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Scientists Ignored This DNA Pattern for DECADES! | The Creation Podcast: Episode 114
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- [00:06]
A
If you could stretch out the DNA in just one of your cells, it would be six feet long. And yet it fits inside a space smaller than the tip of a needle and knows exactly what to do to make you you. The secret is how it's folded. Inside each cell, DNA is arranged in a stunning three dimensional structure that helps control how life functions. This intricate 3D design determines how genes are expressed, how the body adapts to change, and what makes each person unique. This level of precision and order doesn't happen by accident. It points to a creator whose design reaches deep into every detail of life. I'm your host, Mary Claire, and welcome to the Creation Podcast where we explore how science confirmed scripture. So today we're joined by Dr. Jeff Tompkins. Dr. Tompkins, thank you so much for being on the show today.
- [00:58]
B
It's great to be here, thanks.
- [00:59]
A
Of course. So, Dr. Tompkins, you've spent years studying genetics and genome structures, publishing on topics like the 3D genome and human chimp DNA comparisons. So maybe for viewers who aren't really familiar with your background, could you share a little bit about your expertise and how it lends to today's topic?
- [01:21]
B
Sure. So I got my PhD in genetics at Clemson University and then I did a postdoctoral fellowship at a genomics institute and I had a lot of success there, got a lot of grant money, did a lot of research, and I was actually promoted to a non tenure track faculty member at the Genomics Institute. And then the guy that was actually heading up the institute left and went to another university. And so I'm like, what am I supposed to do now? So I started applying for jobs at other universities and Virginia Tech offered me a job and then Clemson counter offered. So I stayed at Clemson and they made me a tenure track faculty member. And so I took over the Genomics Institute as the director. And so I did that for a number of years. I was probably a professor at Clemson in the department of genetics and biochemistry for about 10 years. And I studied the genomes of a lot of different plants, marine creatures, insects, bacteria, just a lot of different creatures. So anything was open game if it had DNA in it. And so my background was pretty broad as far as the diversity of life that I did research with.
- [02:46]
A
Yeah, it sounds like, it sounds like you've had just a interesting and wild journey and that you're well knowledged, very knowledgeable about all of these different facts that we're going to talk about today. So before we dive into the details about today's topics, let's just start with a Nice generic overview. So in our early biology classes, most of us learned that DNA is a double helix. But so many of us haven't even heard about what a 3D genome or what that might be. So could you share a little bit about a 3D genome, just briefly explain that and explain why it's so important in genetics today?
- [03:22]
B
Yeah, sure. So, you know, when we study DNA, we actually study DNA in a linear way. We look at the, at the sequence of a gene or a section of the genome. And so we look at that in a linear fashion. But inside of a cell, the DNA is actually packaged in there in a very specific way in three dimensions. And even in bacterial genomes like E. Coli, the DNA assumes this elaborate star shaped structure in the bacteria. And of course, bacteria don't have a nucleus in what we call eukaryotes, or creatures with a nucleus, which can be a single celled creature like a yeast, or multicellular creatures like fungi and plants, animals, humans, the DNA is inside our nucleus and it has to be very specifically packaged within there to not only fit inside there, as you mentioned, because in a human cell we have six feet of DNA. So how do you get that in this teeny little nucleus inside a cell? Well, it has to be packaged so it will fit in there, actually. And not only packaged, but it has to fit in there three dimensionally so that it can be functional, so that specific genes can be turned on and function according to the needs of that cell. And so the three dimensional structure of the genome is actually different in say, a lung cell compared to a brain cell, compared to a liver cell compared to a muscle cell. It's literally different in every single cell tissue in your body. And it has to be that way because in a specific tissue you have certain types of genes that have to function together and to be all turned on to function as a muscle cell or a brain cell or a liver cell, whatever. And so all of those genes have to be positioned in such a way so that they can be turned on and functioned actually as a group, because genes function in networks. You don't have a gene just out there as a lone ranger. So just as computers function in networks, say on the Internet, genes function together in networks in the genome. And so everything has to be just right in that cell for all these genes to function properly or you're going to have dysfunction and a lot of problems.
- [05:56]
A
Yeah, I was gonna say it sounds like it's incredibly precise, just all of it.
