ist to the orderly progression of species as determined by molecular homologies; so many in fact that I think the exception, the quirks, may carry the more important message. 19
Professor Donald Boulter, of Durham University's Biological Sciences Department, announced in 1980 that the results of his comparisons of amino-acid sequences conflicted with the assumptions of the theory of evolution:
Initial results obtained by using amino acid sequences of vertebrate cytochrome c led to an outline of the phylogeny of the vertebrates which was similar to that derived from fossil evidence. This very encouraging start was soon to change to a less satisfactory one as the results from other proteins were assembled. Amino acid sequence data sets of different proteins did not always lend themselves to the same phylogenetic interpretation or agree with the accepted phylogeny obtained mainly from fossil or morphological characters.20
An article headed "Genome Data Shake the Tree of Life," written by Elizabeth Pennisi and published in the journal Science, revealed that analyses at the molecular level had shaken the evolutionists' so-called evolutionary tree and that the results were contradictory:
Since then, he [evolutionist Carl Woese] and others have used rRNA comparisons to construct a "tree of life," showing the evolutionary relationships of a wide variety of organisms, both big and small. According to this rRNA-based tree, billions of years ago a universal common ancestor gave rise to the two microbial branches, the archaea and bacteria (collectively called prokarya). Later, the archaea gave rise to the eukarya. But the newly sequenced microbial genomes and comparisons with eukaryotic genomes such as yeast have been throwing this neat picture into disarray, raising doubts about the classification of all of life.21
Pennisi stated that the bacterium Aquifex aeolicus, which lives at a temperature close to boiling point and whose DNA sequence has been unravelled, made concrete the problems facing molecular evolutionists. Robert Feldman, a molecular geneticist and one of the scientists involved in the study of the bacterium, summed up his results at the Conference on Microbial Genome held at Hilton Head, North Carolina, in February 1998: "You get different phylogenetic placements based on what genes are used."22
The article also summarized some of the data which emerged from the research:
The gene for a protein called FtsY, which helps control cell division, placed Aquifex close to the common soil microbe Bacillus subtilus, even though the two supposedly come from different branches of the bacterial tree. Even worse, a gene encoding an enzyme needed for the synthesis of the amino acid tryptophan linked Aquifex with the archaea. That wasn't the only anomaly the Diversa team found regarding the archaea, however. Their analysis of the gene encoding the enzyme CTP synthetase, which helps make the building blocks of DNA, spread the archaea out among all the other organisms evaluated, suggesting that they may not be as coherent and distinct a group as the rRNA tree implies.23
According to the tree based on ribosomal RNA, the evolutionary ancestor split into two branches, archaea and bacteria. Later still, eukarya developed from archaea. Yet, recently sequenced microbial genomes and comparisons with eukaryotic genomes such as yeast conflict with this claim and represent yet another dilemma for evolutionists.
Another scientist whose views were cited in Pennisi's article was the Ohio State University microbiologist John Reeve. He said:
Before, people tended to equate rRNA trees with the [life history] tree of the organism. From the whole genomes, you very quickly come across [genes] that don't agree with the rRNA tree.24
Similarities Do Not Mean An Evolutionary Relationship
Evolutionists suggest a so-called evolutionary relationship between living things on the basis of certain genetic or morphological similarities between them. However, research in recent years has shown that genetic and morphological studies do not represent evidence for the 