NUMT, pronounced “new might,” is an acronym for “nuclear mitochondrial DNA” segment which describes a transposition of any type of cytoplasmic mitochondrial DNA into the nuclear genome of eukaryotic organisms. For example, a third of mitochondria in present in Chromosome 1 of humans. This post is to test the evolution vs designer in action, for the formation of new species.

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in His [own] image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

Gen 1:26-27

I used BLAST to find all matching NUMT sequences in human genome from RSRS and filtered matching sequences that are 60 bases above 95% and above. I then used CLUSTALW, the multisequence alignment tool to get consensus sequence. I did the same for chimp using chimp reference mtDNA on chimp genome to get consensus mtDNA sequence. RSRS is 91% identical to Chimp reference mtDNA. However, these consensus sequences are both 92% identical to each other. I did the same procedure for 90-95% identical NUMT sequences with 120 bases, 87-90% with 180 bases, 95-100% with 40-120 bases in length. All these made the consensus sequence between human and chimp to be 93% identical to each other.

As you can see, I aligned human mtDNA with NUMT from human chromosomes which becomes 2% closer to aligned chimp mtDNA using NUMT from chimp chromosomes. I never used another chimp NUMT to align human genome or vice versa. I always used human mtDNA with human genome and chimp mtDNA with chimp genome.

However, if I try to align less then 85% identical NUMT longer sequences on both chimp and human, comparing the consensus sequence for both reduces to 92% identical, which could indicate mutations on NUMT itself.

I also created a consensus sequence using both human and chimp 93% identical sequences, by manually aligning them to match. The result was a consensus sequence that is 94% identical to human rCRS and chimp reference mtDNA.

Hence, undeniably, this experiment seems to prove Human-Chimp divergence from a common ancestor using NUMTs.

Or is it?

In computer science and software engineering, re-usability is the use of existing assets in some form within the software product development process. Don’t repeat yourself (DRY) is a principle of software development in software engineering, aimed at reducing repetition of information of all kinds, especially useful in multi-tier architectures. No software developer would build something from scratch when most of the required functions, libraries, code is already available to reuse.

MtDNA functionality hasn’t changed from chimp to humans. I haven’t seen a single developer till date who changes a function and rewrites it from scratch when the existing function works as expected. So, why would the Designer change the already designed mtDNA, when it’s functionality is exactly what is required? Wouldn’t that be reinventing the wheel? Hence, mtDNA does not need to be changed significantly in humans.

Are there any evidence for design of organisms between species? Yes there is.

Mammalian NUMT insertion is non-random¹. They seems to be occurring not only in a non-random way, the authors had discovered that the inferred insertion points of NUMTs have a strong tendency to have high-predicted DNA curvature, occur immediately adjacent to A + T oligomers and preferentially insert into introns.

Hazkani-Covo et al. (7) reconstructed the approximate pre-insertion sequence of 37 human-specific NUMTs by multiply aligning them with their flanks to human mtDNA and the chimpanzee nuclear genome. They observed that deletion of nuclear DNA did not occur in 54% of those events, in contrast to a nearly 100% rate observed in two experimental systems using V(D)J (91,92) and I-SceI-induced DSBs (93–96). In light of this, they hypothesized that NUMTs serve as filler DNA which mitigates the tendency of short stretches of nuclear DNA to be lost during DSB repair.

We do not present evidence to contradict their hypothesis, but note the logical possibility that repair without deletion may not be caused by the use of filler DNA, but rather that the kind of DSBs which commonly occur in primate germ line cells may have an inherent tendency to allow repair without deletion of nuclear material. In other words, the perceived connection to NUMTs may simply be due to the fact that the DSBs which create NUMTs afford reconstructing the details of their repair. Thus, the characteristics of NUMT insertion sites observed here may reflect mammalian germ-line DSBs in general.¹

So, what’s going on? Fillers? If they are fillers, then the instructions are already present or coded and these fillers are filled in. Hence, the mtDNA fragments are used to fill the non-instruction positions.

The chromosome 2 and the Y chromosome of humans and chimps are the best examples and evidence themselves. There is not a single NUMT at Chromosome 2 fusion site and Chromosome Y Heterochromatic region, which Chimpanzees don’t have. This can only happen if the new instructions present in those two regions are part of a new design built by a Master Programmer. Hence, NUMT isn’t an ongoing activity, but rather, it marks a new design and a release of a new ‘product’ (or species).

Conclusion

• NUMTs does show the same mtDNA template being used for both humans and chimps.
• The non-random NUMTs are actually the mtDNA fragments over which genetic code for chromosomes are written.
• There is not a single NUMT in Chromosome 2 fusion site and Chromosome Y Heterochromatic region which are non-existent in chimpanzees.
• NUMTs actually proves the blueprint of existing species being designed and built as a new species.

This does not mean theistic evolution but a Designer in action. Any Designer, plans in advance, gathers all information like what libraries will be required and how to build, does the design properly, builds them exactly to specifications or what He had planned, go live to production and finally supports it. So, we can get raise an incident to the Developer (pray to God) to get direct support for anything that went wrong in our body.

¹ Retrotransposons At Each. (2020) Mammalian NUMT insertion is non-random – PubMed. Retrieved December 31, 2020, from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22761406/