DESIGN im Plasmodium-Genom entdeckt! oder Noch'n Update zur Design-Challenge.

Die Intelligent Design-Challenge (ich schrieb darüber hier und hier) wurde jetzt auch von Ian Musgrave, dem Initiator, noch einmal zusammengefasst:

Well, the Intelligent design Challenge is over, and we have a winner(s). It was interesting looking at the various methods people used, and I’ll discuss this below the fold. One thing stood out though.

No one used the explanatory filter, or any of the various methods proposed by Intelligent Design proponents. Not one person. [...]

Here was a group of real sequences, not some made up artificial sequence, but a real world example of design (along with some sequences that were not designed by humans). A perfect test bed for the Design Inference, you would think.

But in the end, all except one person used ordinary design. That is, people took what they knew of human design and applied it to the problem at hand. The favourite method was to run the nucleotide sequence though a translation filter and search for English language sentences by hand. After all, there has been much discussion over the years about leaving coded messages in the genome, and Craig Venter and his team had just published on their synthetic Mycoplasma genome, pointing out that they had “watermarked” the genome, so it was an obvious first port of call. Another favourite method was to use BLAST to compare the sequence to known genomes, find the ones that looked like they have some human intervention (say an insertion sequence as shown in the image below. This is what you get when you BLAST sequence 1 against the nucleotide database), and then send that sequence through the translation program and again find an English sentence.
And indeed they were correct; sequences 1, 4 and 5 are the nucleotide sequences that contain the Vetner watermarks from the synthetic Mycoplasma genome. 2,3 and 6 and just straight Mycoplasma genetalium sequences.

This may sound awfully trivial, but the procedure above is how we find design in the real world, contra Dembski (despite Dembski’s claims, archaeologists, forensic scientists etc. do not use the mechanism of the filter). We know a fair bit about designers (be they humans, chimps or pacific island crows). When we find a flaked stone, or a pile of nut smashing rocks, or a palm leaf spear, we don’t have to invoke convoluted statistical measures, we know which designers made these things from experience.

Dembski claims to be able to identify design without knowing the identity or purpose of the designer, or the methods used to implement the design. In all the examples used to find the watermarks, the explicit knowledge of the designer was used straight up to find the design. Even over at Uncommon Descent they looked up Wired to find the sequences, and did not use any ID inspired explanatory filter or even information theory.

[...] ID proponents have been proclaiming the utility of the Explanatory Filter for some time now. Indeed it has been 10 years since the Design Inference and the explanatory filter were introduced to the world, and you would hope by now that it had advanced enough to handle such simple cases as the Venter Code.

Haben wir es nicht immer gewusst...

Die ID-Challenge hat aber auch zu einem interessanten Nebeneffekt geführt, denn TR Gregory von Genomicron hat, inspiriert von der Challenge, tatsächlich DESIGN im Plasmodium-Genom entdeckt.

ORIGIN
  1 pisgiysnme dltigyqhfs kyrhylkwvp kyiahklgkv rdykelfylv npemlcllav
61 neklnynfrq ntgslmtlfk dvnyysdldt demvsfysal gihssmhmrs lsyfilnirn
121 eyylrlynip aylsdinvsn nfpffnyikn npickhvpdh nlgqfisfvn eiinydqkpk
181 pyipnryvyk npklshfvlp tnmsdktytp havigsgrtn lllytydvyr nvsrkqased
241 nvltsdvlfe yegdplifyn wlsyigdqnd mkrrnfmqki ylysdninin vvdnlinafs
301 tthytkffif dknhpvdahk hlhrtlnnfs ipiqivsfsv gnkkkitfpi lntpkidrde
361 aiayeyinry tnflqnhvir nsfytttdhn yilthktfkg yqqkavdrlr dqikvvknfi
421 nshktfnemk kalrdsfnih gtapintdny inhelgdles fveenypnpi gldegvsndd
481 ssqydlsyyd nyngtyllvn sdlklrsvyk ymlkyskiyk ntkyiefvmk nemrgdvhdq
541 lvnvengssc lfdfndnirv syiidycnyd kksyflfyke ykskniysvp sqdlcesaey
601 sylklcqnms llkkfftktl dtqlseihkd emkrmtkikn aiednidfkn ilsisndslv
661 siihdknegi ttfdinacft vsakltlgni fnvnsqidpe tartninnsi fctpvsvpva
721 vnrpimrsin dvyiraifni mkdqqfreym ripvnsnpyh sfiyffdkya yvykkrkwyk
781 nmnhvkmfip pqtikwnmfy yllrnnsqts ynnemflydf fygkksadik alsrnimkpf
841 lshftlffyl ykvdesign

Dargestellt ist die Aminosäure-Sequenz eines hypothetischen Proteins aus Plasmodium, mit dem vorläufigen "Namen" PC001346.02.0. Und da, auch noch direkt am Ende, steht es: DESIGN.

Na, wenn die Wahrscheinlichkeit, dass das zuuufällig auftritt, nicht 10^-312 (oder irgendeine andere spontan ausgedachte, möglichst unwahrscheinlich klingende Zahl) und damit "beyond the edge" ist...


MfG,
JLT