ORFans, De Novo genes, and Taxonomically-Restricted Genes

[benkirk (Benjamin Kirk)]

@vjtorley

Writing that post was a turning point for me, and I’d like to publicly thank Glenn Williamson for his kind assistance. I concluded as follows: “It seems to me that any claims that humans have a large number of ‘de novo’ genes with no counterparts in the DNA of chimpanzees and other apes should be treated with extreme caution. In fact, I wouldn’t bet on our having any de novo protein-coding genes having no counterparts in apes…”

Hello Vincent,
That’s an impressive post at UD. I’m impressed that you are open-minded enough to run the sequence analyses for yourself.

I wonder if you’d be willing to expand on comment 551 you made:

“Sorry, but you’re overlooking something here. The real question is whether an organism containing no other proteins apart from 50-amino-acid peptides that have some minimally selectable function would be a viable organism in the first place.”

My question for you is, against what would such an organism have to compete?