Hi, Preston.
Is this a reference to what you're referring to?
nature science update, 3/5/01
lifelines: Missing links made simple
http://www.nature.com/nsu/010308/010308-5.html
Todd S. Greene
###### Preston Garrison, 4/5/01 10:39 PM ######
For those who might be interested in the question of how rare are
functional protein sequences among the huge number of possible
sequences, there is a breakthrough paper in this week's Nature. The
authors have solved a number of technical problems to create a library
of ~10^13 mRNAs encoding proteins 80 amino acids long. This is a much
larger library than is obtainable by other approaches in this field.
They have arranged it so that after in vitro translation into protein,
the mRNA and protein remain connected to each other, enabling the
association of a protein function with an amplifyable RNA sequence.
Using this system they found 4 sequence classes of ATP binding proteins
in their library, none of which seems to be related to known biological
sequences. The highest affinity binding was 100 nM, which is quite
respectable.
This is only the beginning of what should be very interesting results
from this system. If it turns out to be possible to get lots of
functional proteins out of libraries this size, it will not be good for
Mr. Dembski's argument. (Although I guess he can then join Mr. Behe in
saying that you can't get multiprotein complexes.)
(So far as I know, none of this work was done by physicists. Sorry,
Moorad ;)
Preston Garrison, Ph.D.
Instructor
UTHSCSA-Biochem. Dept. Insert the usual disclaimers here.
MSC 7760
7703 Floyd Curl Dr.
San Antonio, TX 78229-3900
garrisonp@uthscsa.edu
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