Re: Functional proteins from a random library

From: Terry M. Gray (grayt@lamar.colostate.edu)
Date: Fri Apr 06 2001 - 16:12:19 EDT

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    Paul,

    The point IS NOT that we have a naturally occuring evolutionary environment
    here. No one would deny that we have a highly artificial system! I don't
    quite understand why you are pointing that out to us. It's totally obvious.

    The point IS, however, that apparently coming up with a functional protein
    from random sequences is pretty easy (statistically, that is). In other
    words there's NOT a lot of specified information required to get a folded
    protein that does something. There's other evidence that points to this
    same thing, e.g. the lambda repressor experiments of Bob Sauer (just to
    acknowledge that Mike Behe interprets these experiments in completely the
    opposite fashion as Sauer or the rest of the biochemistry community). Other
    mutational studies in other systems (e.g. T4 lysozyme) as well as
    comparison of paralogous and orthologous proteins point to the same thing.

    Then, of course, once it folds (even a little bit) and does something (even
    a little bit) then there is fodder for natural selection. So much for
    irreducible complexity!

    TG

    _________________
    Terry M. Gray, Ph.D., Computer Support Scientist
    Chemistry Department, Colorado State University
    Fort Collins, Colorado 80523
    grayt@lamar.colostate.edu http://www.chm.colostate.edu/~grayt/
    phone: 970-491-7003 fax: 970-491-1801



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