Epigenetic mechanisms control sex determination and phenotype within birds

Multitasking genes point to highly organized and energy efficient passive DNA information storage

https://phys.org/news/2020-09-bird-genes-multitaskers-scientists.html

Excerpts:"Scientists from the University of Sheffield have found that although male and female birds have an almost identical set of genes, they function differently in each sex through a mechanism called alternative splicing.

Males and females of the same bird species can be strikingly different. For example, in addition to fundamental differences in reproduction, the sexes can show profound variation in behavior, colouration, metabolism, disease incidence and life history. The team wanted to understand how these remarkable differences develop despite males and females sharing mostly the same DNA.

Thea Rogers, Ph.D. student at the University of Sheffield and lead author of the study, said: "One notable example of differences between male and female birds is in the peafowl, peacocks have magnificent plumage, whereas the female peahen is relatively dull."

"Genes encode proteins, large complex molecules which drive processes in the body and are responsible for the function and structure of the body's tissues. Before genes can be used to make proteins, their DNA sequence is transcribed into RNA, an intermediary molecule that contains the instructions for making proteins.

                                                                   

The scientists found that males and females differ in how bits of RNA are stitched together, meaning that the same gene can produce a large number of distinct proteins and functions depending on which sex the gene is expressed in. This process is called alternative splicing.

Dr. Alison Wright, a researcher at the University of Sheffield and senior author of the study, said: "It is likely that this genetic process (my add: EPIGENETIC PROCESS) is really important for generating biodiversity, not only in birds but across the whole animal kingdom."

My comment: Epigenetic mechanisms and factors control even sex determination and sex specific characteristics and traits. Alternative splicing (AS) makes it possible for the cell to produce thousands of different proteins just by reading single DNA strand. AS is the most significant mechanism behind the rich biodiversity and it is controlled by epigenetic factors such as DNA methylation profiles, histone markers and non coding RNAs. In this process, DNA is highly organized passive information that the cell uses in order to produce active and functional RNA molecules. These findings refute the old and pseudoscientific theories of random mutations, selection and evolution. Don't be deceived.

Genetic erosion is an inevitable phenomenon

Genetic erosion is the most significant reason for collapse of biodiversity - Evolution is a myth

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/eva.12564

Excerpts:"Genetic erosion is a major threat to biodiversity because it can reduce fitness and ultimately contribute to the extinction of populations."

"Over the last few decades, different components of biodiversity, from populations to ecosystems, have experienced a massive reduction in genetic diversity (Hughes, Inouye, Johnson, Underwood, & Vellend, 2008). In vertebrates, most threatened species have seen their genetic diversity reduced over the last few hundred years (Li et al., 2016; Willoughby et al., 2015). Most countries worldwide report significant genetic vulnerability within their plant populations: with, for example, roughly half of forest species being threatened (FAO, 2010, 2014). Furthermore, due to prolonged and intensive artificial selection, the effective population sizes of major domesticated livestock breeds rarely exceeds a few hundred individuals (Leroy et al., 2013), despite their often very large census sizes. Thus, many domestic breeds of high heritage value also need management to maintain genetic diversity (Bruford et al., 2015)."


"A growing number of surveys of natural loss‐of‐function (LoF) variants have been carried out in vertebrates (Das, Panitz, Gregersen, Bendixen, & Holm, 2015; Groenen et al., 2012; MacArthur et al., 2012; Sulem et al., 2015; de Valles‐Ibáñez et al., 2016) and plants (Cao et al., 2011) with the number observed ranging from hundreds (332–696 in six great apes) to thousands (6,795 in Icelandic humans and ~12,000 across 80 Arabidopsis populations). Most recently, Rogers and Slatkin (2017) identified a much larger number of deletions retrogenes, and nonfunctioning point mutations in a woolly mammoth from Wrangel Island with a low Ne compared with an older sample from a larger population. This suggests that genetic erosion played a significant role in the extinction of woolly mammoths on the island and demonstrates its importance in conservation."

https://www.futurity.org/extinction-genetic-diversity-995412-2/

                              

Excerpt: "They found that threatened species had reduced genetic variation, likely due to inbreeding and the random loss of variation that occurs when population sizes are small.
The team then examined IUCN’s criteria for classifying threatened species to determine how effective the criteria were at identifying genetically poor species. If genetic diversity estimates correlated with the Red List criteria, then IUCN would be systematically selecting for populations or species that have declining diversity, the researchers reasoned. Unexpectedly, they found that IUCN’s criteria were not closely linked to genetic diversity.

