# James Tour and his 60-day challenge **URL:** \ **Category:** Side Conversation\ **Tags:** Science\ **Created:** [December 17, 2025, 12:01am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/james-tour-and-his-60-day-challenge/17564 "2025-12-17T00:01:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 11

**Author:** ![lee\_merrill](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/lee_merrill/32/14458_2.png) [@lee\_merrill](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/lee_merrill)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2026, 11:31pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/james-tour-and-his-60-day-challenge/17564/202 "2026-01-15T23:31:18Z")

> [@Rumraket](#): > > but what is clear is that the sheer number of potential interactions in some complex system tells us nothing about how the cells first evolved, or how likely it was/is. But that has nothing to do with Tour’s challenge, it’s not about cells evolving, it’s about whether life can be created in the lab. > [@Rumraket](#): > > Tour invoking Levinthal’s paradox (and other similarly useless estimates) simply betrays his vast confusions. Um, where does Tour invoke Levinthal’s paradox in any of his challenges? > [@Rumraket](#): > > Similarly, the number of potential interactions is a meaningless number. They never occur and don’t have to occur, and it isn’t a physically real quantity that has to be designed, evolved, searched, or otherwise. It’s a useless number. But I was being told that if you reassemble a cell, you’ll get interactions. Presumably, one of this set of possible interactions. Some interaction certainly will occur, you’re denying the obvious. And who said this number is some sort of physically real quantity? It’s a total, you can’t pick it up and examine it like it was a toaster or something. And not all interactions are healthy, was my argument, and if you tell me that most any old interaction will do, well, that’s going to take some defending to be convincing, in the face of this huge number. ---

> [@Rumraket](#): > > ATP provides energy _when_ it is hydrolyzed to AMP + PPi (ATP + H2O → AMP + PPi). The phosphoanhydride bond being broken is a hydrolysis reaction, in that it _consumes_ a molecule of water. > > This is true for RNA polymerase catalyzing the elongation reaction just as it is true for other enzymes that depend on ATP (such as ATP synthetase). Either way, it’s a hydrolysis reaction of a phosphoanhydride bond. But you were saying the ATP was being incorporated like a nucleotide, with other molecules. Nucleotides don’t change to some other molecule when they are incorporated. ---

> [@Rumraket](#): > > Nobody postulates that the individual components of a cell were individually synthesized and then later assembled in some big assembly event. No matter how difficult such a process might appear for human beings it bears no relation to any postulated model of the origin of life. I’ve addressed this already, Tour is not saying this happened at the origin of life, he pointing out that no one can generate a working interactome, even given the components of a real cell. The claim being challenged is that we are close to creating life in the lab, sorry, we’re not. ---

**Author:** ![lee\_merrill](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/lee_merrill/32/14458_2.png) [@lee\_merrill](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/lee_merrill)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2026, 11:32pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/james-tour-and-his-60-day-challenge/17564/205 "2026-01-15T23:32:02Z")

> [@Rumraket](#): > > > [@lee\_merrill](#): > > > > I think they are incredibly unlikely, for two reasons > > They are basically unavoidable. > > Here’s how we know that functional “interactomes” aren’t unlikely at all. We can move genes around from different species and show they function perfectly well, and even in cases where they have deleterious effects they’re often small and can easily be alleviated by mutation. But moving genes doesn’t create a new interactome. > [@Rumraket](#): > > That’s just GFP. Many thousands of other proteins (and genes functioning in ways other than as protein coding) are routinely used and inserted in countless other organisms in both medical, genetic, and molecular biology laboratories all over the world. But getting the interactome started requires that the critical interactions are happening, that is the challenge. Poking a new protein into a working cell (GFP seems it gets ignored) is not the same thing. > [@Rumraket](#): > > Now consider the reality that innumerable organisms have mechanisms explicitly functioning to facilitate horizontal gene transfer. Bacteria will routinely attempt to take up foreign genetic material and either express it from plasmids, or some times even incorporate it into their own chromosomes. If foreign, never before encountered genes were overwhelmingly likely to cause disruption this could not be a viable survival strategy for bacteria. But the plasmid is already acceptable to the source it comes from! So it’s not like a never-before-encountered gene. > [@Rumraket](#): > > When two gametes fuse, the genetic material is transferred from one cell into another, and since this new genetic material is different from that already present (it would have to be or there would be no reason to bother with sex in the first place), the tolerance to novel genetic architecture must be likely enough for this to be a viable strategy. Same thing here, it’s fine in a source cell, so it’s not likely to overthrow the receiving cell. And all these counterexamples of new material are incidental, the problem is to take a living cell apart, put it back together and get it going again, get the critical, needed interactions going again. Saying new molecules are not bothersome does not show that the needed interactions are somehow, likely to start up, after assembly. ---

