your interpretation of it means that mitDNA research shows the concept of mit Eve to be bonkers. As far as I can tell, notwithstanding the validity of that paper (or otherwise), mit DNA research continues to show mit EVE to be a viable proposition. You appear to think otherwise. Why?

[jordanriver]

I often wonder just how many verses creationists have snipped from their Bibles, because of inconvenience.

JR, it's in my Bible. What about yours?

yeah its in mine too.

but I don't think the verse you are referring to means what you think it means,
there are other verses in there that mean what I think you are trying to say,

but not that one I bet.

what do you think "fruit" refers to, according to the context, according to "trees" in Matthew's Gospel

[rwatts]

yeah its in mine too.

but I don't think the verse you are referring to means what you think it means,
there are other verses in there that mean what I think you are trying to say,

but not that one I bet.

what do you think "fruit" refers to, according to the context, according to "trees" in Matthew's Gospel

I'd say that it means this - a persons action's speak to who they really are. Their words do not. In colloquial language - "actions speak louder than words".

Thus, the bible is very clear against lying - e.g. 1 John 2:4. Yet many creationists deliberately misrepresent what we think about evolution, and why we think about it the way we do. These creationists most often claim to be guided by God, or to be doing his work.

But their deliberate misrepresentations speak against that claim. Matt 7:21-23 then comes to mind.

[jordanriver]

It looked more like some odd list you'd thrown together, in which you implicitly denied all science any validity, given that it's all faith, just like any other faith ... faith in anything.

I like the engineering sciences and medical sciences.
I like the rocket scientists.

What I'm asking you is why you think that research as stood up for the past 10 years such that your interpretation of it means that mitDNA research shows the concept of mit Eve to be bonkers. As far as I can tell, notwithstanding the validity of that paper (or otherwise), mit DNA research continues to show mit EVE to be a viable proposition. You appear to think otherwise. Why?

look, the deal was, mtDNA mutation history is reliable BECAUSE THERE IS NO RECOMBINATION, and the hypothesis that mutations in mtDNA occur at a relatively fixed rate allows the researchers to see which group has the most numerous and diverse collection of mtDNA mutations. This indicates they have existed longer than other modern peoples, because it takes time for mutations to accumulate. That was how Cann, Stoneking, and Wilson concluded "Mitochondrial Eve" was African.

This was the PREVAILING ASSURANCE, the Creationist stopper of the late 1980s and the 1990s

Talk Origins 'What, if anything, is a Mitochondrial Eve?'
"...While each of us necessarily has two parents, we get our mitochondria and mitochondrial DNA from the ovum (and hence from our mothers). Our mothers got their mitochondrial DNA from their mothers and so on. Thus, while our nuclear DNA is a mish-mash of the DNA of our four grandparents, our mitochondrial DNA is an almost exact copy of the DNA of our maternal grandmother (the match may not be exact due to mutations. In fact, the mutations in the mitochondrial DNA provide the molecular clock that allows us to determine how much time has elapsed since the ME lived)....
......The existence of the Mitochondrial Eve is NOT a theory; it is a mathematical fact (unless something like a multiple-origins theory of human evolution i.e. the human species arose independently in different geographically separated populations, and that the present-day ease of interbreeding is the result of a remarkable convergent evolution, is true. Few people subscribe to the multiple-origins theory, and the Mitochondrial Eve observation is a refutation of multiple-origins)..."

practically every credible source said it was because mtDNA is PASSED EXCLUSIVELY FROM MOTHER TO CHILD, not from daddys and not from granddaddys:

IN SEARCH OF DEEP TIME Beyond the Fossil Record to a New History of Life 1999 Henry Gee ISBN 068485421X
p 208-211
"But there is more to genetic material than chromosomes in the nucleus. Small bodies called mitochondria, located outside the nuclei of cells, have their own independent DNA, arranged in a single 'chromosome'. Mitochondria are the power stations of the cell, responsible for cellular 'respiration' (technically, the release of energy from food). Having DNA on site allows mitochondria to produce a few of the essential enzymes it needs without having to import genetic instructions from the nucleus.

This mitochondrial DNA is small when compared with nuclear DNA, but it has an advantage attractive to researchers studying evolutionary divergence: mitochondrial genes are not shuffled and reshuffled with each generation. Except in extremely unusual circumstances, mitochondrial DNA is passed down, intact, through the maternal line. This is a consequence of the mechanics of fertilization. An egg cell is enormous--the largest individual cell in the human body, with the possible exception of a few mature nerve cells. The egg has to be large, as it needs to carry sufficient fuel to nourish it through several cell divisions after fertilization. This process requires energy, so egg cells are well stocked with mitochondria, each of which contain its own DNA. A sperm, on the other hand, is possibly the smallest cell in the human body. It is divided into a head--little more than a DNA-packed nucleus--and a lashing tail, driven by a battery of mitochondria. On fertilization, the head and tail of the sperm separate. The head enters the cell, bearing its cargo of nuclear DNA, leaving the tail behind.

The genetic material of the resulting embryo is consequently biased. The genetic material in the nucleus--the bulk of the DNA in the cell--is of paternal and maternal origin, in equal parts. But all the mitochondrial DNA derives from the mitochondria in the egg alone. The sperm contributes nuclear DNA only. So, although most of your genes come from your father and mother, subsequently shuffled together into a unique combination, your mitochondrial DNA, in every cell of your body, comes exclusively from your mother and is not mixed with other genetic material. Your mother got her mitochondrial DNA exclusively from your grandmother, with no contribution from your grandfather. And she got it from her mother, and so on. This is true of every human that ever existed.

The only way that mitochondrial DNA can change is by the slow accumulation of mutations. Mutations in mitochondrial DNA (or, indeed nuclear DNA) convey information about relatedness in much the same way as any anatomical feature. For example, it is more parsimonious to say that two mitochondrial DNA sequences that share a certain mutation are more closely related to each other, than either one is to a third mitochondrial DNA sequence that does not carry that mutation.