“Unless a population with poor genetic diversity has undergone a dramatic decrease in size, it could be overlooked with our current methodology,” Willoughby says. “We should consider genetic diversity in conservation rankings so a species doesn’t go extinct simply because it wasn’t on our radar.” "

My comment: There are several examples of genetic erosion:

- 68,000 bacterial generations prove: EVOLUTION IS NOT HAPPENING

- No evolution but extremely rapid human genetic degradation

- Genetic degradation - Carnivores lack taste for sweets

- Rapid genetic degradation refutes evolutionary fairytales

- Genetic meltdown just in five generations

- How a broken gene accelerates genetic erosion

- A typical example of genetic erosion

- No random beneficial mutations but a huge number of genetic maladies

- Loss of agricultural biodiversity

- Organisms need genetic rescue

- Genetic degradation - About 40,000 species become extinct every year

Mechanisms for genetic erosion are already well understood. Changing epigenetic information profiles typically result in gradual but inevitable genetic errors. Evolution is a myth. Don't get lost.

Epigenetics behind speciation - It's not evolution!

There are fewer species on Earth than science has defined

https://nautil.us/why-the-earth-has-fewer-species-than-we-think-237177/

Excerpts: "The 2012 trip was to sample the DNA of the two “species” as well as to better understand how many nautiluses live on a given area of seafloor. We caught 30 nautiluses over nine days, snipped off a one-millimeter-long tip of one of each nautilus’ 90 tentacles, and returned all back to their habitats alive (if cranky). All the samples were later analyzed in the large machines that read DNA sequences, and to our complete surprise we found that the DNA of N. pompilius and the morphologically different N. stenomphalus was identical. No genetic difference, yet radically different morphology."
 

Nautilus pompilius

Nautilus stenomphalus

"That’s why N. pompilius and N. stenomphalus are not two species. They are a single species with epigenetic forces leading to the radically different shell and soft parts. Increasingly it appears that perhaps there are fewer, not more, species on Earth than science has defined."

"More and more, biologists are discovering that organisms thought to be different species are, in fact, but one. A recent example is that the formerly accepted two species of giant North American mammoths (the Columbian mammoth and the woolly mammoth) were genetically the same but the two had phenotypes determined by environment."

Woolly mammoth

Columbian mammoth

"The study of epigenetics really comes down to observing two types of epigenetic changes. The first type of changes are the “normal” epigenetic changes that organisms go through, honed by natural selection. (My comment: honed by diet, climate, stressors, toxicants, sensory stimuli, pheromones etc.) For instance, every cell in our bodies contains all the necessary information to become one of the many specific kinds of cells necessary to keep us alive, such as the nerve cells, muscle cells, and the many other highly specialized cell types that are necessary for living. Every cell contains the DNA information to become any or all. But it does. But they do not. The science involved in epigenetics looks to understand how it is that a specific cell at a specific time in a specific anatomical place “knows” how to change into something quite different according to time, place, and function. But the changes are “foreseen” by the organism and beneficial."

My comment: Epigenetic modifications, such as altering DNA methylation patterns typically result in genetic errors. The most common mutational hotspot is C>T alteration due to tendency of methylated cytosine turning to thymine in deamination caused by oxidative stress. For example, there are ~32,000 C>T alterations in human genome worldwide that scientists are trying to repair. These mutations are strongly associated with hereditary genetic diseases. Epigenetic modifications never result in any kind of evolution because they don't add up novel information in the genome but only regulate pre-existing information with epigenetic writers, readers and erasers. However, epigenetics is behind the biodiversity. This is why modern science perfectly supports biblical creation of kinds that have the potential for ecological adaptation and variation.

All possible mutations have been tried out - Still no evolution observed

The world’s most brilliant minds have not been able to produce any different kinds of creatures from Drosophila

https://www.apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=9&article=2501

Excerpt: "According to the prevailing theory of evolution, beneficial mutations acted upon by natural selection provide the driving force behind nature’s production of new creatures. Of course, since mechanisms that reproduce genetic information in organisms are remarkably efficient, genetic modification by mutations are extremely rare. What is more, the overwhelming majority of mutations are so detrimental to the welfare of the mutant organism, the mutant dies or becomes a victim of predation before it has the ability to pass on its genes, and thus nature eliminates the mutation from the gene pool. Allegedly, in the rarest of cases, a “good” mutation that confers an advantage on an organism slips into the gene pool. Since this “beneficial” mutation aids the organism’s survival and reproductive ability, more offspring are produced that have the mutation. Supposedly, myriad millions of these types of mutations have accrued, by which single-celled bacteria have evolved, over billions of years, into humans. When asked why we do not see this process taking place before our eyes, we are told that it simply happens too slowly, is too gradual, and cannot be tested or witnessed in a single human generation, or even in hundreds of years.

What if, however, the process could be expedited? What if we could find some way to introduce exaggerated numbers of mutations into an organism’s gene pool? Could we select the “beneficial” mutations and produce our own, humanly initiated, evolving creatures? If evolution was actually true, and we could find an organism that could be genetically manipulated satisfactorily, then we should be able to “reproduce” evolution in a lab.

Enter Drosophila melanogaster, also known as the common fruit fly. Drosophila maintains several characteristics that make it the perfect specimen for laboratory mutation experiments. First, the female fly is extremely fertile. She can potentially lay 100 eggs a day, up to 2,000 eggs in her life (Reeve and Black, 2001, p. 157). Second, Drosophila grows from an egg to an adult in 10-12 days, thus producing up to 30 generations per year (p. 157). Due to these and other ideal traits, since 1901 the fruit fly has been one of, if not the, most often used organisms in genetic mutation experiments. Reeve and Black noted: “The exploitation that made Drosophila the most important organism for genetical research was its selection by the embryologist Thomas Hunt Morgan for his studies of mutation...” (p. 157).

Since the early 1900s, multiplied millions of fruit fly generations have been bred in laboratories across the globe. Scientists performing these experiments have introduced fruit flies to various levels of radiation and countless other factors designed to produce mutations. Sherwin noted that over 3,000 different mutations have been documented in the fruit fly gene pool (n.d.). These mutations have caused such physical characteristics as eyeless flies, flies with different colored eyes, flies with legs growing from their heads, extra pairs of wings, various colored bodies, wingless flies, flies with unusually large wings, flies with useless wings, flies with twisted wings, etc. The list could go on for hundreds of pages.
 

So extensive have fruit fly experiments been, that the massive numbers of generations produced, and the mutations created, would be the equivalent of millions of years of supposed evolutionary time. Furthermore, intelligent scientists have acted as the “selecting agent,” thus speeding up the accumulation of “beneficial” mutations. If evolution by genetic mutation and natural selection really can take place, we should discover that the fruit fly has mutated into several new kinds of animals that branch out from their “flyhood” into other types of organisms. We should see creatures that are part fly and part something else.

What do we see? Fruit flies. That is all we see. After a hundred years of experimentation, thousands of lab-induced mutations in multiplied millions of flies, and intelligent selection acting on those mutations, the world’s most brilliant minds have not been able to produce any different kinds of creatures from Drosophila. Concerning the fruit fly stasis, late evolutionist Pierre Grassé stated: “The fruitfly (Drosophila melanogaster), the favorite pet insect of the geneticists, whose geographical, biotopical, urban, and rural genotypes are now known inside out, seems not to have changed since the remotest times (as quoted in Sherwin, n.d.). Norman Macbeth highlighted the late evolutionist Richard Goldschmidt’s thoughts about the fruit fly: “After observing mutations in fruit flies for many years, Goldschmidt fell into despair. The changes, he lamented, were so hopelessly micro that if a thousand mutations were combined in one specimen, there would still be no new species” (1971, p. 33). The bottom line of all experiments ever done on fruit flies is that they stay fruit flies.

The results of such experimentation “fly” in the face of evolution, but they are exactly what one would expect to find if the biblical story of Creation is true. In Genesis 1, the Bible states that God made all the flying creatures and land animals on days five and six of the Creation week. In the creation model, the Bible specifically states that all organisms were to multiply according to their own kinds (Genesis 1:11,21,24,25). Thus, one would expect fruit flies, regardless of the number of mutations introduced and selected, to be bound to reproduce only after their “own kind”—which is exactly what the last 100 years of fruit fly research has shown. It is amazing how menacingly a little fruit fly can bug those who adhere to evolution."