Optima in Evolution

[Giltil (Gilbert Thill)]

@Rumraket

But you haven’t shown that functional proteins in general, are “rare in sequence space”, much less how rare they are. You seem to just have this as an axiom you can’t move beyond. And for which you can’t seem to find any actual evidence.

Look.

1. Most natural functional proteins first have to adopt folded structures in order to be able to perform a function
2. Protein folds are rare in sequence space
3. In order to perform a function, it is not enough for a protein to adopt folded structures. In fact, only a small subset of folded structures will be able to perform a biological function.
   From these 3 premises, it follows that natural functional proteins are rare in sequence space.