Quote:And why haven't they found homologous proteins. It's not easy to isolate all proteins in a bacteria, and then get their crystallized structure. it just isn't. the paper clearly stated "none yet known". If they had exhausted all the proteins they'll say they did not find any. It is a hypothesis isn't it? I'm not too informed about the flagellum debate thing, and i don't keep an eye on the research on this field. So yea, if they haven't been able to find all the homology, i would just wait and see. it's a pretty common thing to happen in science.
That's certainly part of it. However, even if some of the proteins they found (for example FlgBCFG), those are homologous to each other! I'm no biologist, but I thought the purpose is to show homologies with precursor proteins, not flagellum proteins. I know all of this does not make ID more plausible, but to just say "It evolved and that's it" is not enough. Interestingly, this is what the authors said in the paper:
Quote:Notwithstanding the good scientific reasons for new forays in this direction, the lack of a scientific literature on flagellar evolution (emphasis mine) also has another undesirable consequence — it leaves open the suspicion among members of the public that maybe there is some mystery here, that maybe the ID proponents do have a point. Although all experts in this field agree that there is nothing to these claims, as Wilkins has recently pointed out , in these politically charged times, it is no longer enough to say, for example, that bacterial flagella evolved and that is that. Instead, scientific experts have to engage with a skeptical public.
