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Wednesday, June 24, 2015

The Ketchum File II: Melba on “The Conspiracy Show” (6-21-15) with Richard Syrett





WARNING: Contains Ketchum Koolaid. Please drink responsibly. Use an informed designated driver.
 

What a perfect radio show for Melba to appear on. While claiming that she’s a victim of a mainstream science “conspiracy” to deny her a place in the sun, Melba Ketchum continues to spin her yarn of having proven the existence of bigfoot. And don’t you know that the likes of sensationalist radio host Richard Syrett drank the Koolaid up. But you’re smarter than that.

First, some of the obvious falsehoods:

1. “The mtDNA is completely human,” she said. Some of the samples were. Others had too many mutations to fall nicely into the human mtDNA phylotree. Any sample with seven or more extra mutations has a less than 1% chance of actually being a real human sample. Several of her samples failed in this. One had 17 extra mutations. Average is only about three in the human population. The most likely explanation is contamination and degradation, which she continues to deny.

2. “The nuclear DNA is a mosaic of unknown and human.” - The three published sequences did not show that. I found that one is a black bear, one is completely human, and one is a dog.

3. “nDNA BLAST gave no hits at all.” - She doesn’t know how to do a proper search. See 2. above. Previously, Melba claimed on Facebook that she got 13 different species hits and still counting, and therefore the sample was unknown. Only a very few relatively short specific gene sequences gave no hits, I found. She claims they’re a hybrid, which would show both human and primate hits, but presented no evidence to support that claim in her paper. She can’t even stick to the same story.

4. “Passed peer review.” - The e-mail which she touts says “Accepted with revisions.” She did not make the requested revisions, but purchased the journal (with Wally Hersom’s funding) instead when the journal cancelled its so called “acceptance.”

Some pure speculations represented as facts:

5. “Crossbreeding is in the historical record. Maidens were stolen and came back with a hybrid baby. Offspring were not always healthy. Others lived normal lives.” - For “historical record” read “legend and mythology.” None of this was documented from personal experience by reputable civilized-world historians in a written language (not nebulous pictographs and totems subject to interpretation).

6. “The human was ‘bred out’ as the weaker species.” - Sample 31 nDNA was completely human. She concluded in her paper that the nDNA showed a “mosaic” pattern of a human hybrid. Furthermore, she continues to campaign against capture or killing because they are “human, just like us“ (she said previously). Just more inconsistencies.

7. “They bury their dead.” - Nobody has ever found verifiable skeletal remains, above or below the ground.  She claimed the government has some.

8. “Some are cannibalistic.” Evidence please?

A few other points. She claimed to have samples of Zana (the wild woman from Russia) and her son Kwit. These were shown by Bryan Sykes of Oxford to be of African origin (haplogroup). I doubt she has samples, and I doubt even more that she will add anything to this.


She claimed to have both samples and funding for her “Giants” study, but has not begun work because she is waiting for more of each. Why hasn’t the work begun on existing samples with existing funding? Even her believer, Chris Noel, asked this question on her Facebook page.

Finally, she continues to label her critics, including me, as “haters.” “The haters don’t give up… So many haters have torn it down,” she says. I don’t know anybody (including me) who has said that they hate Melba Ketchum or her coworkers. Personally, I reserve my hatred for more important people, like Hitler, Stalin, and a few other living dictators. The paper was “torn down” because it contained false conclusions, not because people hate her. 


 “The Galileo Effect?” I don’t think so.

Thursday, June 18, 2015

Ketchum Sample 26 (Justin Smeja’s) Matches Literature Black Bear Data Best


ABSTRACT

Black bear (Ursus americanus) genomic scaffolds from Cahill et al. were converted to a stand-alone PC BLAST™ database, which was queried with the Ketchum et al. Sample 26 (Smeja sample) nDNA sequence. Comparisons to polar bear (Ursus maritimus), giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca), human, and other primates, showed conclusively that Sample 26 is a black bear. Human and other primates were much poorer matches than any of the bears. Sample 26 is a black bear, not a human-primate hybrid as claimed by Ketchum et al.



INTRODUCTION


Since the 2013 paper of Ketchum et al., “Novel North American Hominins…..” [1] was published we have attempted to verify the claim made therein:

“…the species (sasquatch) possesses a novel mosaic pattern of nuclear DNA comprising novel sequences that are related to primates interspersed with sequences that are closely homologous to humans.” 

The Ketchum paper included nDNA sequences for three samples, 26, 31, and 140. Our previous attempts [2] all resulted in the conclusion that Sample 26 (S26) was a bear, recently found to be a black bear. Here we compare the most comprehensive black bear data available to us so far [3] to S26, with the same conclusion.

Black bear nDNA data are relatively sparse in the NCBI databases, especially when compared to the whole genomes of the polar bear and the giant panda, both of which are endangered and of greater conservation interest. The only useful and significant black bear sequence lengths were found in the” Expressed sequence tags” and “RNA reference sequences” databases as previously reported.[4,5] Other useful black bear sequences, ultraconserved elements (UCE), were obtained from the literature [6].