By comparing the mitochondrial DNA from a range of people and plotting the degree to which mutation had changed them through time, Wilson and colleagues came up with a cladogram that reflected, strictly, the pattern of maternal lineage among modern humans. The pattern suggested that mitochondrial DNA of all modern humans had its origin in a single variety of mitochondrial DNA present in people in Africa about 200,000 years ago, the age inferred from assumptions about the mutation rate in mitochondrial DNA. The fact that mitochondrial DNA is inherited maternally gives the work a particular cultural and emotional resonance, because carried to its logical conclusion, the work implies that everyone gets their mitochondrial DNA from a single individual, the many-times great-grandmother of us all. Wilson and his colleagues spelled this out very clearly in their report: "All these mitochondrial DNAs stem from one woman who is postulated to have lived about 200,000 years ago, in Africa."

.

HUMAN EVOLUTION AND PREHISTORY 5th Ed 2000 William A. Haviland ISBN 0155067230
p 240-
'The "EVE" or "Out of Africa" Hypothesis'
"This alternative to the multiregional hypothesis states that anatomically modern humans are descended from one specific population of H. sapiens, replacing not just the Neandertals, but other populations of archaic H. sapiens as our ancestors spread out of their original homeland. The idea for this hypothesis came not from fossils, but from a relatively new technique which uses mitochondrial DNA to reconstruct family trees. Unlike the DNA in the cell nucleus, mitochondrial DNA is located elsewhere in the cell, in compartments that produce the energy needed to keep cells alive. Since the male sperm does not contribute mitochondrial DNA to the fertilized egg, it is inherited only from one's mother and is not "rescrambled" with each succeeding generation. Therefore, it should be altered only by mutation. By comparing the mitochondrial DNA of living individuals from diverse geographical populations, anthropologists and molecular biolgists seek to determine when and where modern H. sapiens originated. As widely reported in the popular press (including a cover story in Newsweek), preliminary results suggesting that the mitochondrial DNA of all living humans could be traced back to a "Mitochondrial Eve" who lived in Africa (though some argued for Asia) some 200,000 years ago. If so, all other populations of archaic H. sapiens, as well as non-African H. erectus, would have to be ruled out of the ancestry of modern humans.

Although most scholars accept that fossils from Africa exhibit the transition from H. erectus through archaic to anatomically modern sapiens on that continent, this by itself offers no confirmation of the "Out of Africa" hypothesis. After all, proponents of the multiregional model also argue that the transition took place here, as in other parts of the Old World. If, however, anatomically modern fossils could be shown to be significantly older in Africa than elsewhere, this would bolster the argument for an African homeland for modern humanity. To date, the strongest candidates for such fossils consist of a skull from Border Cave and fragments of jaws of at least 10 people from a cave at the Klasies River mouth. Both sites are in South Africa. Unfortunately, the Border cave skull is not adequately dated, nor is it as similar to modern African skulls as is often claimed. The Klasies River material is well dated to between 120,000 and 90,000 years ago, but is too fragmentary (they were cut and burned anciently, suggesting cannibalism) to permit categorical statements as to its modernity."

.


[COLOR="#800080"]IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF EVE The Mystery of Human Origins 2000 Lee R. Berger Ph.D.
ISBN 0792276825
p 298-299
"DNA also comes to the support of an out-of-Africa origin for our species. Genetic evidence from mitochondrial deoxyribonucleic acid (mtDNA) suggests that we humans share an unparalleled (among the ape community) genetic unity. MtDNA are tiny sausage-shaped structures that live inside our cells. They convert energy by changing basic substances into chemicals that our cells can more readily use. DNA is inherited by children from their parents, but mtDNA is only inherited from the mother. In the 1980s, scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, were the first to suggest that mtDNA could be used to clock the evolution of our species. Allan Wilson, Mark Stoneking, and Rebecca Cann sampled mtDNA from women representing different racial groups and peoples living in different geographical regions around the world. Their simple goal at the time was to find out how much mtDNA differed among these populations. Theoretically, the similarities and differences could give some indication of how closely or distantly the sample populations were from each other. Quite simply, the closer the mtDNA, the more closely related the group. An offshoot of this work is the hypothesis that mutations in mtDNA occur at a relatively fixed rate. By calculating the rate of mutation one should be able to date the last common ancestor of all the populations studied.

The results of Wilson, Stoneking, and Cann's research, as well as subsequent DNA research conducted around the world, has reached the remarkable results mentioned above, namely a common origin of all living humans as recent as 100,000 years ago. Furthermore, African peoples show a greater diversity in their mtDNA than do any other groups from around the world. This suggests that modern humans have been living in Africa longer than anywhere else. The genetic-Eve hypothesis is just a logical extension of these results--that is, that all modern humans can trace their origins to a small group of females, in fact a single female, living somewhere in Africa between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago."

.

THE SEARCH FOR EVE Michael Brown ISBN 0060160551
P 23-25
"It was on New Year's Day that the geneticists staked their claim. On page 31 in the January 1, 1987, issue of Nature, two scientists from the University of California at Berkeley, and another from the University of Hawaii presented a highly technical paper entitled "Mitochondrial DNA and human evolution." Under the heading was a summary (known as the "abstract") that made all of paleoanthropology take note. It was even startling: "Mitochondrial DNAs from 147 people, drawn from five geographic populations, have been analyzed by restriction mapping. All these mithchondrial DNAs stem from one woman who is postulated to have lived about 200,000 years ago..."

