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Old 12-12-2004, 08:39 PM   #79 (permalink)
1010011010
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mo42
[...BIG snip...]In order to get a protein with this function, a very specific protein would have to be formed from the amino acids. [...snip...] These enzymes average to be about 300 amino acids in length. [...snip about math...].
This remainds me of something I read in another "lies, damned lies, and statistics" type discussions. I think the context of that discussion was the probability of evolving Cytochrome C. Anyway, it was estimated that 60% of the proteins in the search space would have at least some cytochrome functionality. So while it might be one out of 20^100 (or what have you) to assemble the specific sequence for a given protein... the chance to assemble a sequence that will function for a given task may be six out of 10.
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