Mathematical Basis for Probability Calculations Used in (the film)
Origin
Excerpt:
Putting the probabilities together means adding the exponents.
The probability of getting a properly folded chain of one-handed amino
acids, joined by peptide bonds, is one chance in 10^74+45+45, or one in
10^164 (Meyer, p. 212). This means that, on average, you would need to
construct 10^164 chains of amino acids 150 units long to expect to find
one that is useful.
http://www.originthefilm.com/mathemat...
Minimal Complexity Relegates Life Origin Models To Fanciful Speculation -
Nov. 2009
Excerpt: Based on the structural requirements of enzyme activity Axe
emphatically argued against a global-ascent model of the function
landscape in which incremental improvements of an arbitrary starting
sequence "lead to a globally optimal final sequence with reasonably high
probability".
For a protein made from scratch in a prebiotic soup, the
odds of finding such globally optimal solutions are infinitesimally
small- somewhere between 1 in 10exp140 and 1 in 10exp164 for a 150 amino
acid long sequence if we factor in the probabilities of forming peptide
bonds and of incorporating only left handed amino acids.
http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.php/2/...
The Case Against a Darwinian Origin of Protein Folds - Douglas Axe -
2010
Excerpt Pg. 11: "Based on analysis of the genomes of 447 bacterial
species, the projected number of different domain structures per species
averages 991. Comparing this to the number of pathways by which
metabolic processes are carried out, which is around 263 for E. coli,
provides a rough figure of three or four new domain folds being needed,
on average, for every new metabolic pathway.
In order to accomplish this
successfully, an evolutionary search would need to be capable of
locating sequences that amount to anything from one in 10^159 to one in
10^308 possibilities, something the neo-Darwinian model falls short of
by a very wide margin."
http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.p...
“We have no idea how the molecules that compose living systems could
have been devised such that they would work in concert to fulfill
biology’s functions.
We have no idea how the basic set of molecules,
carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids, and proteins, were made and how
they could have coupled into the proper sequences, and then transformed
into the ordered assemblies until there was the construction of a
complex biological system, and eventually to that first cell.
Nobody has any idea how this was done when using our commonly understood
mechanisms of chemical science.
Those that say they understand are
generally wholly uninformed regarding chemical synthesis. Those that say
“Oh, this is well worked out,” they know nothing, nothing about
chemical synthesis – Nothing!
Further cluelessness – From a synthetic chemical perspective, neither I
nor any of my colleagues can fathom a prebiotic molecular route to
construction of a complex system.
We cannot figure out the prebiotic
routes to the basic building blocks of life: carbohydrates, nucleic
acids, lipids, and proteins. Chemists are collectively bewildered. Hence
I say that no chemist understands prebiotic synthesis of the requisite
building blocks let alone their assembly into a complex system.
That’s how clueless we are.
I’ve asked all of my colleagues – National
Academy members, Nobel Prize winners -I sit with them in offices; nobody
understands this. So if your professors say it’s all worked out, your
teachers say it’s all worked out, they don’t know what they’re talking
about. It is not worked out. You cannot just refer this to somebody
else; they don’t know what they’re talking about.”
- James Tour – one of the top ten leading chemists in the world
The Origin of Life: