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Our future, our universe, and other weighty topics


Wednesday, September 13, 2023

In Neuroscience and Astrobiology, What Was Not Seen Matters As Much As What Was Seen

Another day, another not-really-true story in our "science news" feeds. The story is one appearing in the Daily Mail, claiming that "A gas 'uniquely associated with life' when found on Earth has been discovered in the atmosphere of K2-18 b, which is known as a 'super Earth' because it is bigger than our planet but smaller than Neptune." The actual scientific paper (which you can read here) makes no such claim of a discovery about such a gas (dimethyl sulfide), merely stating "The spectrum also suggests potential signs of dimethyl sulfide (DMS)."  The text of the paper says, "We find marginal evidence for DMS," which is sure not a claim of a discovery.

Dimethyl sulfide is not a very complex molecule, having a formula of six hydrogen atoms, two carbon atoms and a sulfur atom. On Earth dimethyl sulfide is produced only by biological processes, but on some extraterrestrial planet with a greatly different chemistry, it might be produced by nonbiological processes.  There's a big reason why we should not regard the "marginal evidence" for dimethyl sulfide as any indicator of life on K2-18 b: the scientific paper reports that the search for chemicals on the planet produced no sign of water. We read this:

"We do not find significant contributions due to H2O or NH3, but find 95% upper limits of -3.21 for log(XH2O) and -4.46 for log(XNH3 ) in the no-offset case. These upper limits are also consistent with those from the other retrieval cases, as shown in Table 2. The non-detections of both molecules are important considering their strong spectral features and detectability expected in the 0.9- 5.2 µm range (Madhusudhan et al. 2021; Constantinou & Madhusudhan 2022). The non-detection of H2O is at odds with its previous inference using the HST WFC3 spectrum in the 1.1-1.7 µm range (Tsiaras et al. 2019; Benneke et al. 2019a; Madhusudhan et al. 2020)."

It is generally agreed that water is absolutely necessary for any form of life of life to exist. The non-presence of water at K2-18 b is a reason for thinking that life does not exist there. The story on www.yahoo.com very much misinforms us by stating this:

"The ability of a planet to support life depends on its temperature, the presence of carbon and probably liquid water. Observations from JWST seem to suggest that that K2-18b ticks all those boxes."

No, the scientific paper says that water was not detected on  K2-18b, even though a sensitive test was made that should have detected traces as low as 1 part in a billion. 

What we have here is a "what was not found tells us very much" case a little like what happened with the 1976 Viking lander on Mars. The lander had multiple tests to try to gather evidence for life on Mars. In a result that might have been caused either by a deficiency of the experimental equipment or by some unusual chemistry producing an effect mimicking what microbes would have produced, a test called the labeled release experiment seemed to indicate the existence of life. But other instruments on the lander failed to find any evidence of organic matter. Organic matter (matter rich in carbon) is as necessary for living things as water.  

In this case scientists had to pay equal attention to what was observed and what was not observed. The non-observation of organic molecules seemed to say in a loud voice that Mars (or at least the part of Mars tested) was lifeless. Other missions found the tiniest traces of some biologically irrelevant organic molecules, but only in negligible amounts. 

Table 1 of the 2023 paper here lists all of the missions that have searched for organic compounds on Mars, and exactly what they found. We find no mention of any of the molecular components of living things. There's no mention of amino acids (the components used to build proteins), and no mention of any of the chemicals used to make RNA or DNA. The organic compounds listed as being found by the Perseverance mission are merely benzene and naphthalene, neither of which is a component of living things. The largest abundance mentioned is only 300 parts per billion, about 1 part in 3 million. 

The non-observation of amino acids is an extremely important clue telling us that Mars is almost certainly lifeless, and suggesting that any attempt to return Mars rocks or soil to Earth will almost certainly not reveal either life or traces of previous life.  Based on the non-observation of amino acids  on Mars, scientists should have told NASA to cancel its plan to retrieve soil and rock samples from Mars.  But scientists have failed to do that. It's a case of scientists paying insufficient attention to what was not found. 

Something similar occurs in the world of neuroscience. Neuroscientists pay endless attention to tiny little details observed in brains. But they senselessly seem to pay almost no attention to what has not been found in brains. What has not been found in brains tells us just as much (and possibly more) as anything that has been found in brains. 