- [06:00]
B
Oh, exactly. And so, you know, when I grew up, my father had A sailboat. It was about a 32 foot sailboat, so it was pretty good size. And so we used to go sailing probably at least, you know, two, three times a month. And on a sailboat, you've got piles of ropes everywhere.
- [06:20]
A
Right.
- [06:21]
B
And these ropes are forever getting in knots and getting tangled up. And. And it's like my father called it the evil nature of ropes, because they were always ending up in knots and always ending up all discombobulated and knotted up. And so if you weren't careful about how you place the ropes in these little piles on the sailboat, everything would end up getting all messed up. And so when you look at the genome, we have 3 billion base pairs of DNA in the human genome, like you said, 6ft long. And you actually have 2 genomes in every cell. You have one from your mother, one from your father. So you have actually 6 billion base pairs of DNA. And so how is all this DNA not getting all knotted up and all discombobulated? And so when you think of that, it's just the complexity is absolutely amazing. I mean, it was a major ordeal for my father and I to keep all these ropes on a sailboat from getting knotted up. And that's nothing compared to what we have in the genome.
- [07:30]
A
Yeah.
- [07:31]
B
And so not only is everything in the genome just where it should be, but it's not getting all knotted up, it's not getting all discombobulated. Everything is exactly where it's supposed to be. Because the machinery that God placed in the nucleus of a cell is basically keeping everything in the right place, where it should be, according to the needs of that cell. And it's also dynamic because when the needs of that cell changes, even, say, with daytime and nighttime. So in our bodies, we have clocks. They're called the circadian clock or the circadian rhythm. So they've even found that the genome will change in a cell or in a tissue according to what time of day it is, whether it's the middle of the day and you're active, or maybe you're just getting up in the morning, or maybe you're sleeping at night. Your genome, the 3D genome, will actually change according to time as well as what tissue it's in.
- [08:28]
A
That's amazing. So one thing that I'm super interested in is how do scientists actually research these 3D genomes? What is it that you do?
- [08:37]
B
Well, we kind of need to back up a little bit and talk about something called transcription factories.
- [08:44]
A
Okay.
- [08:46]
B
As I mentioned previously, genes do not function as lone rangers. They function in networks. What's very interesting is that in the nucleus of a cell you literally have genes that are all what we call co expressed or expressed together. They're literally brought together and they can be on different chromosomes. In fact, they're all brought together at this one point in the nucleus called a transcription factory. So in other words, you could have 10 genes and a lot of them could be on different chromosomes, but yet loops from those chromosomes are brought into this transcription factory. And so all these genes are brought together and they're in very close proximity to one another. And so there are techniques called confirmation capture techniques, where, where basically you can cross link all of this DNA that's working together, all these genes on these chromosome loops that are working together. You can get those to basically bind to each other using chemicals and other techniques. And then you can basically pull those bound up segments of DNA that had genes that were functioning together in that transcription factory. You can pull, pull those out. And then I don't want to get deep into the technology because it's very complicated, but you can pull those out, they're all captured together because they were functioning together. And then you can sequence those DNA segments and literally figure out which genes in the genome were involved in that transcription factory.
- [10:25]
A
That's really interesting.
- [10:27]
B
And so there's literally hundreds to thousands of these transcription factories functioning in a nucleus.
- [10:34]
A
Sure. That takes a while to do, right?
- [10:36]
B
Yeah, it takes a lot of wet lab chemistry and work. It takes a lot of what we call bioinformatics, where you're using computer systems to basically process all of this DNA sequence information and bring it all together and have it make sense. And so it takes a lot of money too. So these labs that do this kind of work are very large. There's multiple postdocs and then PhD students, technicians, all working together on this project. And in fact, you may even have multiple labs across the country working on a single project together. So when I was working in academia, I would typically work with other labs. So for instance, I had one project where I worked on a species of wildflower. And so I had one collaborator at Duke University and another collaborator at a university in California. And so that's how these big projects work.
- [11:37]
A
Wow, that's super cool. I do want to get back to talking about how genes themselves function. So I'm curious, what are chromosome territories and tads and why do they matter for the way that genes function?