While the rest of the world was unfamiliar with the article (and was recovering from the night before), the diverse worlds of anthropology and genetics were immediately seized by the significance of the piece. Nature was not quick to accept new claims, and the journal had the first and final say in many matters of science. Though the average person had never seen the magazine (with an international circulation of just 40,000, it wasn't to be found at the corner store), Nature was a bible of new biological, astronomical, chemical, and anthropological assertions--the most prestigious science publication in all the world. It was where the first identification of the AIDS virus was announced, where the discovery of lasers was originally explained, and where James Watson and Francis Crick had first propounded the very structure of DNA itself. One could go back decades, at least to the announcement of the Taung child, and note its lofty paleoanthropological role. It was where the debate over the status of man-apes--the australopithecines--still took place. It was where the Leakeys announced many of their great fossils. Intense commotion could be caused by technical reports that were hardly more than a page in length. Crucial intellectual debates were spawned by mere letters to the editor. Scientists chewed every morsel like cud....
.....what the article explained was that, in analyzing DNA from the energy-producing compartments of the human cell known as the mitochondria, the authors, Rebecca L. Cann, Mark Stoneking, and Allan C. Wilson, had discovered that this genetic material, inherited through the ages, provided "new perspectives on how, where, and when the human gene pool arose and grew." From samples of placenta, they had extracted and purefied enough hereditary material to compare the intricate variations between and among peoples of Asian, European, African, Australian, and New Guinean descent. The mitochondrial DNA--or "mtDNA," as they insisted upon calling it--offered a wholly unique attrute that couldn't be found elsewhere: it was inherited only maternally, from the mother. Except for occasional minor mutations, this type of DNA was passed intact from great-grandmother, to grandmother, to daughter with virtually no imput from males and thus no mixing--no blending of father's and mother's genes--that would jumble, complicate, and thus obscure its history. It survived the generations--the millenia--without being fudged by recombination. And for that reason, explained th paper, mitochondrial DNA--as opposed to nuclear DNA, where such blending does occur--was a powerful new tool "for relating individuals to one another."

.


EVOLUTION The Triumph of an Idea 2001 Carl Zimmer ISBN 0060199067
p 296-297
"...The fossil record of human evolution was spottier in Asia and Africa, but researchers assumed that H. erectus also evolved into modern humans in those regions and developed the new technology at the same time

But in the 1970s a few paleoanthropologists began to contemplate a radically different vision of human evolution. They proposed that Neanderthals and Homo erectus in Asia were actually two distinct species, and that neither was the ancestor of Homo sapiens.

At the Natural History Museum in London, for example, paleoanthropologist Christopher Stringer found that fossils of Cro-Magnons looked less like Neanderthals than they looked like slightly older Africans. Instead of evolving from Neanderthals, Stringer proposed that modern Europeans descended from African immigrants. The Neanderthals who were alive 30,000 years ago did not evolved into modern Europeans, Stringer declared. They became extinct.

As Stringer stared at fossil skulls, a geneticist at the University of California at Berkeley named Allan Wilson was trying to reconstruct human history with biochemistry. He set out to analyze the DNA in human mitochondria -- those energy-generating factories of the cell that carry their own DNA. He chose mitochondrial DNA rather than any of the genes in the nucleus because it passes from one generation to the next relatively unchanged. Unlike most genes, which are shuffled between the chromosomes we inherit from both our parents, mitochondrial genes come only from the mother. (This is because sperm cannot inject their mitochondria into an egg.) Any differences between a mother's mitochondrial DNA and her child's can arise only when the genes spontaneously mutate. As different mutations build up through the generations, it becomes possible to use mitochondrial DNA to distinguish different lineages.

Wilson's team analyzed samples of mitochondria from people throughout the world, sequencing the genes and grouping them together based on their similarity to one another. In the process they created an evolutionary tree of living humans. The branches of living Africans, Wilson discovered, all reached deepest into the tree of humanity. The tree suggested that Africa is the source of the common ancestor of living humans.

Most paleoanthropologists at the time might have gone along with this idea if Wilson had been talking about an early species of Homo that lived in Africa 2 million years ago, before any hominids had left the continent. But Wilson found that human genes were saying something very different. Once his team had constructed their evolutionary tree, they calculated how long ago the common ancestor of present-day humans lived. They estimated the rate at which the mitochondrial DNA mutates, and then they compared the variations in the genes to judge how much mutation had occurred in the different lineages. Their molecular clock then gave them an estimate for the age of the first modern human: somewhere in the neighborhood of 200,000 years.

"Mitochondrial Eve" -- as this common ancestor came to be known -- was certainly ancient, but to scientists who championed a multiregional origin of Homo sapiens, she was far too young. None of the older Neanderthals in Europe or Homo erectus in Asia could have contributed their genes to living humans. But for Stringer, Wilson's tree offered stunning support.

Stringer, Wilson, and other scientists began formulating a scenario for modern humans they called "Out of Africa." As Homo spread out of Africa, they proposed, it evolved into several distince species that did not breed with one another. Homo erectus settled across much of Asia, while Neanderthals (also known as Homo neanderthalensis, a species in its own right) established themselves in Europe and the Near East. During this time, Homo sapiens was evolving from older hominids back in Africa. At some point, Homo sapiens migrated to Asia and Europe. The cave paintings of Chauvet, as well as the jewelry, weapons, clothing, and other artifacts that turn up in the fossil record after 50,000 years ago were all made by Homo sapiens, who left them behind as they explored the world. And when Homo sapiens arrived on the territory of Homo erectus or Neanderthals, these other humans disappeared.

.TO BE CONTINUED more citations that no recombination was the MT EVE FOUNDATION

[jordanriver]

CONTINUING PART 2




IN THE BEGINNING An Introduction to Archaeology 2001 Brian M. Fagan ISBN 0130307319
P 409
'DNA AND ARCHAEOLOGY'
"Ever since the identification of the ABO blood system in the early twentieth century, genetics has had a profound effect on the study of human evolutionary history (Sims-Williams, 1998). Modern molecular biological techniques have made it possible to detect and analyze new polymorphic genes (genes present in slightly different forms in different people) that might have medical or anthropological interest. All humans carry in their genes the record of their history. In recent years, studies of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) present outside the cell nuclei in small structures called mitochondria have attracted particular attention. Mitochondrial DNA is inherited through the female line and is passed from mothers to offspring virtually unaltered except for rare changes caused by mutation. Large-scale studies of human mtDNA in present-day populations from all parts of the world have shown that there is relatively little mtDNA variation throughout the globe, suggesting that there was a relatively recent branching-out of human populations. The African mtDNAs were the most variable, having had more time to accumulate genetic changes, consistent with the theory that the African human lineages were the oldest ones.

