Responding to the Challenge to Intelligent Design Proponents
Channel: Genomiques
Date: 2012-08-03

This is a response to C0nc0rdance's "A Challenge to Proponents of Intelligent Design." The original video can be found here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uN3XZGgic4o

Some data:

The UniProt accession number of Vir1 is Q9N8A4. This protein serves as the query sequence for the NCBI BLASTP search, which was executed under default conditions. 

The NCBI RefSeq number of the closest match to Vir1 is as follows: ZP_10275064.1. This sequence is found in Streptococcaceae. 

Sequence alignment of Vir1 and ZP_10275064.1 was carried out through Clustal Omega. 

Total percent sequence identity between the two sequences: 10.972%.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
While I'm at it, I'm going to tackle another question: do I think that this protein was intelligently designed? No, I do not, and here's why: gene loss in different lineages, as well as rapid mutation rates can all give rise to ORFan genes, or genes that have no known homologs beyond a set of closely related organisms. 

So in conclusion, I think that this video shows that firstly, the challenge isn't too difficult to meet, and secondly that there is an evolutionary explanation for this, and even though I am indeed an intelligent design proponent, I think that the way this challenge is framed is fundamentally flawed because you really can't rule out an evolutionary explanation -- and also no matter how much you meet this challenge, someone is always going to say that the conclusion of intelligent design would be an argument from ignorance. So even if you met the challenge, it wouldn't help much. 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks for watching! If you have any questions, drop me a comment and I'll get back to you as soon as possible.