- [11:52]
B
Okay. Chromosome territories are very interesting. So one thing you can do is that you can develop these tags that are very specific to a chromosome, and they fluoresce. You can get them to fluoresce in a specific color. And so scientists have done what's called chromosome painting. So they can paint a specific chromosome with these tags, paint another chromosome with these tags, then they can artificially add colors to these chromosomes. You can literally see that all the different chromosomes, for example, in humans, they've done this in fibroblast cells. You can see they all occupy a very specific territory in the nucleus. Maybe you can show a picture of that in the video. I have one in the article that we're actually talking about. It's really cool.
- [12:50]
A
That would be really cool. I would love to be able to show that.
- [12:52]
B
You can see all these. These lit up chromosomes in different colors occupying specific regions in a nucleus. Now that's a chromosome territory. A tad or a tad is a topically associated domain. And so that's part of a chromosome that's typically about a million bases of a chromosome, which also occupies a very specific part of the nucleus as well. And typically these domains are ones that are active. So the DNA outside of these domains that isn't active is very packaged and kind of scrunched up, as it were. But these areas are open and active, and that's where you get the next level. These chromosome loops that we were talking about coming out of these tads, these chromosome loops coming out of these tads into these transcription factories and being involved in gene expression.
- [13:52]
A
Gotcha. Okay, I want to talk now a little bit about you and some of your work that you've done at icr. So I know you've written a lot about genetics, obviously, since you've been here. Notably, you published Human Origins, which we will definitely link down below. So that way our viewers are able to read that. But we talked about this a little bit earlier. There's another aspect to consider, and that's time. So can you break down what the 4D genome is?
- [14:20]
B
Yeah, the 4D genome is actually a big effort right now in the biomedical research community. So they first began looking at the 3D genome and noticing how different it was in different kinds of cells. And, you know, biomedically, we want to know what causes diabetes, cancer, heart disease, these things. So looking at the 3D genome in respect to human health is very important. There's a lot of funding out there for that from the government, particularly the nih. And so as far as time goes, that's very important too. As I mentioned before, the cells in, say, a liver tissue or kidney tissue or whatever are doing different types of Physiology at different times during the day. So even when you say waking up from a night's sleep, there's a whole process that's involved in actually waking up that's time based because your body is switching over from being asleep and shutting a lot of stuff down into being awake. And so things start changing there in 3D. And then as you get going and you're active during the day, things change again according to the physiology that's that's required for you being active during the day, then as you're winding down at night and you're going to sleep and so on. So that's what time is when you connect that to the 3D genome. Because not only is the 3D genome different in different kinds of cells or tissues in the body, but it's also different based on time. And so that's another important factor that's being researched as well and relating that to human health and all these kinds of health aspects that are important to understanding.
- [16:14]
A
Yeah. So some evolutionary scientists are now recognizing that the 3D and the 4D genome structure has a much bigger impact on how genes function and adapt than they previously thought. So I'm going to read this verbatim. A scientist named Eun Jin Lee and colleagues wrote, previous evolutionary models of duplicate gene evolution have overlooked the pivotal role of the genome architecture. So Dr. Tompkins, how do you interpret these findings and what insights do they give you about the genome's complexity and organization from a creation science perspective?
- [16:53]
B
Well, it's very interesting because evolutionists will look at the genome and they'll see gene families. So gene families have a lot of genes in them that have some similarity. But these gene families have very specific function and purpose because they were created to be similar to each other. But evolutionists look at it and say, oh, they just evolved from the same gene and they just kind of had baby genes and blah, blah, blah. But now they're finding out that everything in the 3D genome has a very specific place and purpose. So you just can't have all this random material being produced and thinking that it's not going to affect the 3D genome structure. In fact, there is a lot of the 3D genome structure that's dependent upon areas of the genome that do not have protein coding genes in them. Evolutionists once called those areas junk DNA because they didn't know what it did.
- [17:58]
A
Right.
- [17:59]
B
Well, now it turns out that this so called junk DNA is actually doing a lot of important things, and one of them is allowing that 3D genome structure to actually happen. And to take place. And so whether they're looking at duplicated genes or areas of the genome that don't have protein coding genes, or that maybe even have a lot of repetitive areas and things like these, you have to now look at that in light of the 3D genome and see what is that area's purpose in regard to that.
