Baraminological Analysis of a Set of Archaea Species Based on Genomic Data

ABSTRACTS

Archie Yaugh*

Archaea have not yet been classified in detail by creationist taxonomy. Also, the Bible does not mention archaea or any other kinds of microbes specifically by name. However, clusters of orthologous genes have been determined for a set of 168 archaeal species. In this study an allversus-all comparison of whole-gene content was performed on these 168 species, and eight groups, or tentative holobaramins, were determined based on their whole-gene content by using a new baraminology method that measures the Jaccard coefficient value. The member species of these holobaramins had a high mean Jaccard coefficient value compared to one another and a low value compared to other species from different archaeal baramins and bacterial taxa. This paper presents a holistic way of measuring species distance as compared to phylogenetic trees based on evolutionary methods. Open reading frames also were predicted for three ancient halophile archaea species (H. hubeiense, H. salifodinae, and H. carlsbadense) and compared to these 168 species. These three species may closely represent the archebaramin, or originally created ancestors, of one of the predicted archaeal holobaramins, which consist of extreme halophilic species. On average, baraminic boundaries could be set at the level of order or class for Archaea. Archaeal baramins can also be characterized by the ecological niche that they exist in, due to special sets of genes that are necessary to help these archaeal species to adapt to these sometimes extreme environmental conditions.