No Junk DNA vs. Rarity of Function

[swamidass (S. Joshua Swamidass)]

@Mung

In my most humble opinion you either misunderstand or misrepresent the ID argument. It would perhaps be helpful if you could quote an actual argument. I would be very interested to see where any high profile ID figure makes the argument that function is rare in DNA sequence space.

As I understand it, this a central argument in ID, as expressed here:

@Agauger

I couldn’t copy from Mercer’s post, but he said he wanted me to defend this statement, I think.

So unless functional sequences are easy to find (very common), and/or are clustered together (easily reachable from one functional island to another), explaining current protein diversity without design is impossible.

I don’t see why anyone disputes it.

I can see why people dispute this, but regardless, that seems to be all that we are saying here. They argue that functions in sequence space are rare and isolated. If I am missing something here, I hope that @Kirk and @Agauger and @pnelson would correct us.