- [18:32]
A
Yeah. Okay, Dr. Tompkins, now I want to move on to those radical differences between humans and chimps. You have done a lot of research in this regard. So you studied the genetic differences between chimps and humans and even wrote a book on this concept titled, conveniently, Chimpanzees, Chimps and Humans, which our viewers can find linked in the description on this podcast. But evolutionary models often claim that our DNA is about 98 to 99% similar. But your research suggests something quite different. So what did you find when you compared the 3D genome structure in humans and chimps?
- [19:12]
B
Well, it was quite a long journey in researching that, actually. It took about 10 years to really come up with some solid answers. And there's some other videos I've done on that.
- [19:23]
A
Right, we can add those as well.
- [19:25]
B
You can, yeah, add some links to those. But anyways, the bottom line was my most recent research, using the best DNA sequence data that was available, using these new technologies that are considerably more accurate and that avoid a lot of what we call human DNA contamination in the mix, which has been a big problem in genome sequencing projects. But anyways, with this new technology, this new DNA sequence for the chimp genome, not that long ago, roughly about five years ago, when that data became available, I began comparing those chimpanzee DNA sequences to human. And I discovered that at best, the chimpanzee genome was only 84% similar to human.
- [20:14]
A
That's very different than 98 to 99.
- [20:16]
B
Yeah. And so that's just what I could match up. That didn't include the DNA sequence that was present in human, absent in chimp, present in chimp, absent in human, or regions that were so different that we couldn't even line them up. The algorithm couldn't even line them up together. So it doesn't even include all of that aspect. And so at best, the genomes, the chimp genome was only 84% similar to human on average. Now, there are regions of the chimpanzee genome where you have some common genes associated with just basic cellular metabolism, where those protein coding regions were very similar in between humans and chimps, but they're also pretty similar in between humans and rabbits and mice and things other Mammals anyways. But just looking at the genome as a whole, they were radically more different than evolutionists have tried to put out there anyway. I would say at best 84%, but I would say probably it's much less than that. If we could somehow, at some point in the future, factor in all these other aspects that I just mentioned. So why is that important? Well, because according to the statistical evolutionary models of human evolution, based on the amount of the mutation rates in humans and in chimpanzees, they claim that we shared a common ancestor with chimps. These are theoretical models now, and they're calibrated with deep evolutionary time. These are not practical models based on how fast populations grow and things like that. These are theoretical. So based on that, they need close to a 99% DNA similarity for their statistical models of evolution to work. And so based on that, they claim I've seen estimates anywhere from five to, say, 15 million years ago. They claim we shared a common ancestor with chimpanzees. So anyways, that's why they need close to a 99% similarity for these evolutionary hypothetical models to even work to begin with. So when you start throwing in 84%, that doesn't really help. That doesn't help the model, that doesn't help the system to work very well.
- [22:45]
A
Yeah. So kind of piggybacking off of like you were talking about, the importance of why we need to know that human and chimp DNA is so radically different. What do these differences reveal about God's unique design of human beings?
- [23:02]
B
Right. So on the sixth day of creation, the last thing that was created after the land animals was humans. And God said, let us make man in our image. So humans are created in the image of God. We're not related to any other creature, much less apes or chimpanzees. So humans were the pinnacle of creation. Not only that, but they're completely separate from everything else that was created because they're made in the image of God. And that has a lot of importance theologically as to what happened with Adam and Eve, how they fell into sin in the garden, why we have evil and corruption in the world, why a redeemer had to come, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and die for our sins. And so anyways, really everything goes back to Genesis. And when we talk about Jesus Christ and salvation, it goes back to Adam and Eve created in the image of God.
- [24:04]
A
Yes. So to kind of wrap this episode up, I want to talk a little bit about contrasting worldviews. So creation versus evolution. When it comes to interpreting discoveries like the 3D genome, there are two very different starting points. One assumes long ages and random processes, and the other starts with intelligent design and scripture. So why do you think mainstream science often overlooks and downplays complex adaptive genome features that don't fit these evolutionary expectations?
- [24:39]
B
Well, it's very interesting. That's an interesting question, and I'm going to give you a somewhat complicated answer.
- [24:46]
A
All right, let's hear it.