**Author:** ![lee\_merrill](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/lee_merrill/32/14458_2.png) [@lee\_merrill](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/lee_merrill)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2026, 11:32pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/james-tour-and-his-60-day-challenge/17564/206 "2026-01-15T23:32:35Z")

> [@Mercer](#): > > > [@lee\_merrill](#): > > > > But I wasn’t saying they used a binary assay, > > Yes, you were. The context is your utter failure to defend Axe’s use of a binary assay. No, he picked a threshold, implying measuring a quantity which had a range. > [@Mercer](#): > > > [@lee\_merrill](#): > > > > I was saying they made a binary decision: produce, or don’t produce. > > No, you weren’t: Yes, I was, that was my whole example. > [@Mercer](#): > > > [@lee\_merrill](#): > > > > when they want to _ **know** _ for example, if an antibiotic is effective enough to go into production. > > Your use of “know” here is conclusive. You claimed that they used a binary variable to make a binary decision. The challenge you are running away from is to provide a case of that. I just did! A decision whether to produce an antibiotic. > [@Mercer](#): > > > [@lee\_merrill](#): > > > > Presumably by doing a continuous assay, with a threshold for helping to make this decision. > > Why didn’t Axe do that? I continue to point out that he did, his decision was “functional, or non-functional”. ---

**Author:** ![lee\_merrill](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/lee_merrill/32/14458_2.png) [@lee\_merrill](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/lee_merrill)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2026, 11:33pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/james-tour-and-his-60-day-challenge/17564/207 "2026-01-15T23:33:01Z")

> [@Mercer](#): > > Which is just plain silly. Here’s an example of real OOL research: > > [Isoprenoids enhance the stability of fatty acid membranes at the emergence of life potentially leading to an early lipid divide - PMC](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6802135/) What is silly is the claim that hydrothermal vents are a good place for life to emerge! “Alkaline hydrothermal vents are among the most plausible environments for the emergence of life”. Not so. [Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LWqGVgr9J0&t=55s) is video where Ed Pelzer talks with James Tour about this subject, Pelzer is a retired deep-sea researcher who knows about this area. ---

**Author:** ![lee\_merrill](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/lee_merrill/32/14458_2.png) [@lee\_merrill](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/lee_merrill)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2026, 11:34pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/james-tour-and-his-60-day-challenge/17564/208 "2026-01-15T23:34:00Z")

