New Clues from Man’s Best Friend

Creationists have long argued that mutations could generate diversity within species, as land animals rapidly repopulated the world after the Flood. More recently, a few creationists have suggested that “transposable elements” could have been very important in this post-Flood recovery process. (Transposable elements are segments of DNA that can be moved within or between chromosomes.)

A recent report in the journal Science illustrates how this could happen. Researchers found that the gene that codes for short legs in dachshunds and other short-legged dog breeds is actually a retrogene, a gene generated by a transposable element and then reinserted at another position in the dog’s genome.

This finding adds new light to our understanding of the tools God put in place to help animals repopulate the earth after the Flood. From the original kinds of animals preserved on the Ark, God filled the earth with an amazing variety of creatures! Yet each species of creature is easily identifiable within a created kind. —TCW

*Parker et al., “An Expressed Fgf4 Retrogene Is Associated with Breed-Defining Chondrodysplasia in Domestic Dogs,” Science 325:995–98.