/sci/ - Science & Math

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022283604007624
>Estimating the Prevalence of Protein Sequences Adopting Functional Enzyme Folds

This paper is just a technical way of saying that new enzyme folds are impossible to produce by natural selection. This experiment set out to measure the sensitivity to destabilization of proteins. When proteins are destabilized they lose function and if they lose their function they cannot continue to exist, which means further transformation or conversion into other proteins become impossible. This loss of function gives a measure of the rarity of stable functional folds. You could say that you need a miracle to produce a self-replicating cell out of nothing.


https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC58511/
>Searching sequence space for protein catalysts
>This study provides a quantitative assessment of the number of sequences compatible with a given fold and implicates previously unidentified residues needed to form a functional active site.
>Misplacement of catalytic residues by even a few tenths of an angstrom can mean the difference between full activity and none at all.
>Our estimate of the low frequency of protein catalysts in sequence space indicates that it will not be possible to isolate enzymes from unbiased random libraries in a single step.
>The required library sizes far exceed what is currently accessible by experiment, even with in vitro methods

This study determined that you cannot prove evolution experimentally because the amount of trials you would need is beyond anything that is remotely possible.