Posted: Dec 23, 2010 9:15 am
Darwinsbulldog wrote:
To play the devil's advocate for a second, I just noticed that Michael Behe has brought out a serious paper:-
http://www.lehigh.edu/~inbios/pdf/Behe/QRB_paper.pdf
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Calilasseia wrote:
In that case, Behe needs to read more scientific papers. Because the literature on de novo gene origination is expansive. This list of papers that I've known about for some time probably represents less than 1% of the available literature:
Thanks for these references, will work through.
As I understand Behe's argument loss of function mutations are by far and away the most common occurrence and where gain of function appears this can most often be explained by reactivation of dormant coding sequences - probably by loss of function of repressor genes. The ID group can then claim that evolution works backwards - getting rid of unnecessary protein encoding rather than creating novel proteins.
I have yet to fully understand the literature on 'de novo' gene origination, but the most recent paper quoted seemed to be at thel level of arguing that because no examples of similar codes had been found to date within related population, they must be de novo. A reasonable start, but I suspect a weight of literature supporting this from multiple different species will probably be necessary to win the argument - perhaps that is already available?