When faced with the fact that evolving a particular protein by chance alone would be extremely unlikely, evolutionists respond that proteins could have evolved gradually from other, less functional ones. However, research indicates that the ratio of functional to non-functional proteins is extremelyaround 1 to \( 10^{63} \) for short proteins. 1 Since scientists estimate that “only” \( 10^{40} \) organisms have ever lived on the earth, 2 and thus, there have been at most \( 10^{40} \) inherited mutations (very generously 3 4). As a result, there has not been enough time, even on an evolutionary timescale, for a single functional protein to evolve. And, obviously, evolution requires so much more than just a single small protein. 5
Worse yet, odds of generating a protein with a stable fold for sequences of 150 amino acids are merely \( 10^74 \). 6 Additionally, though stable folds are required for functional proteins, not all proteins with stable folds are necessarily functional. 7 This data demonstrates that the idea of proteins evolving gradually from other proteins does not make sense. 8 Because the odds are so rare of a protein being functional, this demonstrates that proteins cannot possibly evolve from one functional protein slowly into another. Each functional protein is like an island isolated in a vast ocean of non-functional proteins, and gradual evolution cannot cross between islands gradually. Any gradual evolutionary path will end up breaking a functional protein, not enhancing it. 9
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Sources
Meyer, S. C. (2013). Darwin's Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life And the Case for Intelligent Design. New York: HarperOne.
Notes
- Meyer, 2013, p. 180: “Based on one set of mutagenesis experiments, Sauer and his colleagues estimated the ratio of functional to nonfunctional amino-acid sequences at about 1 to 10^63 for a short protein of 92 amino acids in length.”
p. 183: “In the same way, Sauer established that though many different combinations of amino acids will produce roughly the same protein structure and function, the sequences capable of producing these functional outcomes are still extremely rare. He showed that for every functional 92-amino-acid sequence there are roughly another \( 10^{63} \) nonfunctional sequences of the same length. To put that ratio in perspective, the probability of attaining a correct sequence by random search would roughly equal the probability of a blind spaceman finding a single marked atom by chance among all the atoms in the Milky Way galaxy—on its face clearly not a likely outcome.” ↩
- Meyer, 2013, p. 203 ↩
- Meyer, 2013, p. 203: “This was an extremely generous assumption. Since mutations have to be quite rare for life to survive, most bacterial cells inherit an exact copy of their parent’s DNA. Furthermore, the ones that differ from their parents are likely to carry a mutation that has already occurred many times in other cells. For these reasons, the actual number of new sequences sampled in the history of life is much lower than the total number of bacterial cells that have existed.” ↩
- Meyer, 2013, p. 205: “Second, bacteria are by far the most common type of organism included in Axe’s estimate of the total number of organisms that have lived on earth. Yet no one thinks that Cambrian animals evolved directly from bacteria. Nor does anyone think that the putative multicellular ancestors of the Cambrian forms would have been anywhere near as abundant as the bacterial populations that Axe used as the main basis of his estimate.” ↩
- Meyer, 2013, p. 205 ↩
- Meyer, 2013, p. 200: directed mutagenesis experiments, [Axe] determined that ratio to be a vanishingly small 1 in \( 10^{74} \). In other words, for sequences 150 amino acids long, only 1 in \( 10^{74} \) sequences will be capable of folding into a stable protein.”
… “A telling conclusion follows from his experimental data: The probability of any given mutational trial generating (or “finding”) a specific functional protein among all the possible 150 residue amino-acid sequences is 1 chance in 10^77—that is, one chance in one hundred thousand, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion.” ↩
- Meyer, 2013, p. 200 ↩
- Meyer, 2013, p. 196 ↩
- Meyer, 2013, p. 207 ↩