> [@Dan\_Eastwood](#): > > > [@lee\_merrill](#): > > > > So now I need to know how we can be assured that the cell lives and reproduces, after the interactions that just happen to start up, do so. > > It’s generally not possible to predict everything that might happen. That’s why experiements are conducted to observe what happens. I’ll take that as an “I don’t know”, but it seems you were claiming that whatever interactions started up would be fine. > [@Dan\_Eastwood](#): > > I’m assuming the “parts” inserted function more or less as they are intended to. Tour seems to think the parts will somehow interfere with each other, and so require further regulation (an Interactome). You agree? No, my view is that the parts, the proteins, for instance, will interact in some way, and not just any way will do. > [@Dan\_Eastwood](#): > > According to the usual ID claim that such interactions are very rare, so Tour’s objection is unlikely to be a problem. I’ve never heard of such an ID claim, surely ID people know that if you put lots of proteins together, you’ll get many interactions, that’s how the cell operates, you need them. > [@Dan\_Eastwood](#): > > Even if we limit the number of alleles that can interact to some reasonable number… But the interactome is not about interacting genes, primarily, but rather about interactions among small molecules such as proteins. Thus Tour’s quoting of the number of possible protein-protein interactions in a yeast cell. > [@Dan\_Eastwood](#): > > So I ask again, is new function so very rare that new function cannot arise, or is Tour correct and new function is so common that it will prevent new cells from being assemble from “parts”? But Tour’s fifth challenge is not about new function arising, nor about cells assembling on their own, it is about researchers reassembling a cell that has been taken about, and getting the needed interactome started, so the cell is a living cell again. > [@Dan\_Eastwood](#): > > Disease implies some impairment to normal function, which is irrelevant to the question of creating a functional cell. You are again saying there might be some harmful interaction. Yes this is possible, but by your own beliefs this ought to be rare I don’t claim to know how rare functional interactomes might be, I point to disease due to interactome problems as evidence that there is fragility there. > [@Dan\_Eastwood](#): > > Also, if I assemble a parts from assorted bicycles and produce a 3-speed cruiser instead of an 18-speed touring bike, have I produced a “diseased” bicycle? No, but the term “disease” implies we don’t have just another type of cell. > [@Dan\_Eastwood](#): > > > [@lee\_merrill](#): > > > > Second, why are researchers not researching paths to interactomes, if it’s such a slam dunk as you say? Tour says he hasn’t seen any, can you find any? … > > Who says they aren’t? I work in a building that is full of researchers working to understand cell function and protein interactions, and they publish. This is a common activity at any institution doing basic research. So my answer is “yes”. I don’t understand why Tour says this, do you? I’m sure Tour would be glad to hear of people at work on the interactome, could you give examples? > [@Dan\_Eastwood](#): > > > [@lee\_merrill](#): > > > > Researchers are not eager, foundations aren’t very willing to pay for research that will be unlikely to produce results, is the likely cause here, was Tour’s conclusion. > > You might read up about about “Translational” research. Briefly, it’s an effort to streamline the pathway from basic “bench” science to new medical treatments. But I don’t see what this has to do with generating an interactome… > [@Dan\_Eastwood](#): > > A fine example. Scientists inserted a new gene and it produced the expected function, no additional fiddling about with an “Interactome” required. Were there other effect? Probably, but not so strong that the modified organism could not survive, or that the experiments were considered a failure. I refer you to my response to Rumraket on this… ---

**Author:** ![lee\_merrill](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/lee_merrill/32/14458_2.png) [@lee\_merrill](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/lee_merrill)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2026, 11:34pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/james-tour-and-his-60-day-challenge/17564/209 "2026-01-15T23:34:15Z")

> [@Faizal\_Ali](#): > > > [@lee\_merrill](#): > > > > But the claim was that the home run was done! Can you not see this? > > Please quote where someone claimed to have hit a home run. Metaphorically, of course. [Here](https://www.mdpi.com/2075-1729/14/3/341) is a paper claiming this in 2004. > [@Faizal\_Ali](#): > > So, remind me: Exactly when did Doug Axe respond to this challenge, that was directed at him specifically? > > > [@](#): > > > > 11 years ago (give or take), I posted an [essay](https://pandasthumb.org/archives/2007/01/92-second-st-fa.html) on The Panda’s Thumb that discussed what I believed to me some serious flaws in Doug Axe’s 2004 paper in the Journal of Molecular Biology, or rather, flaws in the ways that the ID community have used the conclusions from that study. We have been discussing Douglas Axe’s response to Art Hunt’s initial comments on Panda’s Thumb, in the thread about this topic. And I made some comments to Art Hunt about what he said were his central concerns, that had gone unaddressed, and he dropped the conversation after a few exchanges. ---

**Author:** ![lee\_merrill](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/lee_merrill/32/14458_2.png) [@lee\_merrill](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/lee_merrill)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2026, 11:34pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/james-tour-and-his-60-day-challenge/17564/210 "2026-01-15T23:34:35Z")

