I felt like this video series needed more exposure, it really is shaping up to be quite excellent in my opinion:
I really hope @Jon-Perry eventually gets around to talking about how we can infer, from structural and sequence-comparisons, that many of the individual proteins that make up the flagellum are actually homologous to proteins found in other, simpler structures (and interestingly, how numerous individual proteins in different parts of the flagellum are homologous to each other).
In other words, a video on what you might call the case for homology of similar protein sequences. In particular I find it worth going into the topic of increasingly dissimilar protein sequences and how this is a straightforward prediction of evolutionary divergence over time.
Innumerable examples could be given from so many other systems and structures, from enzymes families, globin-family proteins, through immunoglobulins and so on, where we can trace their evolutionary relationships to increasingly dissimilar proteins. Take your pick, I like table S3 in the supplementary information from this paper which shows a huge list of increasingly dissimilar protein sequences in basically 0.1% intervals all the way from 45.455% to 4.545% sequence idenity for the DPBB superfamily.
Man, so many creationists are complaining in the comments that Jon has not made his case for the flagellum specifically yet, and seem completely unwilling to let him build up the argument by going over basics like optimization and co-option first.
And yet we can know with absolute certainty that if he didn’t do this they’d also complain about him using such terms and demand he made a case for those also.
Then there are people in the comments demanding explanations for the origin of ATP, the use of phosphorous at the origin of life, and the origin of the cell membrane. In a video about flagellum evolution. An astonishing amount of confusion, impatience, misinformation, and bad faith at display.
Thanks for posting this! Yes, you have predicted the future with the precision of a scientist. This series will go in-depth into the evolution of protein complexes, including duplications and divergence of entire genes, and domains.
Yes, I also noticed a comedic amount of cope from anti-evo folks in the comment section, but I encourage people to focus more on all the support found there too. I suspect I’m on the right track with the concept of the series and even the slow pace (not perfect for everyone but helpful for many) because people are voting with their dollars. I have had a huge increase in support on Patreon, and the Patreon trend died years ago, so this says a lot.
I am very grateful for the support and I am happy that Destin has asked such clear and direct questions. He is aware that the series is going but has not yet responded to requests to directly participate. He’s a busy man and it’s in his best interest to see where this is going before he chimes in so I won’t read anything into his lack of response until the series is finished.
If Destin and I end up doing something together, it might be worth hosting it with a religious moderator active here. Let me know if you fit the bill and are interested. As some of you know, I am not religious, but Destin is. I don’t want this to be an “atheist vs Christian” thing. That’s been done. I hope it’s time to move forward.
