“The reason a bike lock works,” explains Meyer, “is that there are vastly more ways of arranging those numeric characters that will keep the lock closed than there are that will open the lock.”
Most bicycle locks have four dials with ten digits. So for a thief to steal the bike, he would have to guess correctly from among 10,000 possible combinations. No easy task.
But what about DNA? Well, in experiments Axe conducted at Cambridge, he found that for a DNA sequence generating a short protein just 150 amino acids in length, for every 1 workable arrangement of amino acids, there are 10 to the 77th possible unworkable amino acid arrangements. Using the bicycle lock analogy, that’s a lock with 77 dials containing 10 digits.
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/10/eric_metaxas_on_1100261.html
I believe this is what Mung has been talking about. I asked Mung:
How many goes do you get? How many bacteria in the earth’s soil?
Mung replies:
Not nearly enough.
I feel this is interesting enough for an OP as it seems to finally touch upon what IDers think the designer actually does that can be investigated scientifically.
For example, if we find in a population a protein that is different to the version in an ancestral population but which still works, the by (their) definition, that is prima facie evidence of the designer at work.
Perhaps we can then take the population with the original protein, enclose it in our most sensitive equipment and attempt to detect the designers actions when it “solves the bike lock” and finds the new protein and somehow makes the required adjustment?
If I were an ID supporter these are exactly the sorts of experiments I’d be proposing, and with money on the table (Templeton) I continue to be surprised at the lack of such endeavours. At the very least they can rule out some levels of possible designer interaction at the macroscopic level.
And Mung, I’d be interested in knowing how many would be enough?
Earlier during his direct testimony, Behe had argued that a computer simulation of evolution he performed with Snoke shows that evolution is not likely to produce certain complex biochemical systems. Under cross examination however, Behe was forced to agree that “the number of prokaryotes in 1 ton of soil are 7 orders of magnitude higher than the population [it would take] to produce the disulfide bond” and that “it’s entirely possible that something that couldn’t be produced in the lab in two years… could be produced over three and half billion years.”
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dover/day12am.html
I find it so despicable. IDists always quote(mine) evolutionary biologists misrepresenting them. They know full well who has the scientific credibility so they try to make it look like the very people they oppose support their fallacious claims. It’s both so unbelievably dishonest and stupid…
Allan Miller,
Lynches paper maxes out a 6 changes. Hardly enough to create a novel protein. If you think I am missing something please read the paper first.
dazz,
Yet you quote mined Lynches paper. I don’t think you intended to, but you left out the range of mutations covered which is mission critical for large scale evolutionary change. I think quote mining is often a result of misunderstanding.
Really? Care to back that up with a proper quote? What “range of mutations” is missing here that makes evolution implausible for the know mechanisms?
Since I’m not familiar with Lynch or this paper, perhaps you could say whether or not Lynch himself thinks the key evolutionary mechanisms have not yet been discovered, or whether he thinks known mechanisms explain observed changes in the time available.
Very briefly, are you using Lynch’s paper as evidence to support a position Lynch is not known to hold?
Allan Miller,
I am not looking at their viewpoint, I am looking at the data they surfaced in their paper and seeing if it can support large scale evolutionary changes like the evolution of a flagellar motor. If you think it can show me your analysis. The data coming for evolutionary sympathetic people I think is significant. The data in both cases is showing lots of mutations in order to find function.
I think you are missing something. I even have a suspicion as to what it is. But rather than speculate, would you care to be a little more specific about why you draw this conclusion from this paper.
LMFAO, you quoted a paper that actually provides data to show that complex evolutionary changes are well within the capabilities of the known mechanisms. Now you move the goal posts to the flagella again. Do all scientific papers need to mention the fucking flagella and show how it evolved to make their case or what? You IDiots are ridiculous
DNA_Jock,
http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/27/6/1404/F5.large.jpg
Here it shows the population sizes and time for 2,3,5 adaptive changes. I believe these large numbers come from Lynch’s mathematical model trying to work through the genome. If these numbers are real how would they support a large scale specie change?
Waa!
Sure. The flagellum or the eye. Either one works.
And if they did, then it would need to be the eye of the flagellum, right Mungy?
The Figure Legend for the figure you linked to (Fig. 5) states:
Mean number of generations until establishment for complex adaptive alleles involving d = 2, 3, 4, and 5 sites (denoted in the right margin) for the case in which the intermediate states are deleterious
Yup. That was what I suspected you had missed.
Most proteins were formed in unicellular organisms with large populations and short generation times. You seem to think body plans, speciation… all require tons of new proteins and whatnot. That’s demonstrably false. Even then, complex changes understood as those requiring multiple mutations are clearly possible in multicellular species in reasonable time-spans. That’s the conclusion of the very paper you cited. You say the data provided by evolutionary biologists is relevant but you misrepresent it. Just one 10^6 population of multicellular organisms can produce those changes in tens of millions of years. Consider all the multicellular populations in the last 3 billion years. How many of those impossible adaptations could have happened in those multicellular populations alone?
Get out of my thread. Which is a shame, as you basically said what started it.
But if you can’t act like an adult you can’t play adult games.
colewd,
You first. Explain why my reasoning with respect to accessing long-string spaces from shorter ones by duplication and modularity is faulty.
