I understand he isn’t YEC, and didn’t think you were implying he is. But my points stand regardless. They’re two points typically avoided by IDers, regardless of how loudly they proclaim themselves to be not YEC, and totally onboard with science. If they’re onboard with science, then where is the actual science?
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This is one part of the solution. There is more too. It turns out that function is rather dense in sequence space, so it is pretty normal (though not always predictable, and therefore serendipitous) that a sequence for one function is very close to a sequence for another function. It is common to start with one function, and then switch to another. This is so common that we have a name for it: “exaptation” Many proteins even have mutliple functions for just this reason: it is called “moonlighting.”
Exactly.
Moreover, even if Doug is off by 20 orders of magnitude, cancer would be impossible. Viruses would not be able to adapt. Evolving nylonase would have never been possible. And several direct tests to determine of the proportion of functional sequences (e.g. phage display) in sequence space would be wrong.
Disagree if you must, but that is why we think that Doug is unambiguously wrong.
Of course mainstream science can be wrong. But this isn’t either/or, and you don’t get points for being "right’ in science. You have to make a coherent, evidence-based case, following the rules of science. That hasn’t happened yet in the ID movement. Maybe it can. We just haven’t seen it yet.
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[quote=“Billcole, post:212, topic:9418”]
I agree with Cornelius here and don’t think it has anything to do with the bible. Proteins are organized by a sequence and long sequences have essentially an infinite variety of possible outcomes. [/quote]
No, it’s not infinite. Anyone can do the math.
Interesting. You said 21 hours ago that you didn’t understand Dennis’s argument:
Which is it? You do realize that it’s not a mere argument or analogy, correct?
Did you read the paper? How can you know it to be contradictory if you don’t understand Dennis’s position?
Doug is off 50-60 orders of magnitude. Cornelius is wrong.
It STUDIES only one, very rare, temperature-sensitive mutant. Axe tries to generalize this to all nonmutant proteins. Can you justify his choice of a mutant specifically chosen to be at the very edge of thermal stability?
What about them? Do you know that one of them (Abl) completely falsifies your claim that “specific binding requires specific sequences”?
[quote]There is, however, a real possibility that mainstream science is wrong here. What a fascinating story
[/quote]You don’t appear to be fascinated enough to look at the evidence and understand Dennis’s (and my) point…
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[quote=“Cornelius_Hunter, post:201, topic:9418”]
For these vertebrate immune system antibodies, a relatively few residues are substituted,[/quote]
Correct, which greatly constrains them to a tiny slice of nonrandom sequence space…
Large relative to what, exactly? It’s virtually nothing relative to Axe’s extrapolation.
Here’s where you are missing the point by a mile.
The primary B-cell library is only 10^7 - 10^11 different antibody sequences. From those, we get not one, but multiple cases of binding to a single antigen. Moreover (this is the important point you are eliding), that initial, unselected binding is functional, because it is sufficient to trigger proliferation of the reactive B-cell.
That’s all empirical, no inference or extrapolation.
So Axe’s extrapolation to wild-type proteins from a carefully-chosen single mutant protein of 10^77 is off by a factor of far more than 10^50.
[quote]This is light years away from the hypothetical, glacial, evolutionary process. Your continued appeal to the antibody search problem is not helping your case.
[/quote]You’re missing the point that we observe multiple cases of functional binding to ANY antigen, before ANY selection from a relatively tiny library.
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Hi George
I agree with Cornelius here and don’t think it has anything to do with the bible. Proteins are organized by a sequence and long sequences have essentially an infinite variety of possible outcomes.
The solution Dennis and Joshua have to this is lots of ways that you can arrange the amino acids and still get function.
Doug Axe’s paper is contradictory to Dennis position. If Doug is even off 10 orders of magnitude in his calculations then Cornelius is right.
Axe’s paper talks about bacterial proteins. But what about human nuclear proteins that are very mutation sensitive (cancer)
Joshua is right that Cornelius does not represent main stream science. There is, however, a real possibility that mainstream science is wrong here. What a fascinating story 
Repeating your comment doesn’t help, since Joshua and I have already responded to it.
21 hours ago you didn’t understand Dennis. What changed?
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Please don’t hesitate to cite the evidence, then.
Here’s a recent assessment of the primary plus memory (therefore an overcount) antibody repertoire: just 3.7 x 10^7 from deep sequencing from 3 human subjects:
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I did not understand a specific statement he made and wanted clarification before I discussed it. This am I got clarification reading through his discussion between Dennis and Cornelius. I understand now the statement was about proving lots of function in protein space. Ben, lets agree to disagree at this point. I think Joshua is right about taking a break.
I think this discussion has reached the end of its natural life. I’m closing the thread. As always, anyone is welcome to start new conversations. You can even start a new topic based on any of these posts by clicking on the timestamp and then “+ new topic.”