A large amount of hypotheticals can be found in Plasmodium :-) Jürgen - Jürgen Bosch Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute 615 North Wolfe Street, W8708 Baltimore, MD 21205 Phone: +1-410-614-4742 Lab: +1-410-614-4894 Fax: +1-410-955-3655 http://web.mac.com/bosch_lab/
On Sep 8, 2010, at 9:29 PM, Ed Pozharski wrote: > David is absolutely right. There is no design, Jacob, we just > instinctively look for it everywhere because seeking purpose instead of > understanding mechanism conveys advantage to our species. Your > rationale is flawed - just because it is imaginable (with caveats) does > not mean that it must exist on this particular planet. Complementary, > not every feature observed has functional significance (in part because > biomacromolecules are structurally redundant). > > On Wed, 2010-09-08 at 09:04 -0400, David Schuller wrote: >>> Ah, so many possibilities! And as I said before, considering that >>> it would be so useful, and that the genius of macromolecular design >> observed >>> in nature is apparently so unlimited, shouldn't it be out there >> somewhere? >> "Design"? I think there are more appropriate descriptions for life as >> it >> has been observed. The complexity of life can be explained fairly >> well >> by Darwinian evolution, i.e. replication with variation coupled with >> selection. This works through modification of existing entities. The >> relatedness of many molecules and the theme of modification of >> pre-existing parts ought to be apparent to someone who has learned >> about >> replication and sources of genetic novelty, and spent any time >> studying >> protein structure. >> >>