- [24:47]
B
So out there in the research community, you have the biomedical research community, and these are people that are actually looking for answers to human disease, genetic defects, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, you know, genetic defects that happen to affect the baby during development and cause problems. So you have the biomedical community out there and they're actually looking at what causes all of these different health problems and possibly how we can correct those. I wouldn't call these people, even though they're probably, most of them are indoctrinated in evolution. They're really not out there studying evolution. They're studying how the genome is structured and how that relates to human health. And that's a very large community because there's lots of money, grant funding, money from the federal government pouring into this biomedical research community. And so they're not necessarily studying evolution, but they're creating a lot of problems for these theoretical evolutionists that are not these biomedical scientists looking to actually solve human health problems. They're out there pontificating about evolution and their theoretical evolution evolutionists, and there's not that many of them, to be quite honest with you, because they don't get tons of grant money like these other guys get, but yet they have to deal with all these discoveries that debunk evolution. And what's really crazy is some of these theoretical evolutionists will even call these biomedical guys creationists just because they discovered something that debunks evolution when they're not even creationists. You know, they're just secular scientists out there doing their biomedical research. And so it's not really a simple answer necessarily. But I will say that everything that is now coming out of the biomedical research community and other research communities and other creatures that don't involve humans, all of these discoveries are creating huge problems for evolution because they're revealing nothing but just absolutely total complexity that nearly seems infinite. Yeah, I mean, we can't even hardly wrap our minds around what we're discovering now. It is absolutely so complex that it's just mind boggling. And typically a lot of scientists are very compartmentalized. In other words, they only really study this little pathway, this little biochemical pathway, or just this set of enzymes or this particular response or this adaptive response, this. And so they're not even really looking at the big picture. They're just looking at their little box that they research in. And so yet they're still evolutionists. And just my experience in interacting with a lot of scientists in the academic community when I was working in it, and then when I still visit universities and do talks and talk to students and professors and things, they literally feel like, well, yeah, we'll just let someone else handle that. I'm still gonna believe the party line, so to speak. Or I'm still gonna buy into what I call the religion of evolution.
- [28:12]
A
Yeah.
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B
But, you know, hopefully someone will figure it out. But I'm focused on my own thing. I need to get a paycheck here.
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A
Right.
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B
Don't we all feed my family, you know? And so I'm just gonna keep focusing on my little area. But yet I'm still gonna believe in evolution anyways. So, yeah, it's kind of a complex question actually. And there's a lot of factors involved in there philosophically and so on.
- [28:37]
A
I mean, definitely, exactly. Like you said, it is incredibly complex. And this is really deep science. Like the topic that we have covered today is deep science, but that also means it's deeply personal as well. So the truth that our genomes are intentionally structured and adaptable says something powerful about God's design in every person. So as a final question, why do you think the average listener today should care about the 3D genome?
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B
Well, I think they should care about it because it proves that there's a creator.
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A
Right.
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B
That this creator is omniscient, he's omnipotent. Because what our mighty God has created is so complex that we're just barely beginning to scratch the surface on the complexity. And what we're seeing is mind blowing at this point. And we've barely gotten into it.
- [29:29]
A
Yeah, so scratched the surface.
- [29:30]
B
Right, right. I mean, the molecular biology age, if you want to call it that, really is not that old. Maybe 50 years at the most, since we've really been digging into the function of DNA and the deep inner workings of the cell. And so we're barely. And the deeper we get, the more complex it gets, the more offshoots of different research areas and sub areas are being created. And so it's so absolutely amazing at this point what we're seeing in the genome and in the cell. It has to. The only logical conclusion is that just an absolutely incredible infinite creator who Is all powerful. All knowing created this.
- [30:23]
A
Yeah, that's the only thing that really makes sense.
- [30:26]
B
Right.
- [30:27]
A
Well, Dr. Tompkins, thank you so much for helping us unpack this incredibly complex and honestly, fascinating topic.
- [30:34]
B
It's very complex, even for me when I read these papers. It's really amazing material. But the techniques they use are very complex. But what they're discovering is absolutely mind blowing, really is.
