Cool new paper by Robert Asher

[Giltil (Gilbert Thill)]

@Rumraket

Clearly the gene-sequence of the starch enzyme in species A, is not functionally constrained to be phylogenetically grouped with the starch enzyme in species B. That would not make sense. Why should it be like that? You’d have to posit some sort of completely mysterious cross-species correlation that, for reasons I simply can’t imagine, constrain them to sort phylogenetically more closely to each other than to others. In other words, for some unimaginable reason, nucleotides in the gene in species A, are forced to have a sequence that a phylogenetic algorithm will end up putting as the closest relative of the sequence for the same gene in species B. Why? It doesn’t make sense.

On the contrary, it seems to me that under a design perspective, it makes perfect sense that genes in anatomically/physiologically similar species would display more similarities than with the same genes in species more distant anatomically/physiologically. Indeed, for a given function, it is expected that the designer would fine tune the genes involved in that function according to the specific physiological needs of a given type of organisms.