DNA Coding

[zoned out]

lol, how was lunch?

anyhow, i doubt that there would be a coincidence like this by accident. i think that the chinese alligator does mean something.

someone (srry, forgot the name) suggested that it may be dna from a flood infected elite, since elites are reptile like, but i doubt that, because all of the server information is from the war the forerunners were fighting with the flood, and elites probably weren't around, right? maybe i'm just stupid...[/quote]

It was muy bueno... Tuna salad sandwich ftw!

Anyways, the elites SHOULD have been around back then. Humanity was around then, we were just very, very primitive. It is fully possible that it's a Flood-infected Elite. I doubt it though, since if the Flood got onto the Elites home planet, I'm betting there wouldn't be any Elites left (unless the Forerunner had the Elites DNA recorded, already, of course)[/quote]

Right, I see you point that elites probably weren't around then because the infomation from the servers would have been

around the time that the Forerunners were warring with the flood. But then again would we have found chinese alligators

back then also? We would have found alligators but not the chinese alligator specifically since they would have not evolved

by then. Just a thought to ponder upon.

[mtwain]

The genetic code we were given was for the Chinese Alligator's mitochondria, correct? If I'm not mistaken, mitochondrial DNA doesn't change very quickly... has anyone tried checking this code against human mitochondrial DNA? The message was definately intended for a human audience, whatever that message is -- it makes sense that if it's to be compared to any genetic code, it would be human.

[Kurk]

I'm pritt sure that it's not human.
Human DNA has the code GATTACA and i'm fairly sure that this code sequence does not contain it.
I'm a fairly meger bio student so any other more adept forumers should feel free to correct me

[Ibeechu]

I'm pritt sure that it's not human.
Human DNA has the code GATTACA and i'm fairly sure that this code sequence does not contain it.
I'm a fairly meger bio student so any other more adept forumers should feel free to correct me

Um, Gattaca was a 1997 movie staring Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke. However, the title IS made up of the letters for the four nucleotide bases in DNA.

I compared sample1000101 to human mtDNA and they are completely different.

[pocky]

what if the Elite are just an evolved chinese alligator. could the elite be from earth?

[beelzebub]

The genetic code we were given was for the Chinese Alligator's mitochondria, correct? If I'm not mistaken, mitochondrial DNA doesn't change very quickly... has anyone tried checking this code against human mitochondrial DNA? The message was definately intended for a human audience, whatever that message is -- it makes sense that if it's to be compared to any genetic code, it would be human.

This is wrong. Mutation rate in the mitochondrion is much higher than in the rest of the genome, in mammals for sure and probably in most other vertebrates. At any rate I compared this sample sequence against the American Alligator's mitochondrial genome (available here), and it only has 83% similarity. It's definitely built from the Chinese Alligator sequence. Nothing else in the database is even close.

[kudo43]

Apparently there is very little genetic diversity within the mitochondrial DNA in the Chinese Alligator population b/c the wild population was almost destroyed...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entre ... stractPlus

Also, remember if you ask Jonas Volman what he used to be a professor of, it was genetics...

[sassafras]

This is wrong. Mutation rate in the mitochondrion is much higher than in the rest of the genome, in mammals for sure and probably in most other vertebrates. At any rate I compared this sample sequence against the American Alligator's mitochondrial genome (available here), and it only has 83% similarity. It's definitely built from the Chinese Alligator sequence. Nothing else in the database is even close.

Not to start a flame war here, but mtDNA is much more highly conserved than chromosomal DNA. We use mtDNA to tell the relationships of vastly different species when a traditional chromosomal analysis would be completely irrelevant. You have to understand that the bulk of the Eukaryotic genome is actually non-coding or relic genes that are nonfunctional (called pseudogenes). Because of the high improbability of DNA in this region actually being significant, many more changes occur here that are not corrected through time because they have no selective advantage, and therefore Darwinian Natural Selection does not come into play and these mutations accrue rapidly.

mtDNA on the other hand is more bacterial in makeup, meaning that almost the whole loop strand is a coding gene of some sore. Because it is so highly functional, mutations in mtDNA are ~99.5% of the time, deleterious to the organism and therefore they get "weeded out" quickly. Consequently, mtDNA is much more conserved throughout time than chromosomal DNA.

What am I getting at? Well, an 83% correlation between human mtDNA and alligator mtDNA is not out of bounds, it is about right, considering that branch of evolution is probably close to 120 million years ago (when the squamosa diverged into what is currently mamallia and reptilia). So my point? This isn't human in any way, but it could very well also not be crocodile. A 20-40 bp difference is significant in mtDNA. That's not random variation, that's sister species or sister taxa at least.

...Besides, I think this is just like the star chart. They took it from an actual source, changed it a little so it would be unique to the game, and then we find the original and obsess about that significance until we get another clue.

[zoned out]

what if the Elite are just an evolved chinese alligator. could the elite be from earth?

Well before we go anywhere with this elites are related to the chinese alligators theory we have to remember that we don't actually know what elites are. We don't know if they are avian, reptilian, mammalian, or something else all together. So lets just stick to seeing what the chinese alligator has to do with the flood.

[DavFlamerock]

...Besides, I think this is just like the star chart. They took it from an actual source, changed it a little so it would be unique to the game, and then we find the original and obsess about that significance until we get another clue.

I have to agree with you here.