This blog compares S26 to the black bear data of Cahill et al. in reference [3], which was the result of mapping black bear DNA to the 238 longest scaffolds (1Mb or greater in length) in the polar bear reference genome [7]. Coverage was 11.6 X. Their filtering reduced the error rate of each base to less than 1/1000 [3].

COMPUTATIONAL METHODS



S26 nDNA sequence was downloaded from the Sasquatch Genome Project website (see link at right). The black bear file [3], in FASTA format, was downloaded as a 600 Mb compressed gzip file, which was inflated to 2.1 Gb and converted to a stand-alone BLAST™ database for PC, using NCBI software (http://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi?CMD=Web&PAGE_TYPE=BlastDocs&DOC_TYPE=Download). Each database entry was one of the 238 scaffolds mentioned above. The 2.7 Mb S26 nDNA sequence from [1] was queried against this database with PC BLAST™ software (above link). The hit table (converted from a text file to EXCEL®) was sorted by score, and the top 50 hits were examined and compared to the corresponding (in sequence range) best polar bear and giant panda matches to S26 from the NCBI “Reference genomic sequences database” (complete genomes). Additionally, the best human and other primate matches to S26 from the Reference genomic sequences database over the same sequence ranges were compared to the bear hits. All %IDs were computed based on mismatches only, excluding “N” designations, for unspecified bases, and gaps. This permitted the conservative base assignment approach of [3] to be compared consistently to the other matching sequences in our %ID comparisons.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION


Table 1 shows partial results of our sequence comparisons. Within each grouping separated by a blank row, are, top to bottom, each in single row:

S26 match to black bear data in [3]

Best S26 match to polar bear

Best S26 match to giant panda

Best S26 match to human

Best S26 match to other primates (ex-human).

This table presents only the top 15 hits by score. When the top 50 hits were compared, 30 matched black bear best, eight matched polar bear best, 11 were tied between these two bears, and one was tied between polar bear and giant panda. Overall, black bear was the best species match to S26.

All the human and other primate hits were significantly poorer matches than any bear matches. For conserved genes with the highest scores, we found previously [2] that a few percentage points %ID can be the difference between phylogenetic orders (e.g. Carnivora (Ursidae family) vs. Primata), and such was the case here.



CONCLUSION



S26 is a black bear, consistent with our previous conclusions. Human and all primates don’t even come close to matching S26. The Ketchum et al. conclusion above IS WRONG. There are no good human or primate matches to S26 among the 50 highest scores.

Incomplete genomes can be useful in forensic investigations if the scaffolds are sufficiently long and well selected, coverage is good, and base assignment is conservative, as was the case here [3]. The sequence matches here were approximately twice as long as our previous best black bear matches

Beginning with this blog, S26 will no longer be referred to here as “The Smeja Kill” as it does not fit the description of what Justin Smeja (an experienced bear hunter) said he killed. Also, since this sample was collected five weeks later as a hand-sized patch of fur and flesh found under two feet of snow, it therefore has no verifiable connection to the actual “Smeja Kill.” Three other independent laboratory analyses found S26 to be a black bear [8]. Our computational analysis of the original Ketchum nDNA sequence is in agreement with these independent laboratory analyses and our own previous interpretations of the Ketchum et al. sequence [2].

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

We are grateful to James Cahill and Prof. Beth Shapiro of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, UC-Santa Cruz, for making the black bear data from [3] available for this study and also to the Sasquatch Genome Project for making the S26 nDNA sequence available on their website.



CONFLICT OF INTEREST

The author declares no conflict of interest.


REFERENCES

[1] See Sasquatch Genome Project link at right.

[2] See Paper 1 links at right and blogs under “Ketchum DNA Study” tab above.

[3] Cahill J A, et al., Genomic Evidence for Island Population Conversion Resolves Conflicting Theories of Polar Bear Evolution, PLOS Genetics, March 14, 2013, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1003345. 

[4] See on this blog, May 22, 2015, “
New Black Bear Data Show Ketchum Sample 26 (the Smeja Kill) is a Bear.”

[5] See on this blog, June 4, 2015, “RNA Data Show Ketchum Sample 26 - the Smeja Kill - is a Black Bear.” 

[6] See on this blog, June 11, 2015, “New Genetic Markers for Bears Show that Ketchum Sample 26 - the Smeja Sample - is a BLACK BEAR” 

[7] Li B, Zhang G, Willerslev E, Wang J, Wang J (2011) Genomic data from the Polar Bear (Ursus maritimus). Available from:
http://dx.doi.org/10.5524/100008. GigaScience.

[8] See “The Tyler Huggins Report” under Pages at right and on this blog, November 26, 2014, “
Ketchum Sample 26, The Smeja Kill: Independent Lab Reports.”