Molecular biologists Rebecca Cann, Mark Stoneking, and Alan Wilson proposed that all modern humanity is descended from a single anatomically modern human, who lived in tropical Africa about 200,000 years ago (Cann and others, 1995). This hypothesis has been widely criticized and refined, but it seems increasingly likely that Homo sapiens sapiens (ourselves) evolved in Africa, then spread into other parts of the Old World and eventually to the Americas. Mitochondrial DNA research on American populations links them to Siberian ancestors, as one might expect.

The first ancient DNA sequences were reported by Swedish scientist Svaante Paabo, who extracted and characterized DNA from the skin of a Predynastic Egyptian of about 4000 B.C. in 1985. Since then, DNA has extracted from bones, teeth, and plant remains using a new technique called polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Paabo used this technique on a human brain of 3000 B.C. from a hunter-gatherer site at Windover, Florida, and identified an mtDNA strain not previously observed in North America. In recent years, scientists have succeeded in extracting DNA from a Neanderthal bone over 50,000 years old and have shown that these archaic Europeans were genetically distinct from the modern humans who succeeded them. Mitochondrial DNA analysis of ancient human skeletons from Easter Island in the Pacific has also shown that the ultimate origins of the Easter Islanders lie in Polynesia, for this remote land mass had been colonized from the Society Islands (the Tahiti region) by A.D. 500.

Molecular biology is playing an increasingly important role in the study of ancient human populations and population movements."
p 441-442
"We are Homo sapiens sapiens, capable of subtlety, of passing on knowledge and ideas through the medium of language. We have consciousness and self-awareness and are capable of foresight. We can express and show emotions. Mitochondrial DNA researches trace the roots of modern humans back to tropical Africa between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago. Archaeology tells us Homo sapiens sapiens had settled in western Asia by 90,000 years ago, and in western Europe, replacing earlier Neanderthal populations, by 35,000 years before the present. Sometime during this ancient diaspora, we anatomically modern people developed a unique capacity for symbolic and spiritual thought, for defining the bounderies of existance, and for conceptualizing the relationship between the individual, the group, and the cosmos. We do not know when these capabilities first developed, but late-Ice Age cave art tells us that humans had melded the living and spiritual worlds by at least 30,000 years ago (Bahn and Vertut, 1988)"

.


PRINCIPLES OF HUMAN EVOLUTION 2003 Roger Lewin, Robert A. Foley ISBN 0632047046
p 401-403
"Most of the DNA in our cells is packaged within the 23 pairs of chromosomes in the nucleus, which in total measures about 3 billion base pairs in length; this structure is known as the nuclear genome. The cell also contains a second, much smaller genome that consists of a circular molecule of DNA, 16,569 base pairs long. Many copies of this second genome, called the mitochondria genome, are found within each cell. Mitochondria are the organelles responsible for the cell's energy metabolism, and each cell contains several hundred of these structures.

Mitochondrial DNA is considered useful for tracking relatively recent evolutionary events for two reasons. First, this DNA, which codes for 37 genes, accumulates mutations on average 10 times faster than occurs in nuclear DNA. Even in short periods of time, therefore, mitochondrial DNA will accumulate mutations that can be counted. In contrast, slowly evolving nuclear DNA may accumulate few or even no mutations over the same time. As mutations represent the equivalent of information, mitochndrial DNA provides more information over the short term than does nuclear DNA . Second, unlike an individual's nuclear genome, which consists of a combination of genes from both parents, the mitochondrial genome is inherited only from the mother (except under unusual circumstances). Because of this maternal mode of inheritance, no recombination of maternal and paternal genes occurs; such a mixture may sometimes blur the history of the genome as read by geneticists. Potentially, therefore, mitochondrial DNA offers a powerful way of inferring population history, unhindered by the genetic fog of recombination.

One of the first significant observations to emerge from this work was that the amount of variation of mitochondrial DNA types in the modern human population throughout the world is surprisingly low--just one-tenth of that known among chimpanzees, for instance. One explanation is that modern humans evolved very recently, a view that Wallace and Wilson independently supported (Douglas Wallace Emory U., Allan Wilson, Berkeley). A calculation based on the rate of accumulation of mutations of mitochondrial DNA gave a time of origin of 140,000 to 280,000 years ago. An alternative explanation holds that modern humans passed through a population bottleneck recently, which reduced genetic variation. These explanations are not mutually exclusive: modern humans may have evolved recently and experienced a population bottleneck..."

.well, "except under unusual circumstances" should give you hope

HUMAN (A Smithsonian Book 2004-2006) ISBN 0756619017
p 30-31
"Paleontologists usually rely on fossils to find out about our ancestors. With modern humans, the study of DNA is a powerful new tool. During development, chromosomes pair up and swap bits of DNA, making each sperm of egg cell unique. This process could make it difficult to trace our genetic history, but it does not occur in mitochondria (tiny energy pumps in our cells, with their own genes) or in Y chromosomes. We inherit mitochondrial genes from our mothers and Y chromosomes from our Fathers. Like any genes, they undergo mutations in their DNA at a roughly defined rate. By studying the mutation pattern in people around the world, scientists have worked out a family tree of the World's races. At its base is "Mitochondrial Eve," about 150,000 years ago. She was not the first Homo sapiens, but was the most recent common female common ancestor we know about. Y chromosomes contain more DNA, so yield a more detailed picture. By studying the pattern of their mutations in the world's indigenous peoples, scientists found "Nuclear Adam," the most recent known common ancestor of all the world's men, who probably lived between 90,000 and 60,000 years ago; they also mapped out spread across the globe.[/COLOR]

.