Billions have been spent on studying brains. Brain tissue has been examined with instruments of ever-increasing power. Below is an interesting graph from a web page of the National Institute of Health. You can see the graph by using the link here. The original graph had a hard-to-read use of a yellow line, so I have changed the colors, and added a phrase identifying which line represents neuroscience funding. 

neuroscience funding

We see from this graph that there was a great spike of funding for neuroscience, which reached its peak around 2012, when the NIH was paying nearly 500 million dollars a year for neuroscience research. In that year funding for neuroscience exceeded funding for things such as immunology and health sciences.  But despite all of this lavish funding, there are some very important things that neuroscientists have never found:

Not found #1: any trace of learned human knowledge or experience in a piece of microscopically examined brain tissue.  

Within cells below the neck, there is stored information in DNA using a system of representations called the genetic code. Scientists were able to discover such a system in the middle of the 20th century, and were able to start recovering information stored using such a system, which was all low-level chemical information such as which amino acids make up particular proteins. If the human brain stored memories, there would be brain areas storing memories that could be studied microscopically to find what a person had learned or experienced. Scientists would then be able to find out some of the things someone (living or dead) had learned or experienced by studying his brain, and would be able to say things such as "I see he studied French" or "I see this dead man once lived in a blue house." No such memories have ever been discovered by microscopically examining brain tissue, even though scientists today have vastly more powerful microscopes than they had in the 1950's.  No one has ever been able to find any trace of what a person learned or experienced by studying such a person's brain tissue through a microscope or any other device. 

Not found #2: any encoding system by which human experiences and learned information could be converted into neural states or synapse states.

If a human brain stored memories, there would need to be some system or systems of encoding by which information you learned in school and experiences you had were stored as brain states.  Because  of the vast variety of things that people can remember (some experiential, some visual, some auditory, some textual, and some musical), it seems there would have to be not one simple system of encoding (like the genetic code) but many very complex systems of encoding allowing all the different things people can experience and learn to be stored as neural states. No such system of encoding can be found anywhere in the brain.  Besides failing to even microscopically find the words "cat" or "dog" or any other word stored in brain tissue, scientists don't even have any credible theory of how text or images or life experiences or concepts could be stored as neural states or synapse states. Given that the genetic code was discovered in the 1950's, and that the "footprints" of some code for converting human learned knowledge and human experience into stored memories would have to be much larger than such a genetic code, I estimate that if such a "neural code" for storing memories existed, it would have been discovered in the 1950's. 


Not found #3: any token repetition in the brain other than the nucleotide base pair tokens capable of representing only low-level chemical information such as sequences of amino acids.

Even when there is an encoding system that has not yet been deciphered or figured out, there will be indications that such an encoding system exists. The indications are repeated tokens. Before Europeans were able to figure out how hieroglyphics worked, they knew that hieroglyphics used some type of encoding system, because they could see how frequently there was a repetition of individual tokens or symbols. Not counting the genetic information stored in neurons and many other types of cells, where we do see an enormous amount of token repetition, there is no sign of any token repetition in the brain. This is a clear sign that the brain does not use any system of encoding to store human memories.  And if there is no such system of encoding, we should not think that brains store memories; for some system of encoding would be required to convert human experiences and human learned knowledge into brain states. 

Not found #4: any physical characteristics in the brain that might enable the kind of instant recall of correct answers that humans show when asked a question. 

Human recall typically occurs instantly. If you ask me "where was Abraham Lincoln shot," I do not say, "Hold on, let me scan through my memories, and after a while I'll tell you." Instead, the instant you have finished answering the question, I answer, "Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C."  If such a thing were to occur by brain activity, the brain would need to have aspects that can explain instant recall.

 Humans manufacture objects that allow instant retrieval of information, things such as books with numbered pages and indexes, encyclopedias with alphabetically sorted entries, and computers that can instantly retrieve information.  We know from such things that humans make what are the kind of things that enable instant retrieval using material objects. They are things such as sorting, addressing and indexing. In a book, page numbers are the addresses, and the indexes are sorted and make use of such page numbers. Computers that connect to relational databases or web pages (as all computers do these days) also use sorting, indexing and addressing. Every web page has an address, and relational databases use sorting, indexing and addressing to allow instant recall.  But in the brain there is no sign whatsoever of any sorting, indexing or addressing.  Neither neurons nor synapses have any addresses, and given the strongly entangled physical structure of neurons, it is impossible for brains to sort their neurons. No sign of any indexing can be found in the brain, and since indexes require sorting and addressing (things not found in the brain), there cannot be any indexing in the brain.  The lack of any addressing, indexing and sorting in the brain is a strong sign that instant recall of correct answers cannot be any activity of the brain. Scientists have no credible tale to tell of how the instant recall of correct answers could occur by brain activity. 

