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Current animal and plant classification models are fairly subjective in how they areset up. Scientists had hoped that the newer science of molecular biology would providemore objectivity to classification systems.
 
It was hoped that comparisons of thenucleotides of DNA or RNA sequences or of amino acid sequences in proteins wouldyield more consistent results that could be used to classify organisms with a highdegree of accuracy. However, according to an article in the January 1998 issue of 
Science
:
 Animal relationships derived from these new molecular data sometimes are very different from those implied by older, classical evaluations of morphology. Reconciling these differences is a central challenge for evolutionary biologists at present. Growing evidence suggests that phylogenies of animal phyla constructed by the analysis of 18S rRNA sequences may not be as accurate as originally thought. Inaccuracies may occur in molecular phylogenies for a variety of reasons.Prior to analysis, the sequences of corresponding genes from each animal must be placed in register (aligned) with each other so that homologous sites within eachsequence can be compared. However, sequence divergences may be sufficiently largethat unambiguous alignments cannot be achieved, and different alignments may lead to
 
different inferred relationships. Additionally, the data are often sufficiently noisy that there may be a lack of strong statistical support for important groupings.
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 The article thendiscusses a figuredetailed similaritiesand differences in 18srRNA sequenceswhich show thatmollusks (scallops) aremore closely related todeuterostomes (seaurchins) thanarthropods (brineshrimp). Of course, this is not too surprising. Intuitively, a scallop seems more like asea urchin than a shrimp. So, the 82% correlation between the scallop and sea urchinis not surprising. However, in this light it is surprising is that a tarantula (also anarthropod) has a 92% correlation with the scallop. Here we have two differentarthropods, a shrimp and an tarantula. How can a scallop be much more related to onetype of arthropod and much less related to the other type of arthropod? This troublingthought led the authors of the
Science
article to remark:
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