BEFORE THE DAWN Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors 2006 Nicholas Wade
ISBN 1594200793
p 52-59
'The Genealogies of Eve and Adam'
"Because everyone in the world is descended from the ancestral population, geneticists can infer some of its properties by analyzing the DNA of living people, and then working backward.

Two parts of the human genome are particularly useful for this purpose. One is the Y chromosome, the only chromosome possessed by men alone. The other is known as mitochondrial DNA. These are the only two parts of the genome that escape the shuffling of genetic material between generations. The shuffling, an evolutionary mechanism for generating diversity rapidly at each generation, means that almost all other parts of the human genome have a pedigree that is at present too complex to untangle.

Unlike most pairs of chromosomes, the X and Y do not exchange segments of DNA between generations (except at their very tips). This is to ensure that the Y's most important gene, the one that makes a person male, never gets shuffled into the X chromosome. The Y chromosome is therefore passed down essentially unchanged from father to son, generation after generation. Mitochondrial DNA escapes shuffling through a different process. Mitochondria, cellular components that generate chemical energy, are former bacteria that were enslaved long ago by animal cells. They live in the main body of the cell, outside the nucleus that holds the chromosomes. When the sperm fuses with the egg, all the sperm's mitochondria are destroyed, leaving the fertilized egg equipped with only the mother's mitochondria. Because of this arrangement, mitochondria are bequeathed unchanged from mother to child (and a man's mitochondria are not passed on to his children)(64) ...*and the 'note-64' is on p. 284, "64. The reason is probably that a rivalry between mitochondria inside the cell would be too disruptive. The sperm's mitochondria are made to carry a special chemical tag that says "kill me." As soon as the sperm enters the egg, its mitochondria are destroyed. The egg possesses about 100,000 mitochondria of its own, and has no need for the mere 100 or so contributed by the sperm" Douglas C. Wallace, Michael D. Brown, and Marie T. Lott, "Mitochondrial DNA Variation in Human Evolution and Disease," Gene, 238:211-230 (1999):

.

FROM LUCY TO LANGUAGE 1996 Donald Johanson, Blake Edgar ISBN 0684810239
P41
"IN 1987, a Berkeley biochemistry lab sent shock waves through the scientific community with the announcement that modern human genetic heritage had been traced back through time to our species' very origin. That origin occurred in Africa around 200,000 years ago. The study relied on a portion of our genetic reserves, called mitochondria DNA (mtDNA), that is inherited only from one's mother, so the proposed founding mother of humanity naturally got dubbed "mitochondrial Eve" and this origins story became the Eve hypothesis. The scenario written in the mtDNA data had some staggering implications. Humans resulted from a relatively recent speciation event and rapidly spread out from Africa around the world. Moreover, all the more archaic populations of Homo erectus and Homo heidelbergensis already living outside Africa made no contribution to the modern human genome. Because mtDNA failed to show any deep Asian roots for our species, for instance, Peking Man and Java Man were dead ends. The now-classic mtDNA study by the late Allan Wilson, Rebecca Cann, and Mark Stoneking examined gene diversity among 147 people from the United States, New Guinea, Australia, Asia, and Europe. The scientists homed in on DNA in the mitochondrion, an organelle outside the nucleus that generates energy for a cell. Mitochondrial DNA evolves much more rapidly than nuclear DNA, so it can be used to explore questions about recent evolutionary divergences by studying the differences between populations due to accumulated genetic mutations since some past divergence. In this case, the results showed that Africans had a greater mtDNA diversity (reflecting a longer period of evolution) than other populations, and a human genealogical tree could be rooted in Africa with a founding mother between 140,000 and 290,000 years ago."

[jordanriver]

PART 3

.and can't leave out Richard Dawkins:

RIVER OUT OF EDEN 1995 Richard Dawkins ISBN 0465016065
p 45-53
Mitochondrial DNA does not participate in any sexual mixing, either with the main "nuclear" DNA of the body or with the DNA of other mitochondria. Mitochondria, like many bacteria, reproduce simply by dividing. Whenever a mitochondrion divides into two daughter mitochondria, each daughter gets an identical copy -- give or take the odd mutation -- of the original chromosome. Now you see the beauty of this, from our point of view as long-distance genealogists. We found that where our ordinary texts are concerned, in every generation sex scrambles the evidence, confusing the contributions from paternal and maternal lines. Mitochondrial DNA is blessedly celibate...

...We get our mitochondria from our mother only. Sperms are too small to contain more than a few mitochondria; they have just enough to provide the energy to power their tails as they swim toward the egg, and these mitochondria are cast away with the tail when the sperm head is absorbed in the egg at fertilization. The egg is massive by comparison, and its huge, fluid-filled interior contains a rich culture of mitochondria. This culture seeds the child's body. So whether you are a female or male, your mitochondria are all descended from an initial inoculum of your mother's mitochondria. Whether you are male or female, your mitochondria are all descended from your maternal grandmother's mitochondria. None from your father, none from either grandfather, none from your paternal grandmother. The mitochondria constitute an independent record of the past, uncontaminated by the main nuclear DNA, which is equally likely to come from each of four grandparents, each of eight great-grandparents and so on back...

...Mitochondrial DNA is uncontaminated, but it is not immune to mutation -- to random errors in copying. Indeed, it mutates at a higher rate than our "own" DNA, because (as is the case with all bacteria) it lacks the sophisticated proofreading machinery our cells have evolved over the eons. There will be a few differences between your mitochondrial DNA and mine, and the number of differences will be a measure of how far back our ancestors diverged. Not any of our ancestors, but our ancestors in the female female female ...line. If your mother happens to be a purebred native Australian, or a purebred Chinese, or a purebred !Kung San of the Kalahari, there will be rather a lot of differences between your mitochondrial DNA and mine. It doesn't matter who your father is: he can be an English marquess or a Sioux chieftain, for all the difference it makes to your mitochondria. And the same goes for any of your male ancestors, ever...

