[asa] Orfans and Paul Nelson

Paul Nelson has been making much of the claim that Orfans somehow are
a problem for evolutionary theory and thus by extension evidence of
design. However, the facts show that Orfans hardly provide the
evidence against evolutionary theory, instead Ian Musgrave shows how
lacking Nelson's understanding of Orfans really is

http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/11/nelson_vs_mycop.html

Yet another instance where one's ignorance is used to infer
'intelligent design' erroneously?

Paul Nelson has developed a liking for ORFans, sequences of DNA that
appear to code for proteins, but have (or had) no currently
detectable homology to other genes. He feels they represent a
difficulty for “Darwinian” accounts of gene origin and common
descent. I have previously discussed why ORFans present no challenge
to modern evolutionary theory, Dr. Nelson even showed up in the
discussion.

More recently, he has been promoting ORFans again, without indicating
he has learnt anything at all from our discussion. In particular, in
a recent article in the Christian Post he claims that 28% of the
genes in Mycoplasma genitalium are ORFans.

     Nearly one-third of the protein-coding genes of mycoplasma, the
simplest “free-living thing” up until last year, are unknown genes or
ORFans.

Unfortunately for him, the actual number is zero. Yes, that’s right,
zero. How did he get it so wrong?

Let me repeat that again. The number of ORFans in Mycoplasma genitalium

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Received on Tue Nov 21 00:34:14 2006