How can messenger RNA tell us about the changes between species?
When you have a common ancestor, and then you develop different species, there are many theories of speciation. One of them is the simple geographical separation of groups. But eventually, as two lineages evolve away from each other, you are going to get differences of all kinds. There may be gains of genes, there may be losses of genes, there may be changes in specific sequences of genes and changes in the amino acids, changes in their function, and there may be changes in messenger RNA. And given that human evolution occurred over maybe six million years and took place in many steps, the fossil evidence clearly says that there were many, many steps along the way. My own feeling is that all of these theories are going to turn out to be right, that we’re going to find examples of each, and it’s all of them working together over a very long period of time that have resulted in the present situation, and of course I should immediately say that genes are not everything, and that without t