I had another skim of the Lynch paper. It has nothing to do with the combinatorial issue. I’m not a population geneticist (I doubt you understand the math either) but this is not an issue for the origination of new variants (ie the explorability of combinatorial space neighbourhoods from any current point), but their establishment in the population once originated.
colewd said,
Of course, because god created everything in 6 days, so if 6 sites is not enough to evolve a crocoduck protein in one single fixation event then it’s game over, evolution craps out and we need to start over, right?
Lynch, The Rate of Estalishment of Complex Adaptations
Even leaving aside the point that it’s not got much to do with the structure and connectivity of genetic space (and accusations of quote mining ha ha ha!), I don’t see how this helps the ID case.
Yeah, I also posted that yesterday, but apparently colewd thinks a new “alelle” with all the necessary mutations needs to arise and fixate to produce a fully formed flagellum in a single adaptation event. He also seems to suggest that because Lynch looked at up to 6 sites, then that’s where evolution “maxes out” and more complex adaptations are out of the question. Amusing stuff
ID sympathisers have a common blind spot IMO – an unwillingness to think in the dimension of time. If establishment of a set of changes has a limit, then the establishment of any number of changes greater than that limit is impossible. Game over. Call in the designer, who just kinda knows what to do.
Perhaps design advocates can tell us how many steps separate any given protein sequence from its ancestor.
Given that a significant percentage of random sequences have some function.
That one is easy. None. Zero. Proteins don’t have ancestors.
What percentage is a significant percentage? Can you put some actual numbers to that statement?
Out of the total of all possible sequences, how many have some function?
If you don’t want me to act like you do perhaps you should stop acting like you do.
Something that would raise the total of functional DNA above 10 percent.
0.001 percent is not significant in that context.
So instead of saying thousands, why not state the percentage of the genome?
If they aren’t poofed from the brow of Zeus, they have ancestors.
Allan Miller,
I think those that still support current evolutionary mechanisms have a blind side for how large sequential space is and how it makes time irrelevant.
colewd,
For the thousandth time, the size of the sequential space is totally irrelevant (it’s analogous to the surface area of my glacier).
If you think otherwise, make your case. Without committing the Hoyle’s fallacy, that is.
I think
what you may be missingwhere you are going wrong* is thinking of evolution as a search for one needle in a large haystack. Evolutionary processes stumble across needles that work. And all evidence points to the haystack not being short on needles.ETA*
But it’s a very large haystack. So “short on needles” is relative.
But DNA_Jock would say that the size of the haystack is irrelevant. You see, we don’t have to search the whole haystack to find a needle. We just need to search a small portion of the haystack where we already know a needle already exists.
If search space is not sparse in solutions, you can stumble across them without having to traverse the whole space.
not “would say”, rather “has said” in fact.
True dat.
What an idiotic thing to say.
The size of the haystack is irrelevant. It’s the density of needles in the stack, and their accessibility, that matters.
What if we had a really powerful magnet?
It’s really a rather lame analogy, isn’t it?
Alan Fox,
The paper I cited has lots of needles in the haystack. The problem is the haystack is larger then the universe. Bacterial flagellum 4^40000 of genome space.
And yet there are synonyms for any working sequence just one mutation away from any functional sequence, and completely new functions within a few functional mutations of any working sequence.
The number of working sequences is also hyper-astronomical.
petrushka,
If you look at Hunt’s paper he has a density range of 10^10 to 10^64 per 100aa. Best case 1 needle per haystack area the size of New York vs 1 needle per haystack area the size of the milky way galaxy.
And yet there is almost always a synonymous or equivalent sequence just one mutation away from any working sequence. And a short divergence path linking modern proteins with an ancestral sequence.
colewd,
I know exactly how big protein space is – at least, I know how to calculate it. I admit, I am blind to the relevance of the size of the space, just as I would be blind to the relevance of the size of the universe in relation to the chance of chucking a rock and hitting a human.
I can see I am just going to type arguments, and you are just going to repeat the mantra “but … but it’s big!”. I know which of us has the simpler task.
Keefe & Szostak, Functional proteins from a random-sequence library
https://molbio.mgh.harvard.edu/szostakweb/publications/Szostak_pdfs/Keefe_Szostak_Nature_01.pdf
Mung,
Where, confronted with the vastness of protein space, would a designer look to locate said start point?
colewd,
So you can’t find a needle in such an area by blind search, but you do KNOW where the needle is located. How?
The Designer has access to a fully indexed Library of Babel.
petrushka,
Yes, this is true with enzymes and demonstrated in the Thornton lab. The problem is when you need to cross over to a unique function like a motor protein or a spliceosome component with very different sequences and 5x or more longer than Hunts model protein.
Allan Miller,
I have no fn idea. Maybe Mung has one:-)
Good thing evolution never “has to” do Axian things.
That’s the kind of thing a designer might try to, but it never happens.
Evolution doesn’t try to do things and doesn’t try to make things and doesn’t foresee needs.
colewd, why not cut out the bullshit and just present us with a historical sequence change, in detail, that required the intervention of a designer?
colewd,
So if you critique evolution for its failure to answer your pseudo-problem, what does fn ID bring to the table?
colewd,
You were going to read Arrival of the Fittest, and had actually started it if I recall correctly.
What happened?
The statements you’re making about the size of sequence space seem to indicate that you either didn’t read the book or didn’t understand it.
The word hyperastronomical comes to mind.
Yes, Mung, sequence space is huuuuuuge. But colewd is completely wrong that this poses an insurmountable problem for “current evolutionary mechanisms”:
Did you read the book (and understand it), Mung? I know you’ve quoted from it.