Darwin, o homem que teve a maior ideia que toda a humanidade já teve assim escreveu sobre o valor dos falsos fatos na ciência, e sua sugestão deve ser mais seguida pelos cientistas evolucionistas:
“Falsos fatos são altamente prejudiciais para o progresso da ciência, pois frequentemente eles duram muito tempo; mas as falsas opiniões, se apoiadas por alguma evidência, causam pouco dano, pois todo mundo toma um prazer salutar em provar a sua falsidade; e quando isso feito, um caminho para o erro é fechado e a estrada para a verdade, frequentemente, é aberta ao mesmo tempo.”
“False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for everyone takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness; and when this is done, one path towards error is closed and the road to truth is often at the same time opened.” Darwin in Descent of Man (1871, p. 385)
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FALSO FATO 3:
Large-Scale Taxonomic Profiling of Eukaryotic Model Organisms: A Comparison of Orthologous Proteins Encoded by the Human, Fly, Nematode, and Yeast Genomes
-Author Affiliations
1AxyS Pharmaceuticals, Inc., La Jolla, California 92037 USA; 2Department of Biological Sciences, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida 33620 USA; 3NemaPharm, Inc., Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139 USA
Abstract
Comparisons of DNA and protein sequences between humans and model organisms, including the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, and the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, are a significant source of information about the function of human genes and proteins in both normal and disease states. Important questions regarding cross-species sequence comparison remain unanswered, including (1) the fraction of the metabolic, signaling, and regulatory pathways that is shared by humans and the various model organisms; and (2) the validity of functional inferences based on sequence homology. We addressed these questions by analyzing the available fractions of human, fly, nematode, and yeast genomes for orthologous protein-coding genes, applying strict criteria to distinguish between candidate orthologous and paralogous proteins. Forty-two quartets of proteins could be identified as candidate orthologs. Twenty-four Drosophila protein sequences were more similar to their human orthologs than the corresponding nematode proteins. Analysis of sequence substitutions and evolutionary distances in this data set revealed that most C. elegans genes are evolving more rapidly than Drosophila genes, suggesting that unequal evolutionary rates may contribute to the differences in similarity to human protein sequences. The available fraction of Drosophila proteins appears to lack representatives of many protein families and domains, reflecting the relative paucity of genomic data from this species.
Footnotes
↵4 Present address: Genos Biosciences, Inc., La Jolla, California 92037 USA.
↵5 Corresponding author.
E-MAIL arcady@axyspharm.com; FAX (619) 452-6653.
Received December 15, 1997.
Accepted April 21, 1998.
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press
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