...Mitochondrial DNA as been exploited by a group of researchers associated with the late Allan Wilson in Berkeley, California. In the 1980s, Wilson and his colleagues sampled the sequences from 135 living women drawn from all around the world -- Australian aborigines, New Guinea highlanders, Native Americans, Europeans, Chinese and representatives of various peoples in Africa. They looked at the numbers of letter differences separating each woman from each other woman. They gave these numbers to a computer and asked it to construct the most parsimonious family tree it could find. "Parsimonious" here means doing away as much as possible with the need to postulate coincidence. This requires some explaining...

...Just as entomologists might disagree over the most representative way to sample the Brazilian rain forest, so DNA genealogists have used different sampling methods. And unfortunately the results don't always agree. Nevertheless, for what they are worth, I'll present the conclusions the Berkeley group reached in their original analysis of human mitochondrial DNA. Their conclusions were extremely interesting and provocative. According to them, the most parsimonious tree turns out to be firmly rooted in Africa. What this means is that some Africans are more distantly related to other Africans than to anybody in the whole rest of the world. The whole of the rest of the world -- Europeans, Native Americans, Australian aboriginals, Chinese, New Guineans, Inuits, and all -- form one relatively close group of cousins. Some Africans belong in this close group. But other Africans don't. According to this analysis, the most parsimonious tree looks like this: [some Africans [other Africans [yet other Africans [yet other Africans and everybody else]]]]. They therefore concluded that the grand ancestress of all of us lived in Africa: "African Eve." As I have said, this conclusion is controversial. Others have claimed that equally parsimonious trees can be found in which the outermost branches occur outside Africa. They also claim that the Berkeley group obtained the particular results they did partly because of the order in which their computer looked at the possible trees. Obviously, order of looking ought not to matter. Probably most experts would still put their money on Mitochondrial Eve's being African, but they wouldn't do so with any great confidence...

...The second conclusion of the Berkeley group is less controversial. No matter where Mitochondrial Eve lived, they were able to estimate when. It is known how fast mitochondrial DNA evolves; you can therefore put an approximate date on each of the branch points on the tree of divergence of mitochondrial DNA. And the branch point that unites all womankind -- the birth date of Mitochondrial Eve -- is between a hundred fifty thousand and a quarter of a million years ago."


and textbooks

HUMAN GENETICS Concepts And Applications 2nd Ed. 1997 Ricki Lewis ISBN 069735850X
p267-268
'Mitochondrial DNA Clock'
"Researchers study recent human ancestry with a special type of molecular clock based on mutations in mitochondrial DNA. Mitochondria are organelles (structures in cells) that house the reactions of cellular respiration and also contain DNA. The 16,569 base pairs in human mitochondria are sometimes referred to as our 24th chromosome (because we have 23 types of chromosomes--2 of each type). Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is valuable in tracking recent evolutionary time because this molecular clock ticks five to ten times faster than the nuclear DNA clock--that is, mtDNA mutates this much faster than DNA in the nucleus, creating many more differences between individuals.

Like other matters of evolutionary relatedness, the more similar the mtDNA sequence is between two individuals, the more recently they presumably shared a common ancestor. However, following the inheritance of mtDNA presents an interesting quirk because it is maternally inherited. Mitochondria are passed from mothers only in their gametes. The part of the sperm cell that enters the oocyte at fertilization usually does not contribute mitochondria. This fact led to the proposal of a mitochondrial Eve, or ancestral mother."

'Mitochondrial Eve'
"Theoretically, if a particular sequence of mtDNA could have given rise--by mutation--to different mtDNA sequences in modern humans, then that ancestral sequence may represent a very early human or humanlike female--a mitochondrial Eve, or first woman. (Actually, the name "Eve" was the researcher's very figurative name for this hypothesized female. The media mistook the name to literally mean the biblical Eve.)

When might this figurative first woman, who is the most recent to be ancestral to us all, have lived? Most fossil evidence points to Africa for the answer, but some anthropologists maintain that modern peoples emerged from Asia, too. Berkeley reserarchers led by the late Allan Wilson compared mtDNA sequences for protein-encoding as well as noncoding DNA regions in a variety of people, including Africans, African Americans, Europeans, New Guineans, Australians, and others. They concluded from several methods that the hypothesized ancestral woman lived about 200,000 years ago."

.

BIOLOGY Visualizing Life HOLT, RINEHART and WINSTON 1995 George B. Johnson
ISBN 0030538173 (a highschool text)
P 234
'The Origin of Homo Sapiens'
"Where Homo sapiens evolved has been a much-debated issue among scientists. Some scientists argue that our species evolved simultaneously from different groups of H. erectus that lived in different areas of the Old World. According to these scientists, the differences among racial groups, such as among the young people in Figure 11.16 (its a picture of 4 kids diff races), reflect the descent of each racial group from a different population of H. erectus. In contrast, other scientists contend that our species evolved in one place, in Africa, and then spread to the rest of the world. Therefore, the unique characteristics of each race represent adaptations to local conditions that arose after our species migrated out of Africa.

Recently, scientists studying DNA sequences in mitochondria have uncovered evidence supporting the hypothesis that H. sapiens evolved in Africa and then spread to the rest of the world, as shown in Figure 11.17 (just a globe map arrows shooting out from Africa, Ethiopia actually) ...Mitochondria carry their own DNA and reproduce independently of the cell's chromosomes. Moreover, mitochondrial DNA is inherited only from the mother. The egg contains mitochondria which give rise to all the mitochondria in the body of the child; sperm do not contribute any mitochondria to the offspring. Unlike DNA in the nucleus, mitochondrial DNA is not shuffled by meiosis or crossing over. Any changes in mitochondrial DNA are caused by mutations. Scientists have determined the sequence of nucleotides in mitochondrial DNA samples from people on all continents. Since DNA accumulates mutations over time, the oldest DNA should show the largest number of mutations. It turns out that the greatest number of different mitochondrial sequences occurs among modern Africans. Thus, we can conclude that humans have been living in Africa longer than on any other continent. This evidence suggests that our species evolved in Africa, and that the differences among racial groups emerged after H. sapiens descended from H. erectus."