  
Table 1. Top 15 Black Bear Hits and

Comparisons


Accession

%ID

Length

Start

End

Species

scaffold152

99.58

1681

1655920

1657569

black bear

NW_007907230.1

99.88

1679

1655920

1657569

polar bear

NW_003217478.1

99.59

1688

1655920

1657569

giant panda

NM_001039618.2

95.69

1695

1655921

1657569

human

XM_003254601.2

95.68

1690

1655921

1657569

northern white-

cheecked gibbon


scaffold156

99.92

1279*

189026

190304

black bear

NW_007929448.1

100.00

2139

189028

191141

polar bear

NW_003218202.1

100.00

2141

189026

191141

giant panda

BC038508.1

94.68

2142

189026

191141

human

XM_003951836.1

94.54

2142

189026

191141

chimpanzee

scaffold46

99.34

1359

759948

761288

black bear

NW_007907078.1

99.93

1359

759948

761288

polar bear

NW_003217489.1

99.49

1364

759948

761288

giant panda

NM_001278163.1

97.42

1354

759948

761288

human

XM_003254384.2

97.49

1353

759948

761288

northern white-

cheecked gibbon


scaffold46

100.00

1237

690618

691854

black bear

NW_007907078.1

99.92

1237

690618

691854

polar bear

NW_003217489.1

99.35

1237

690618

691854

giant panda

Z83001.1

98.79

1239

690618

691855

human

NC_006478.3|

98.87

1239

690618

691855

chimpanzee

scaffold180

99.84

1243

326857

328097

black bear

NW_007907318.1

99.69

1299

326857

328153

polar bear

NW_003217713.1

99.00

1300

326857

328153

giant panda

NG_012881.1

95.18

1308

326857

328153

human

NC_018435.1

95.03

1308

326857

328153

gorilla



scaffold180

99.84

1244

349476

350698

black bear

NW_007907318.1

99.92

1244

349476

350698

polar bear

NW_003217713.1

99.36

1243

349476

350698

giant panda

NC_000011.9

94.28

1241

349476

350700

human

NW_002885339.1

94.18

1237

349476

350697

orangutan

scaffold31

99.82

1112

2257274

2258385

black bear

NW_007907111.1

99.73

1112

2257274

2258385

polar bear

NW_003218653.1

99.28

1112

2257274

2258385

giant panda

NC_000011.9

94.96

1112

2257274

2258385

human

NC_013906.1

95.23

1112

2257274

2258385

white-tufted-

ear marmoset


scaffold24

99.66

1174

1835440

1836608

black bear

NW_007907090.1

99.66

1174

1835440

1836608

polar bear

NW_003218271.1

99.06

1174

1835440

1836608

giant panda

NW_004078072.1

94.47

1175

1835440

1836608

human

XM_004052006.1

94.38

1175

1835440

1836608

gorilla

scaffold46

100.00

1115

673215

674328

black bear

NW_007907078.1

100.00

1115

673215

674328

polar bear

NW_003217489.1

99.55

1114

673215

674328

giant panda

AC093262.2

98.30

1117

673215

674328

human

NC_022285.1

98.66

1118

673215

674327

crab-eating

 macaque


scaffold31

100.00

1140

2258573

2259712

black bear

NW_003218653.1

99.57

1173

2258573

2259743

polar bear

NW_007907111.1

99.65

1157

2258573

2259729

giant panda

NG_027813.1

96.37

1156

2258575

2259729

human

DQ977225.1

96.45

1156

2258575

2259729

pygmy

chimpanzee


scaffold137

99.92

1260

1624428

1625637

black bear

NW_007907229.1

99.44

1260

1624428

1625637

polar bear

NW_003218719.1

99.13

1260

1624428

1625637

giant panda

XM_005273811.1

95.71

1374

1624428

1625746

human

NW_010810287.1

95.39

1259

1624428

1625637

golden snub-

nosed monkey


scaffold93

99.83

1151

1508093

1509231

black bear

NW_007907285.1

100.00

1151

1508093

1509231

polar bear

NW_003217421.1

99.04

1151

1508093

1509231

giant panda

AP000609.5

94.59

1147

1508092

1509231

human

XM_003808137.1

94.77

1147

1508090

1509231

chimpanzee

scaffold46

99.91

1141

710570

711698

black bear

NW_007907078.1|

99.91

1141

710570

711698

polar bear

NW_003217489.1

98.16

1140

710570

711698

giant panda

AC_000143.1

95.90

1146

710568

711698

human

NW_002885202.1

96.06

1142

710570

711698

orangutan

scaffold46

99.91

1080

630428

631502

black bear

NW_007907078.1

99.07

1079

630428

631501

polar bear

NW_003218059.1

98.24

1082

630426

631502

giant panda

AC_000143.1

94.38

1085

630427

631501

human

NC_019830.1

94.37

1083

630428

631501

northern white-

cheecked gibbon


scaffold180

100.00

1083

321092

322174

black bear

NW_007907318.1

99.82

1083

321092

322174

polar bear

NW_003217713.1

99.35

1083

321092

322174

giant panda

NG_012881.1

95.87

1090

321092

322174

human

NC_018435.1

96.24

1091

321092

322174

gorilla

Top 15 hits only – top 50 were compared in text. 
%ID is based on mismatches only.  Length is in bp.  Start and End sequence positions refer to S26 sequence.

*   Note shorter sequence length.