Human and chimpanzee chromosomes are very similar. If published research statements concerning highly selective cherry-picked data are taken at face value, to conclude that human and chimpanzee DNA are 94% (or greater) similarity is still seriously misleading. We need to briefly clarify the structure and nature of telomeres as to what would be expected if such a fusion event occurred. As noted by Marks, it is important to understand that since only four DNA bases exist in all genomes, any two random stretches of DNA of the same length will always be about 25% identical. The DNA sequence at this location is the supposed evidence of a head-to-head telomeric fusion of two acrocentric chromosomes. I’m not sure what you mean by “restate my case”, so I thought I’d just go through each point as you present it in your post: “This paradigm is based primarily on cherry-picked highly homologous DNA and protein sequences”. This is thought to account for the discrepancy in chromosome numbers between humans and apes, who have 46 and 48 chromosomes, respectively (Yunis and Prakash 1982). [iv] Tomkins, J. and Bergman, J., Telomeres: implications for aging and evidence for intelligent design, J. Interestingly, human chromosomes 2, 16, 21 and 22 were peppered with the ‘fusion site’ sequence over the length of their entire euchromatic landscape. The rest of the genome involves many other DNA code types that includes for regulatory function, nuclear matrix attachment features, nuclear arrangement and packaging, and a whole diversity of two-and three-dimensional structures. Funnily enough, I’m actually writing from hospital at the moment: I’m almost halfway through a stem cell transplant after being diagnosed with AML a few months back. This site is located in a pericentric region (meaning it is close to the present functional centromere) on the long arm of human chromosome 2. Regardless of the type of phylogenetically informative data chosen for analysis, the evolutionary history of humans is reconstructed differently with different sets of data.”[viii]. Could you be so kind as to restate it for me and I’ll restudy the chromosome fusion. One of the most common arguments for human evolution is the hypothetical head-to-head fusion of two small acrocentric ape-like chromosomes to form human chromosome 2. What’s I find interesting is how a quick Google search for “35% daffodil DNA” shows many hits that consider this a fact. In most cases, the authors only report the ‘best of the best’ data—a form of dogma-driven bioinformatic cherry picking. If you are anything like me, your first question is what do all the colors mean? My “Is 1% a Myth?” post goes into detail about why his new figure is incorrect. During that time, I was traveling back and forth between Big Spring, Tx and Dallas because my youngest daughter had a tumor in her cheekbone. What is interesting is not that two chromosomes were joined to form one but why this splicing occurred. Purely for curiosity, I tried to find a source for this in Jonathan Mark’s book. The naming system of chimpanzee chromosomes ‘2A’ and ‘2B’ was first used by McConkey, E.H., Orthologous numbering of great ape and human chromosomes is essential for comparative genomics, Cytogenet Genome Research105:157–158, 2004. Telomeres: implications for aging and evidence for intelligent design. [vi], In retrospect, it appears that the early reports of human–chimp DNA similarity, based on reassociation kinetics, has set a ‘98 to 99% Gold Standard’ whereby the results of subsequent DNA sequence-based research conformed accordingly, even though the buried and obfuscated data related to these reports said otherwise. (2012). The authors of the 1982 Science paper had no hesitancy in declaring that “the telomeric fusion of chromosomes 2p and 2q accounts for the reduction of the 24 pairs of chromosomes … more similar than 25%. The extreme diversity of informational code in the genome also occurs, not only in multiple abstract layers of extreme informational complexity, but also in both two-and three-dimensional formats (topology-based information) that are interactive with linear-based sequence information. Unless you were there, who can really say how and why humans diverged from their close relatives in chromosome number?