Wistar destroys its credibility

Norm Weatherby points to an article by the Wistar Institute claiming to have destroyed evolution.

Well, perhaps for some value of "destroyed", it has. However, in the real world, where we have to deal with real facts, the only thing that's been destroyed is Wistar's credibility.

It was the development of tremendously powerful digital computers that sparked the controversy. At last mathematicians were able to work out the probability of evolution ever having occurred. They discovered that, mathematically, life would neither have begun nor evolved by random action.

That again? But that trick never works!

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Murray Eden showed that it would be impossible for even a single ordered pair of genes to be produced by DNA mutations in the bacteria, E. coli,—with 5 billion years in which to produce it! His estimate was based on 5 trillion tons of the bacteria covering the planet to a depth of nearly an inch during that 5 billion years. He then explained that the genes of E. coli contain over a trillion (1012) bits of data. That is the number 10 followed by 12 zeros. Eden then showed the mathematical impossibility of protein forming by chance.

This ignores, of course that:

• nobody thinks any modern living thing emerged full-blown from the primordial soup. Everyone who's thought seriously about this subject believes bacteria evolved from much simpler ancestors. The question under consideration is, which of several very plausible pathways was the one actually taken?
• E. coli is far from the only target around. Even if we stipulate to the absurd caricature that has a bacterium flying together from random parts, if you calculate the odds against one particular bacterium, you ignore the fact that every other bacterium is also a viable target, and quite obviously alive. The numerator of your odds ratio is not one, but at least the number of types of bacteria in existence today. (I say "at least" because bacteria mutate, and it's very unlikely that any two would have identical genes.)

So someone, probably the Wistar Institute, lied about what scientists believe. Why are they lying to us?

Hemoglobin has two chains, called alpha and beta. A minimum of 120 mutations would be required to convert alpha to beta. At least 34 of those changes require changeovers in 2 or 3 nucleotides. Yet, *Eden pointed out that, if a single nucleotide change occurs through mutation, the result ruins the blood and kills the organism! *George Wald stood up and explained that he had done extensive research on hemoglobin also,—and discovered that if just ONE mutational change of any kind was made in it, the hemoglobin would not function properly. For example, the change of one amino acid out of 287 in hemoglobin causes sickle-cell anemia. A glutamic acid unit has been changed to a valine unit—and, as a result, 25% of those suffering with this anemia die.

Big problem here. You've just been lied to again.

While the mutation described does produce sickle-cell anemia, or at least a carrier, if he inherits only one mutated gene, most amino acids can be changed around with little or no effect!!! The mutation described happens to be in a critical spot, where the amno acid chain has to fit together in a tight space. If you change that amino acid, you make the chain too bulky to fit together the right way, and you get a deformed blood cell.

Biologists who compare proteins in different species have long known that certain amino acids are "conserved". That is, if the amino acid at location 456 in a protein is conserved, that means that many different living things will have the same amino acid at location 456 in that particular protein, no matter how the other amino acids have changed.

Biologists use this information to find critical locations in proteins, where a particular amino acid serves a critical function – either it's essential for folding into the proper shape, or it has to be where it is in order to make contact with some other molecule (e.g., the substrate in an enzyme, or the heme molecule in hemoglobin). The fact that most amino acids in any protein are not conserved means Eden and Wald are either terribly inept or have lied to you.

If they're so egregiously wrong about something as widely known as conserved and non-conserved amino acids, what else are they wrong about?

And why should you listen to anything they have to say?

I'll stop here, but right now, I'd say the track record of the Wistar Institute is looking pretty dismal.