The origin of the Jewish nation is a fascinating question that is addressed in the Bible, archaeology, and genetics. In this episode, Dr Rob examines the early Israelite family tree and notes the huge amount of inbreeding that occurred as three successive generations intermarried. He compares this to other people from across the world and draws some conclusions about the rise of the various human 'races' that will be surprising to many.

Notes and links:

 	Carter R. 2013. Inbreeding and the origin of races, Journal of Creation 27(3):8–10. [Original paper, with main graphics]
 	Carter R, Sanders L, How long were the Israelites in Egypt? Using their own family tree to resolve a debate, Creation.com, 21 September 2021.
 	Carter R. 2018. The genetic history of the Israelite nation, Journal of Creation 32(1):114–120.
 	Carter R, Sanders L, The Israelites: Forging of a nation, Creation.com, 2 September 2021.
 	Carter R, Where did the Israelites cross the “Red Sea”? Creation.com, 20 July 2021.
 	Carter R. 2017. Extensive mixing among Israelites and non-Israelites in biblical history, Journal of Creation 31(3):112–118.
 	Ringbauer H, et al. 2021. Parental relatedness through time revealed by runs of homozygosity in ancient DNA, Nature Communications 12:5425; doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-25289-w.

Thumbnail image: Blake Campbell via Unspash.com

The Jews, inbreeding, and false notions of ‘race’

Biblical Genetics is a vlog/podcast by Dr. Robert Carter. His posts explore modern genetics through the lens of biblical history, and vice versa.

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Life Sciences

Human-chimpanzee similarity is a hotly-debated topic in the evolution-creation wars. Are we 98, 95, 90, or 85% similar? One way to get at the question is to ask what is the longest stretch of DNA that is shared between the two species. This is a very difficult question to answer! But, unperturbed, Dr Rob set out to answer it. Will our fearless hero be able to pull it off? Spoiler alert: not quite, but the path of discovery is still very interesting.

 	LastZ github.com/lastz/lastz
 	LastZ chaining github.com/hillerlab/make_lastz_chains
 	Mummer4 mummer4.github.io/
 	Blast blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi
 	Telomere-to-Telomere Consortium primate projects github.com/marbl/Primates
 	Python python.org/
 	
Standard Bases:

 	A: Adenine
 	C: Cytosine
 	G: Guanine
 	T: Thymine (in DNA)
 	U: Uracil (in RNA)

Ambiguous Bases (IUPAC Codes):
These codes are used when there is ambiguity in the nucleotide present at a particular position:

 	R: A or G (puRine)
 	Y: C or T (pYrimidine)
 	S: G or C
 	W: A or T (Weak)
 	K: G or T (Keto)
 	M: A or C (aMino)
 	B: C, G, or T (not A) (B comes after A)
 	D: A, G, or T (not C) (D comes after C)
 	H: A, C, or T (not G) (H comes after G)
 	V: A, C, or G (not T) (V comes after U; U is replaced with T in DNA)
 	N: Any base (A, C, G, T) (N for any nucleotide)


 	Silver Comet Trail silvercometga.com/

What is the longest match between the human and chimpanzee genomes?

https://youtu.be/-jpoxCZgZKQ



Is the human genome highly functional or mostly junk? This is a question that is not only being asked in the creation-evolution debate; it is a question raging in the ivory tower as well. The 'old guard' is much more likely to resist any claim that large swaths of the genome are useful. The 'young punks' in science is more willing to accept the obvious fact that the genome is highly functional. Who is going to win? In this episode, Dr Rob puts a few more nails in the coffin of junk DNA..

Notes and links:'

 	Carter 2023 What proportion of the human genome is actually functional? And how much variation is tolerable?
 	Chen et al. 2023 A genomic mutational constraint map using variation in 76,156 human genomes
 	Moran 2023 What's in your genomes? 90% of your genome is junk

Junk or genius? How functional is the human genome? Part 2

Is the human genome highly functional or mostly junk? This is a question that is not only being asked in the creation-evolution debate; it is a question raging in the ivory tower as well. The 'old guard' is much more likely to resist any claim that large swaths of the genome are useful. The 'young punks' in science is more willing to accept the obvious fact that the genome is highly functional. Who is going to win? In this episode, Dr Carter highlights four new studies that ratchet the argument toward high function.

Notes and links:'

 	Carter 2023 What proportion of the human genome is actually functional? And how much variation is tolerable?
 	Zhang et al. 2023 FOXP3 recognizes microsatellites and bridges DNA through multimerization
 	Walter 2024 Are non-protein coding RNAs junk or treasure?
 	Stepankiw et al. 2023 The human genome contains over a million autonomous exons
 	Chen et al. 2023 A genomic mutational constraint map using variation in 76,156 human genomes
 	Moran 2023 What's in your genomes? 90% of your genome is junk


DNA – highly functional or mostly junk? Part 1

No, the size of the genome has not changed, but the number of genes we thought it contains certainly has. After lots of double checking, there are fewer known protein coding genes today (~19,000) than there were when the human genome was first published, and even that count (~23,000) was shockingly small, according to the predictions of the world's top geneticists. The nature of the genome has consistently surprised people, but mostly because they applied Darwinian concepts to it. Instead, the genome is a wonderful testimony to the engineering prowess of God, who built something unexpected.

LInks:

 	GeneSweep
 	One-gene-one-enzyme
 	Central dogma of molecular biology
 	Amaral et al. 2014 The status of the human gene catalogue, Nature 622(7981):41-47.
 	What on earth is a ‘gene’? Slicing and dicing the genome
 	The Barrier has been breached: new discoveries are challenging neo-Darwinism

The Incredible Shrinking Human Genome

A slew of videos has recently come out arguing for and against the work of Dr Jeffrey Tomkins, who claims humans and chimps are only about 85% similar. His detractors have made some massive blunders and I attempt to document them here. This is not to gloat, however. I understand that all humans are bigoted, biased, myopic, jealous, envious, etc., including all scientists. So, we'll apply James 3:1 ("Not many of you should presume to be teachers...for know that we will be judged more strictly)  and Philippians 2:3... (Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit...) to the situation as we outline multiple lapses of logic and analysis that have been done in an attempt to discredit Tomkins' work. To be fair, though, the main person in my crosshairs has admitted to making these mistakes. I am only documenting things for posterity.

Notes and links:

 	James 3:1–2
 	patternsofevidence.com/patterns-plus
 	The 3rd Commandment
 	Dr Jeffrey Tomkins
 	Blast
 	Gutsick Gibbon, A Professional Creationist Agrees with Me: Tomkins Wrong, 30 Dec 2023.
 	Roohif, Jeffrey Tomkins is allergic to controls, 29 Dec 2023. Note: I made several mistakes when describing Roohif's results. First, he was looking at older trace read datasets, not the contig database I (and Gutsick Gibbon, and Tomikins in his 2018 paper) have been working with, so his conclusions about vector, etc., contamination do not apply here. Second, I stated that he only tested a few of the problematic areas, but he actually performed several thorough tests. Third, I also conflated his analysis on non-aligning subsequences in Blast matches with his analysis of the sequences for which Blast failed to find any alignment at all. After being challenged on a few of these points, and upon re-watching the video, paying attention this time (!) I stand corrected. Yet, that was but a small portion of my presentation and I included it almost as supplementary information, trying to cover all bases. In retrospect, I could easily have left it out entirely.
 	Gutsick Gibbon's Blast program on Github: GGBlast
 	Philippians 2:3–11

The Jews, inbreeding, and false notions of ‘race’

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