There are quite a few other examples of important things not found in the brain. Collectively such important neural shortfalls suggest that the brain cannot be the storage place of our memories and cannot be the source of our minds. But alas the members of the neuroscientist belief community fail to pay attention to what has not been found by studying brains. They fail to recognize the very important principle that what is not observed can tell you as much (and sometimes more) as what was observed.

Postscript: Since today's post is partially about astrobiology, I should comment on the story in today's Daily Mail with this headline: "Alien' bodies with three-fingered hands, 'unknown DNA and eggs inside' are presented by UFO expert at Mexican congress - with the 'non-humans' found in Peru said to be 1,000 years old."  A few random thoughts:

(1) The objects displayed are about the size of a human baby, and the heads look about one quarter the size of a human head.  A materialist might wonder: how could such tiny-brain creatures be smart enough to master interstellar travel?

(2) From outward appearances, the objects displayed look more like sculptures than corpses. We see no signs of clothing, and may ask: why would extraterrestrials be walking around naked on Earth?

(3) We have a caption claiming "the corpses, recovered from a mine in Cusco, Peru, had a genetic composition 30% removed from that of human beings."  We would expect any extraterrestrial life to have a genetic composition 100% different from humans.  Earthly life uses a system of representations (the genetic code, shown above) that is an arbitrary scheme of representations.  We would never expect life arising on some other planet to have even 20% genetic similarity with humans.  A "genetic composition 30% removed from that of human beings" would suggest some undiscovered earthly species (along the lines of Bigfoot) rather than a species coming from some other planet. 

Wired magazine has an article claiming the Peru objects are a mixture of animal and human material, held together with glue.  On September 14, 2023 NASA  released its much-anticipated report on UFOs and Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena. It's a mere "going through the motions" affair that reads like about as lazy an effort as could have appeared, as if written by people with no interest in this topic, unwilling to seriously study the topic, who just "phoned it in." 

Almost all of the press coverage on the K2-18 b study discussed above has been of very low quality. Almost all press reports claimed incorrectly that a discovery of dimethyl sulfide had been made, which was not a claim made by the paper. The paper merely claimed "marginal evidence" for dimethyl sulfide. The press articles almost all fail to tell us that no water was detected despite a very sensitive search (something that removes any biological relevance for K2-18 b); and quite a few of them mislead us by trying to insinuate that K2-18 b has water.  Some of the headlines in mainstream publications told the big fat lie that "signs of life" had been found in space. Let this be a lesson: the information presented by the science press very often consists of falsehoods or cherry-picked facts and spin designed to be clickbait or to get you to believe as the author wishes; and it is very common for the science press to fail to inform you of the most important relevant facts and observations relating to some topic being written about. 

Postscript:  In 2024 scientists produced a paper arguing that K2-18 b was not a "Hycaean" planet covered by an ocean, but instead a gas planet like Neptune with no ocean. The paper was "JWST Observations of K2-18b Can Be Explained by a Gas-rich Mini-Neptune with No Habitable Surface" authored by Nicholas F. Wogan and others. The 2025 paper "A Comprehensive Reanalysis of K2-18 b's JWST NIRISS+NIRSpec Transmission Spectrum" reanalyzes the data on K2-18 b and says "we find no statistically significant or reliable evidence for CO2 or DMS [dimethyl sulfide]."

Saturday, September 9, 2023

Some Accidentally Unachievable Molecular Machines in Your Body

In order to help perpetuate their dogma that humans are accidents of nature owing our existence to lucky random mutations in the distant past, our biologists are very fond of using what I call shrink-speaking language: language that makes the endless towering cathedrals of biological complexity look like mere crumbs.  This involves many tricks of diminutive representation, such as:

  • Referring to gigantically organized human bodies as "bags of chemicals" or "carbon stuff" or "star stuff."
  • Referring to stratospheric leaps of biological organization and  functional complexity as mere "variants." 
  • Referring to enormous new bonanzas of unprecedented biological engineering (such as the Cambrian Explosion) as mere "diversification." 
Our biological professors have in effect received their marching orders that they are supposed to describe human bodies as something that nature might have accidentally produced. But there are some cases where they encounter so much fine-tuned organized and purposeful functional complexity that professors find it almost impossible to follow such orders. One such case is the case of extremely organized protein complexes that even our reductionist professors have repeatedly described as molecular machinery

