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28. Ibid.
29. Makalowski, “Not Junk After All,” 1246–47.
30. Ibid.
31. Collins, The Language of God, pg. 139.
32. Karl Giberson and Francis Collins, The Language of Science and Faith:
Straight Answers to Genuine Questions (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press,
2011), 43.
33. Private correspondence with Dr. Miller.
34. See for example D. Zheng and M. B. Gerstein, “The ambiguous boundary
between genes and pseudogenes: the dead rise up, or do they?,” Trends in Genetics,
23 (May, 2007): 219–24; S. Hirotsune et al., “An expressed pseudogene regulates the
messenger-RNA stability of its homologous coding gene,” Nature, 423 (May 1, 2003):
91–96; O. H. Tam et al., “Pseudogene-derived small interfering RNAs regulate gene
expression in mouse oocytes,” Nature, 453 (May 22, 2008): 534– 38; D. Pain et al.,
Multiple Retropseudogenes from Pluripotent Cell-specific Gene Expression Indicates
a Potential Signature for
Novel Gene Identification,” The Journal of Biological Chemistry, 280 (February
25, 2005):6265–68; J. Zhang et al., “NANOGP8 is a retrogene expressed in cancers,”
FEBS Journal, 273 (2006): 1723– 30.
35. Evgeniy S. Balakirev and Francisco J. Ayala, “Pseudogenes, Are They ‘Junk’
or Functional DNA?,” Annual Review of Genetics, 37 (2003): 123 –51.
36. Ryan Charles Pink, Kate Wicks, Daniel Paul Caley, Emma Kathleen Punch,
Laura Jacobs, and David Paul Francisco Carter, “Pseudogenes: Pseudo-functional or
key regulators in health and disease?,” RNA, 17 (2011): 792– 98.
37. Collins acknowledges that the caspase-12 gene produces a full-fledged
protein in chimps, so this is not a case where humans share a non-functional
stretch of DNA with another species. In fact, the gene is not always a pseudogene
in humans. According to a paper in The American Journal of Human Genetics,28% of
people in sub-Saharan Africa have a functioning copy of the caspase-12 gene, as do
lower percentages in some other human populations. Collins ignores the obvious
possibility that caspase-12 was originally designed to produce a functional protein
in humans but was rendered noncoding bya mutation in some human populations at some
point the recent past. See Yali Xue, Allan Daly, BryndisYngvadottir, Mengning Liu,
Graham Coop, Yuseob Kim, Pardis Sabeti, Yuan Chen, Jim Stalker, Elizabeth Huckle,
John Burton, Steven Leonard, Jane Rogers, and Chris Tyler-Smith, “Spread of an
Inactive Form of Caspase-12 in Humans Is Due to Recent Positive Selection,” The
American Journal of Human Genetics, 78 (April, 2006): 659–70.
38. M. Lamkanfi, M. Kalai, and P. Vandenabeele, “Caspase-12: an overview,”
Cell Death and Differentiation, 11: (2004)365– 68.
39. Sug Hyung Lee, Christian Stehlik, and John C. Reed, “COP, a Caspase
Recruitment Domain-containing Protein and Inhibitor of Caspase-1 Activation