- [30:51]
A
So what we've learned today is that our genome isn't a random string of letters. It's an incredibly ordered 3D masterpiece that moves, responds, and adapts by design. From the smallest oyster to human beings made in God's image, the every living thing carries evidence of his intentional craftsmanship. So before we wrap up, Dr. Tompkins, can you share three main points that you would like listeners to take away from today's message?
- [31:18]
B
Yeah, I think the three main points are the genome is not this linear, random, you know, confused mess of DNA, six feet of it. Actually, as we noted, in every human cell, it is specifically ordered and placed three dimensionally according to the type of cell, according to the process that that cell is involved in, according to the tissue that cell is in, according to what time of day it is. And so the main thing I want to really, really get out there is that this is so complex.
- [31:56]
A
Right.
- [31:57]
B
It's really, it's difficult to even get our minds around at this point how complex that is. And we're talking about 3 billion letters of DNA in the human genome. And as I said previously, you have two different genomes in every cell. You have 3 billion letters from your mother and 3 billion from your father. So you have actually 6 billion. And so there's so much information there on these chromosomes. And how do you keep them from getting all knotted up and tied up? You think about the machinery that's in the nucleus that keeps all of these chromosomes exactly where they're supposed to be. That unpackages the DNA so that it can be accessible to the machinery of the cell that turns these genes off and on and makes RNA from these genes. When you think about the amount of machinery that's involved in keeping all of that ordered and three dimensionally correct and everything functioning the way it's supposed to, and every single piece of every single chromosome exactly where it's supposed to be in that cell. According to that, it's absolutely amazing. I guess the overriding theme is that this points directly to a powerful, all knowing, all powerful creator.
- [33:18]
A
Yeah. And that's the most important thing that anybody can gather from this episode. If you enjoyed today's episode hit like and subscribe and share it with someone who loves learning how science confirms scripture. And if you'd like to support the work we're doing here at icr, you can join our members and patrons community. Their names are scrolling on the screen right now. And one of our viewers actually had a question for you, Dr. Tompkins. So Lecter Evangelista asked, were the cells of Adam and Eve at the moment of their creation, the very first human cells, the original source of human genetic information and the first complete pair of human genomes?
- [33:58]
B
Yes, absolutely. Adam and Eve contained pristine DNA in their genomes. There was absolutely no mutations in there. Since then, we have had mutations enter the human genome, which is responsible for all these various diseases and things that we now deal with, and different kinds of heart disease and diabetes, things like this.
- [34:21]
A
I assume that's probably because of the fall, right?
- [34:24]
B
Absolutely. So when Adam and Eve fell, sin and corruption entered into the world and their genomes. At that point or from that point forward into history, something we call genetic entropy started happening. Okay, so in other words, our genomes are not evolving and getting better. I see and see, that totally flies in the face of evolution, right?
- [34:53]
A
It does.
- [34:54]
B
The information in our genomes is slowly being corrupted over time. There are systems in the genome that actually surveil and monitor mutations and then fix them, but still some of these mutations will creep in and end up in subsequent generations. So our genomes are not getting better. Evolutionists would like to claim. Oh, all this amazing information just keeps building up in the genome and randomly popping out of all these regions that are neutrally evolving, and it's just absolute nonsense. So our genomes are not evolving and getting better. They're being slowly corrupted over time. And we call that genetic entropy. Actually, Dr. John Sanford has actually modeled this using the evolutionists own paradigms and showing that even granting them the benefit of the doubt and using their own genetic models, our genome is actually not getting better. It's actually being corrupted over time. And actually there's been lots of clinical studies sequencing the genomes of thousands of people all over North America, Europe, Africa, that basically show that these mutations are there and they're real. We are not genetically getting better.
- [36:17]
A
Yeah, yeah, it sounds that way. But Adam and Eve were the first full set.
- [36:22]
B
They were absolutely the original. Yes, absolutely. And all of the variation that we now see in humans, all the different people groups and things, are actually built into Adam and Eve at the beginning. Wow.
- [36:34]
A
Yeah, that's just so cool. And just something I've never like considered before or thought through. So thank you so much for taking the time to answer that for us today, Dr. Tompkins.
- [36:43]
B
All right, thank you.
- [36:44]
A
And thank you, viewers, for watching. We'll see you next time on the Creation Plan podcast.