.


and for people who didn't read that genre there was NEWSWEEK and NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC magazines:

Newsweek Jan. 11, 1988 'The Search for Adam and Eve'
"...To find Eve, Cann first had to persuade 147 pregnant women to donate their babies' placentas to science. The placentas were the easiest way to get large samples of body tissue. Working with Wilson and a Berkeley biologist, Mark Stoneking, Cann selected women in America with ancestors from Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Her collaborators in New Guinea and Australia found Aboriginal women there. The babies were born, the placentas were gathered and frozen, and the tissue analysis began at Wilson's lab in Berkeley. The tissues were ground in a souped-up Waring blender, spun in a centrifuge, mixed with a cell-breaking detergent, dyed flourescent and spun in a centrifuge again. The result was a clear liquid containing pure DNA.
This was not the DNA in the nucleus of the babies' cells -- the genes that determine most physical traits. This DNA came from outside the nucleus, in a compartment of the cell called the mitochondrion, which produces nearly all the energy to keep the cell alive. Scientists didn't learn that the mitochondrion contained any genes until the 1960s. Then in the late 1970s they discovered that mitochondrial DNA was useful for tracing family trees because it's inherited only from the mother. It's not a mixture of both parents' genes, like nuclear DNA, so it preserves a family record that isn't scrambled every generation. It's altered only by mutations -- random, isolated mistakes in copying the genetic code, which are then passed on to the next generation. Each random mutation produces a new type of DNA as distinctive as a fingerprint."
http://www.virginia.edu/woodson/cour...s/tierney.html

.

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC 'The Greatest Journey' The genes of people today tell of our ancestors' trek out of Africa to the far corners of the globe. By James Shreeve March 2006
The human genetic code, or genome, is 99.9 percent identical throughout the world. What's left is the DNA responsible for our individual differences—in eye color or disease risk, for example—as well as some that serves no apparent function at all. Once in an evolutionary blue moon, a random, harmless mutation can occur in one of these functionless stretches, which is then passed down to all of that person's descendants. Generations later, finding that same mutation, or marker, in two people's DNA indicates that they share the same ancestor. By comparing markers in many different populations, scientists can trace their ancestral connections.
In most of the genome, these minute changes are obscured by the genetic reshuffling that takes place each time a mother and father's DNA combine to make a child. Luckily a couple of regions preserve the telltale variations. One, called mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), is passed down intact from mother to child. Similarly, most of the Y chromosome, which determines maleness, travels intact from father to son.
The accumulated mutations in your mtDNA and (for males) your Y chromosome are only two threads in a vast tapestry of people who have contributed to your genome. But by comparing the mtDNA and Y chromosomes of people from various populations, geneticists can get a rough idea of where and when those groups parted ways in the great migrations around the planet.
In the mid-1980s the late Allan Wilson and colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, used mtDNA to pinpoint humanity's ancestral home. They compared mtDNA from women around the world and found that women of African descent showed twice as much diversity as their sisters. Since the telltale mutations seem to occur at a steady rate, modern humans must have lived in Africa twice as long as anywhere else. Scientists now calculate that all living humans are related to a single woman who lived roughly 150,000 years ago in Africa, a "mitochondrial Eve." She was not the only woman alive at the time, but if geneticists are right, all of humanity is linked to Eve through an unbroken chain of mothers.
Mitochondrial Eve was soon joined by "Y chromosome Adam," an analogous father of us all, also from Africa. Increasingly refined DNA studies have confirmed this opening chapter of our story over and over: All the variously shaped and shaded people of Earth trace their ancestry to African hunter-gatherers."
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/pr...y/shreeve-text


.....but I don't think ScienceDaily got the memo, they still (as of 2010) publish mtDNA inherited exclusively from mothers:

ScienceDaily ''Mitochondrial Eve': Mother of all humans lived 200,000 years ago' Aug 17 2010 Rice University
".....For example, the way scientists attempt to date mtEve relies on modern genetic techniques. Genetic profiles of random blood donors are compared, and based upon the likenesses and differences between particular genes, scientists can assign a number that describes the degree to which any two donors are related to one another.

Using mitochondrial genomes to gauge relatedness is a way for geneticists to simplify the task of finding common ancestors that lived long ago. That is because the entire human genome contains more than 20,000 genes, and comparing the differences among so many genes for distant relatives is problematic, even with today's largest and fastest supercomputers.

But mitochondria -- the tiny organelles that serve as energy factories inside all human cells -- have their own genome. Besides containing 37 genes that rarely change, they contain a "hypervariable" region, which changes fast enough to provide a molecular clock calibrated to times comparable to the age of modern humanity. Because each person's mitochondrial genome is inherited from his or her mother, all mitochondrial lineages are maternal..."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0817122405.htm


and that was what the deal was promoted as.

[rwatts]

...

So JR, can you point to any consistent research from the last 10 years which demonstrates that the conclusions based on mitDNA must be fundamentally flawed?

[jordanriver]

So JR, can you point to any consistent research from the last 10 years which demonstrates that the conclusions based on mitDNA must be fundamentally flawed?

you're being funny, Roland.

I don't need to.