> [@Rumraket](#): > > > [@Mercer](#): > > > > > [@lee\_merrill](#): > > > > > > But I wasn’t saying they used a binary assay, > > > > Yes, you were. The context is your utter failure to defend Axe’s use of a binary assay. > > I already explained to Lee [what Axe should have done](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/did-douglas-axe-disprove-evolution-spoiler-no/17458/147) if he had really wanted to do this experiment properly. Lee’s response basically amounted to “but that work would be more difficult.” So we must not take a simpler approach, when we see that would be adequate? It’s fine if you want to tie your shoes with a bowline knot, but you don’t need to… ---

**Author:** ![lee\_merrill](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/lee_merrill/32/14458_2.png) [@lee\_merrill](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/lee_merrill)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2026, 11:34pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/james-tour-and-his-60-day-challenge/17564/211 "2026-01-15T23:34:56Z")

> [@Mercer](#): > > > [@lee\_merrill](#): > > > > Well, Tour reads their papers, and points out problems. > > Who, precisely, constitutes “they,” and how would you possibly know if Tour has read their papers? Tour says that’s how he got motivated to point out that the claims were false! He read the papers, and saw that what they were claiming was not what they were doing. He goes through some of the papers in some of his videos, and remarks that ordinary people are not going to be able to do this, but he can, and does. ---

**Author:** ![Dan\_Eastwood](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/dan_eastwood/32/2368_2.png) [@Dan\_Eastwood](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Dan_Eastwood)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2026, 12:36am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/james-tour-and-his-60-day-challenge/17564/212 "2026-01-16T00:36:52Z")

> [@lee\_merrill](#): > > > [@Dan\_Eastwood](#): > > > > > [@lee\_merrill](#): > > > > > > So now I need to know how we can be assured that the cell lives and reproduces, after the interactions that just happen to start up, do so. > > > > It’s generally not possible to predict everything that might happen. That’s why experiements are conducted to observe what happens. > > I’ll take that as an “I don’t know”, but it seems you were claiming that whatever interactions started up would be fine. We see from numerous examples of genetic editing, gene knockouts, mitochondrial transplants, etc., that these “new parts” get along just fine without any need to create any new interactome to go along with them. > [@lee\_merrill](#): > > > [@Dan\_Eastwood](#): > > > > I’m assuming the “parts” inserted function more or less as they are intended to. Tour seems to think the parts will somehow interfere with each other, and so require further regulation (an Interactome). You agree? > > **No, my view is that the parts, the proteins, for instance, will interact in some way, and not just any way will do.** > > > [@Dan\_Eastwood](#): > > > > According to the usual ID claim that such interactions are very rare, so Tour’s objection is unlikely to be a problem. > > **I’ve never heard of such an ID claim,** You have never heard the ID claim that randomly assembled part are unlikely to produce any function at all? Sorry, but you have got to be pulling my leg. > … surely ID people know that if you put lots of proteins together, you’ll get many interactions, that’s how the cell operates, you need them. This part is true. We also see numerous examples of cell modifications that produce a new kind of cell and does not disrupt cell function, without any effort toward creating an “interactome”. I’m sure we could find examples of such experiments that didn’t work out too. Tour challenge about the interactome is a plausible problem, but the evidence shows that it is not the Show Stopper that Tour claims it to be. > [@lee\_merrill](#): > > > [@Dan\_Eastwood](#): > > > > Even if we limit the number of alleles that can interact to some reasonable number… > > But the interactome is not about interacting genes, primarily, but rather about interactions among small molecules such as proteins. Thus Tour’s quoting of the number of possible protein-protein interactions in a yeast cell. Um … Lee … You know that proteins are made by transcribing DNA/RNA, right? I again suspect you are being disingenuous. > [@lee\_merrill](#): > > > [@Dan\_Eastwood](#): > > > > So I ask again, is new function so very rare that new function cannot arise, or is Tour correct and new function is so common that it will prevent new cells from being assemble from “parts”? > > But Tour’s fifth challenge is not about new function arising, nor about cells assembling on their own, it is about researchers reassembling a cell that has been taken about, and getting the needed interactome started, so the cell is a living cell again. **Proteins interactions are functions.** The Interactome is a function too (more than one!). We see numerous examples of modified living cells that live and reproduce without any new “interactome” functions being purposefully added. Whatever it is that Tour is looking for (and you don’t seem to know either), it hasn’t prevented scientists from assembling functional cells from given parts. > [@lee\_merrill](#): > > I don’t claim to know how rare functional interactomes might be, I point to disease due to interactome problems as evidence that there is fragility there. Well you’ve gone both ways on this now, but it is a nuanced question. There could be fragility if the assembled part interfere with each other, that’s probably a failed experiment. My point is the numerous examples where cells function just fine. > [@lee\_merrill](#): > > No, but the term “disease” implies we don’t have just another type of cell. You introduced “disease” to the discussion, but it just doesn’t seem to be relevant. I suppose some mad (yet well funded) scientist could intentionally create a diseased cell, but why? _… wait …_ that happens all the time in knockout experiments … 😅 … I’ll start again. In the normal course of research, an experiment that didn’t work out and produced a “diseased” cell would be a failed experiment. Possibly this is a dead-end, OR it might be successful experiment in the stepwise process that produces a final result. Either way, a new sort of cell is produced. I really do no see how Tour could not know this. > [@lee\_merrill](#): > > > [@Dan\_Eastwood](#): > > > > Who says they aren’t? I work in a building that is full of researchers working to understand cell function and protein interactions, and they publish. This is a common activity at any institution doing basic research. So my answer is “yes”. I don’t understand why Tour says this, do you? > > I’m sure Tour would be glad to hear of people at work on the interactome, could you give examples? I should defer to one of the biochemists for examples, and @Rumraket gave some above. More in my area is cancer research, which is full of interactions gone wrong from the human viewpoint (or interactions gone right from the tumor’s viewpoint). OR you might Google it. Protein/protein interactions are a hot topic these days, and AI is fast becoming an important tools is this research. Here is the first example that popped up in a search on “journals dedicated to protein/protein interactions”. Notably I did not include the term “interactome”. > [@lee\_merrill](#): > > I refer you to my response to Rumraket on this… Fair, but also fair to take that as a “no”. 😉 ---