I showed that NO RECOMBINATION was the foundation for the EVE HYPOTHESIS

with these citations:

RIVER OUT OF EDEN 1995 Richard Dawkins ISBN 0465016065


BIOLOGY Visualizing Life HOLT, RINEHART and WINSTON 1995 George B. Johnson
ISBN 0030538173 (a highschool text)


FROM LUCY TO LANGUAGE 1996 Donald Johanson, Blake Edgar ISBN 0684810239


HUMAN GENETICS Concepts And Applications 2nd Ed. 1997 Ricki Lewis ISBN 069735850X


IN SEARCH OF DEEP TIME Beyond the Fossil Record to a New History of Life 1999 Henry Gee ISBN 068485421X


HUMAN EVOLUTION AND PREHISTORY 5th Ed 2000 William A. Haviland ISBN 0155067230
THEN, UPDATED HAVILAND 9th Edition 2011 ISBN 0495812196

IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF EVE The Mystery of Human Origins 2000 Lee R. Berger Ph.D.
ISBN 0792276825


EVOLUTION The Triumph of an Idea 2001 Carl Zimmer ISBN 0060199067

IN THE BEGINNING An Introduction to Archaeology 2001 Brian M. Fagan ISBN 0130307319


PRINCIPLES OF HUMAN EVOLUTION 2003 Roger Lewin, Robert A. Foley ISBN 0632047046


HUMAN (A Smithsonian Book 2004-2006) ISBN 0756619017


BEFORE THE DAWN Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors 2006 Nicholas Wade
ISBN 1594200793

and NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC and TALK ORIGINS


All I had to do to refute them, was to undermine that FOUNDATION of NO RECOMBINATION

and that was done earlier IN POST 39

[klaus54]

JR,

I do love your patience and persistence of niggling about the twigs and ignoring the forest and Earth and the Universe.

'Tis admirable. ;-)

K54

[klaus54]

Richard Dawkins is the Kent Hovind of atheism.

Who cares about his philosophical opinions?

Versteh?

K54

P.S. Wake up, Girl, and smell the limestone. We are evolved animals -- selfish, self-centered, altruistic naturally only to our kin. Jesus was a man who pooped and peed and felt hunger and pain. And he died for our sins.

In other words, get over it -- and stop making Christianity a laughing stock.

...And tell your friends Jorge, "Mr." Black, BrainStem the same.

[Roy]

I showed that NO RECOMBINATION was the foundation for the EVE HYPOTHESIS

No, you didn't. You showed that maternal inheritance was the foundation of the Eve hypothesis. Only two of your citations even mention recombination, and those only list it as a consequence of maternal inheritance.

All I had to do to refute them, was to undermine that FOUNDATION of NO RECOMBINATION

No, in order to refute the mitochondrial Eve hypothesis you need to undermine maternal inheritance. You have provided one example of paternal inheritance of mitochondrial DNA, but only one, and you have not linked mitochondrial recombination to paternal DNA as opposed to recombination between copies of maternal DNA, which has no effect on the base hypothesis.

The mitochondrial Eve hypothesis is, basically, that the mitochondria of all humans is descended from the mitochondria of a single human female who was the ancestor of all modern humans. You have not even scratched that concept.

You claimed that mitochondrial Eve was not our ancestor. That was bollocks.

Roy

[rwatts]

you're being funny, Roland.

I don't need to.

I showed that NO RECOMBINATION was the foundation for the EVE HYPOTHESIS

with these citations:

RIVER OUT OF EDEN 1995 Richard Dawkins ISBN 0465016065


BIOLOGY Visualizing Life HOLT, RINEHART and WINSTON 1995 George B. Johnson
ISBN 0030538173 (a highschool text)


FROM LUCY TO LANGUAGE 1996 Donald Johanson, Blake Edgar ISBN 0684810239


HUMAN GENETICS Concepts And Applications 2nd Ed. 1997 Ricki Lewis ISBN 069735850X


IN SEARCH OF DEEP TIME Beyond the Fossil Record to a New History of Life 1999 Henry Gee ISBN 068485421X


HUMAN EVOLUTION AND PREHISTORY 5th Ed 2000 William A. Haviland ISBN 0155067230
THEN, UPDATED HAVILAND 9th Edition 2011 ISBN 0495812196

IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF EVE The Mystery of Human Origins 2000 Lee R. Berger Ph.D.
ISBN 0792276825


EVOLUTION The Triumph of an Idea 2001 Carl Zimmer ISBN 0060199067

IN THE BEGINNING An Introduction to Archaeology 2001 Brian M. Fagan ISBN 0130307319


PRINCIPLES OF HUMAN EVOLUTION 2003 Roger Lewin, Robert A. Foley ISBN 0632047046


HUMAN (A Smithsonian Book 2004-2006) ISBN 0756619017


BEFORE THE DAWN Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors 2006 Nicholas Wade
ISBN 1594200793

and NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC and TALK ORIGINS


All I had to do to refute them, was to undermine that FOUNDATION of NO RECOMBINATION

and that was done earlier IN POST 39

See Roy's comment JR:-

http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/sh...l=1#post108167

And you do need to address my point.

[jordanriver]

No, you didn't. You showed that maternal inheritance was the foundation of the Eve hypothesis. Only two of your citations even mention recombination, and those only list it as a consequence of maternal inheritance.


Roy

you're joking right?

the citations pointed out maternal-exclusive , but if they didn't include the magic word "recombination" then it doesn't count??????????



really?

[jordanriver]

die-hards , never say die,

but


"There are many variables that can affect the mutation rate of mtDNA, including even the possibility that mtDNA is not always inherited strictly through maternal lines. In fact, recent studies show that paternal mtDNA can on rare occasions enter an egg during fertilization and alter the maternal mtDNA through recombination. Such recombination would drastically affect the mutation rate and throw off date estimates.

Not surprisingly, there is currently a heated debate over the value of "mitochondrial Eve"—especially between history-hunting geneticists and some fossil-finding paleoanthropologists"
NOVA 'Tracing Ancestry with MtDNA' by Rick Groleau


....there will never be enough citation. my goodness.

[rwatts]

die-hards , never say die,

but


"There are many variables that can affect the mutation rate of mtDNA, including even the possibility that mtDNA is not always inherited strictly through maternal lines. In fact, recent studies show that paternal mtDNA can on rare occasions enter an egg during fertilization and alter the maternal mtDNA through recombination. Such recombination would drastically affect the mutation rate and throw off date estimates.
NOVA 'Tracing Ancestry with MtDNA' by Rick Groleau


....there will never be enough citation. my goodness.

Again, that looks to be old stuff.

Has any subsequent research shown that mitDNA arguments are grossly wrong?