**Author:** ![Mercer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e274bd/32.png) [@Mercer](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Mercer)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2026, 12:37am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/james-tour-and-his-60-day-challenge/17564/213 "2026-01-16T00:37:16Z")

> [@lee\_merrill](#): > > But that has nothing to do with Tour’s challenge, it’s not about cells evolving, it’s about whether life can be created in the lab. Then the challenge really isn’t about the productivity of abiogenesis research. ---

> [@lee\_merrill](#): > > > [@Mercer](#): > > > > Why didn’t Axe do that? > > I continue to point out that he did, his decision was “functional, or non-functional”. Why didn’t Axe measure activity? You know that’s the question. ---

> [@lee\_merrill](#): > > What is silly is the claim that hydrothermal vents are a good place for life to emerge! “Alkaline hydrothermal vents are among the most plausible environments for the emergence of life”. Not so. How much have you looked into the evidence? > [@lee\_merrill](#): > > Ed Pelzer talks with James Tour Given my level of expertise and familiarity with the primary literature, why, precisely, should I care at all what Ed Pelzer and Tour think about anything pertaining to abiogenesis? And given your lack of expertise and complete unfamiliarity with the primary literature, why should you? ---

**Author:** ![Mercer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e274bd/32.png) [@Mercer](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Mercer)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2026, 12:38am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/james-tour-and-his-60-day-challenge/17564/216 "2026-01-16T00:38:14Z")

> [@lee\_merrill](#): > > So we must not take a simpler approach, when we see that would be adequate? Obviously it wasn’t adequate, as Axe’s extrapolation is the greatest outlier. ---

**Author:** ![Mercer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e274bd/32.png) [@Mercer](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Mercer)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2026, 7:56pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/james-tour-and-his-60-day-challenge/17564/217 "2026-01-18T19:56:58Z")

> [@lee\_merrill](#): > > > [@Mercer](#): > > > > > [@lee\_merrill](#): > > > > > > Well, Tour reads their papers, and points out problems. > > > > Who, precisely, constitutes “they,” and how would you possibly know if Tour has read their papers? > > Tour says that’s how he got motivated to point out that the claims were false! The question was: > [@Mercer](#): > > Who, precisely, constitutes “they,” Names. > [@lee\_merrill](#): > > He read the papers, Which papers? > [@lee\_merrill](#): > > He goes through some of the papers in some of his videos, So what? “Some” doesn’t cut it. You’re portraying Tour as having thorough knowledge of the field based on zero evidence. > [@lee\_merrill](#): > > …and remarks that ordinary people are not going to be able to do this, but he can, and does. If he thinks that the goal of abiogenesis research is engineering a cell, he doesn’t have a clue. ---

**Author:** ![Mercer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e274bd/32.png) [@Mercer](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Mercer)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2026, 7:57pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/james-tour-and-his-60-day-challenge/17564/218 "2026-01-18T19:57:10Z")

> [@Dan\_Eastwood](#): > > > [@lee\_merrill](#): > > > > But the interactome is not about interacting genes, primarily, but rather about interactions among small molecules such as proteins. Thus Tour’s quoting of the number of possible protein-protein interactions in a yeast cell. > > Um … Lee … You know that proteins are made by transcribing DNA/RNA, right? I again suspect you are being disingenuous. I think “suspect” is too generous. ---

**Author:** ![John\_Harshman](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/john_harshman/32/1121_2.png) [@John\_Harshman](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/John_Harshman)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2026, 7:57pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/james-tour-and-his-60-day-challenge/17564/219 "2026-01-18T19:57:29Z")

> [@lee\_merrill](#): > > Nucleotides don’t change to some other molecule when they are incorporated. Oh dear. ---

**Author:** ![lee\_merrill](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/lee_merrill/32/14458_2.png) [@lee\_merrill](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/lee_merrill)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2026, 7:58pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/james-tour-and-his-60-day-challenge/17564/220 "2026-01-18T19:58:31Z")

> [@Belisarius\_Cawl](#): > > Hi everyone. I’ve been following this topic for its current 200-post life span and I’ve noticed we’ve hit a wall… one that, in my view, was reached almost immediately. Actually, the people arguing against Tour have proposed various papers and results at various times that they claimed answered one of Tour’s challenges. But all so far have proven to be faulty. > [@Belisarius\_Cawl](#): > > @lee_merrill , correct me if I’m wrong, but my impression is that biology is a field you have a lot of interest in. Throughout this thread, several users who are experts in various aspects of that field have clarified concepts you hadn’t previously fully understood. Given that, do you think it’s possible you might be mistaken in your assessment of James Tour or your own understanding of OoL research? I’m first of all interested in intelligent design, which does involve some biology. I’m glad to learn from biologists, but none of their corrections have made an impact on the points Tour raises, or Michael Behe raises, or Gunter Bechly raised. No one has refuted James Tour and his protest that no progress to speak of has been made in the field since Miller-Urey. No one has answered his point that the goal is getting farther away, not closer, the more we find out about the cell. And no one has proposed an answer here to any of Tour’s challenges, and none of the proposed papers here have held up. Even a rube like me can find the problem with OOL papers proposed here and their claims pretty quickly, lots of training in biology is not needed. ---

**Author:** ![lee\_merrill](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/lee_merrill/32/14458_2.png) [@lee\_merrill](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/lee_merrill)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2026, 7:59pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/james-tour-and-his-60-day-challenge/17564/221 "2026-01-18T19:59:29Z")

> [@Dan\_Eastwood](#): > > > [@lee\_merrill](#): > > > > > [@Dan\_Eastwood](#): > > > > > > It’s generally not possible to predict everything that might happen. That’s why experiements are conducted to observe what happens. > > > > I’ll take that as an “I don’t know”, but it seems you were claiming that whatever interactions started up would be fine. > > We see from numerous examples of genetic editing, gene knockouts, mitochondrial transplants, etc., that these “new parts” get along just fine without any need to create any new interactome to go along with them. But I addressed that, please address my response to this point, and don’t just bring it up again. > [@Dan\_Eastwood](#): > > You have never heard the ID claim that randomly assembled part are unlikely to produce any function at all? Sorry, but you have got to be pulling my leg. But Tour’s challenge was not to put the parts together at random, it was to reassemble the cell, in its proper form, and then get it working. How can you miss that? > [@Dan\_Eastwood](#): > > > [@lee\_merrill](#): > > > > But the interactome is not about interacting genes, primarily, but rather about interactions among small molecules such as proteins. Thus Tour’s quoting of the number of possible protein-protein interactions in a yeast cell. > > Um … Lee … You know that proteins are made by transcribing DNA/RNA, right? I again suspect you are being disingenuous. Yes, I do know that, but the proteins can’t just be plopped into a cell in any old way, they need to be in proper places at proper times. Per [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactome): “In [molecular biology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_biology "Molecular biology"), an **interactome** is the whole set of molecular interactions in a particular [cell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(biology) "Cell (biology)"). The term specifically refers to physical interactions among molecules (such as those among proteins, also known as [protein–protein interactions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein%E2%80%93protein_interaction "Protein–protein interaction") (PPIs); or between small molecules and proteins.[[1]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactome#cite_note-1)) but can also describe sets of indirect interactions among genes ([genetic interactions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_interactions "Genetic interactions")).” Now in Tour’s challenge, the genes in their proper places are a given, the assembly step would include getting the DNA properly set up, so then the PPIs and interactions with small molecules and proteins would be what would be of interest. Hence the relevance of the total number of PPIs in a yeast cell. > [@Dan\_Eastwood](#): > > My point is the numerous examples where cells function just fine. And I again refer to my reply, which you need to address, that what needs to be arranged are the interactions needed for life function. Poking other molecules into a cell with a working interactome, which may actually be ignored, or which come from another working cell, does not address this. > [@Dan\_Eastwood](#): > > > [@lee\_merrill](#): > > > > No, but the term “disease” implies we don’t have just another type of cell. > > You introduced “disease” to the discussion, but it just doesn’t seem to be relevant. I suppose some mad (yet well funded) scientist could intentionally create a diseased cell, but why? _… wait …_ that happens all the time in knockout experiments … 😅 … I’ll start again. But I was addressing the analogy of producing different types of bikes! That’s not at all applicable to what I was saying. > [@Dan\_Eastwood](#): > > I really do no see how Tour could not know this. Again and again, this response has nothing to do with starting up the needed functions in an interactome, to get the cell to be a living cell. Nothing about experiments producing different cells, or failed cells, is relevant here. Tour is not stupid, as people here do seem to think. > [@Dan\_Eastwood](#): > > > [@lee\_merrill](#): > > > > I’m sure Tour would be glad to hear of people at work on the interactome, could you give examples? > > I should defer to one of the biochemists for examples, and @Rumraket gave some above. No, as I recall, he did not, please link them if he did and I missed them. > [@Dan\_Eastwood](#): > > OR you might Google it. Protein/protein interactions are a hot topic the Well, I did already do this! I do wonder why people think of an idea of something I should do, and then assume I haven’t done it. > [@Dan\_Eastwood](#): > > Here is the first example that popped up in a search on “journals dedicated to protein/protein interactions”. Notably I did not include the term “interactome”. Did you leave out a link to the example? I’m not seeing one. > [@Dan\_Eastwood](#): > > > [@lee\_merrill](#): > > > > I refer you to my response to Rumraket on this… > > Fair, but also fair to take that as a “no”. Only if Rumraket can refute me… [Previous page](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/james-tour-and-his-60-day-challenge/17564.md?page=10) [Next page](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/james-tour-and-his-60-day-challenge/17564.md?page=12)