Organisms such as ourselves involve hierarchically structured and enormously organized complexity that cannot be credibly explained by appealing to random mutations. What we have in a human body is enormously organized and fine-tuned complexity so immense that it can be called an enormous engineering effect. In his interesting book Cosmological Koans, the physicist Anthony Aquirre tells us about just how complex biological life is. He states the following on page 338:

"On the physical level, biological creatures are so much more complex in a functional way than current artifacts of our technology that there's almost no comparison. The most elaborate and sophisticated human-designed machines, while quite impressive, are utter child's play compared with the workings of a cell: a cell contains on the order of 100 trillion atoms, and probably billions of quite complex molecules working with amazing precision. The most complex engineered machines -- modern jet aircraft, for example -- have several million parts. Thus, perhaps all the jetliners in the world (without people in them, of course) could compete in functional complexity with a lowly bacterium."

So if a lowly bacterium has a functional complexity comparable to a jetliner, what kind of functional complexity does a human body have? Functional complexity so great it can be called an enormously strong engineering effect. The human body includes many types of  molecular machines that are best classified as accidentally unachievable. Something is accidentally unachievable if there are no imaginable unguided accidental events that could cause its origin. 

I can explain the idea of something being accidentally unachievable with a simple example that is easy to understand.  A bridge across a shallow stream is something that is accidentally achievable. We can imagine some accidental arrangement of rocks that might make a kind of bridge across a shallow stream, and we can imagine some lightning bolt causing a tree to fall, making a bridge across a shallow steam. But a bridge across a very wide and deep river is something that is accidentally achievable. There is no conceivable series of accidents or unwilled natural events that could create a bridge over an average section of a wide river such as the Mississippi, which has an average width of one mile. 

Let us look at some of the most impressive cases of molecular machinery in your body, systems requiring so many thousands of well-arranged parts that they are reasonably called accidentally unachievable. Pay attention to the numbers given in the second columns of the tables below, numbers which tell how many amino acids parts have to be well-arranged to get the protein mentioned in each row. If the numbers were very low numbers such as 3 or 5 or 7, it might be excessive to state that the relevant molecular machines are accidentally unachievable. Instead, the actual numbers will be numbers in the hundreds or thousands, meaning that we will be constantly finding that individual protein components of these molecular machines each required hundreds or thousands of well-arranged amino acid parts (with a consequence that the total system required thousands of well-arranged amino acids, equivalent to tens of thousands of well-arranged atoms).  

Example #1: The Apoptosome 

apoptosme

(Image credit:  Wikipedia Commons, derived from Yuan et al. 2010, Structure of an apoptosome-procaspase-9 CARD complex)

Shown above is the apoptosome protein complex involved in programmed cell death. Note the references in the chart to propellers, which remind  us how much the complex resembles a product of engineering. Humans have more than 20,000 types of protein molecules, and the average protein molecule is a very special arrangement of more than 400 different amino acid parts. The arrangement of amino acids in each protein is as hard-to-achieve by chance as 400 accidentally typed characters making a paragraph of grammatical and functional prose. Extremely complex engineering arises in the form of protein complexes, in which different proteins (often useless by themselves) work together as team members to achieve some dramatic functional result. We see that in the visual above, where multiple instances of several different types of protein molecules come together to form an extremely complex structure consisting of thousands of well-arranged amino acid parts, and consisting of a total of tens of thousands of well-arranged atoms. A page describes the action of these individually useless proteins coming together to form a functional protein complex:

"The process of programmed cell death, also known as apoptosis, is highly regulated, and the decision to die is made through the coordinated action of many molecules. The apoptosome plays the role of gatekeeper in one of the major processes, termed the intrinsic pathway. It lies between the molecules that sense a problem and the molecules that disassemble the cell once the choice is made. Normally, the many subunits of the apoptosome are separated and inactive, circulating harmlessly through the cell. When trouble occurs, they assemble into a star-shaped complex, which activates protein-cutting caspases that get apoptosis started."

Another site that includes a 3D rotating animation of the structure shown above says this:

"The apoptosome is revealed as a wheel-like complex with seven spokes. On top of the wheel is a spiral-shaped disk that allows for docking and subsequent activation of proteases, which then target cellular components. When active, the apoptosome is revealed to be a dynamic machine with three to five protease molecules tethered to the wheel at any given time."

The "Apaf 1" part of this complex (APAF_HUMAN ) involves 1248 amino acids.   

Example # 2: The Spliceosome

spliceosome

At the site here, we read this about the human spliceosome: 

"The spliceosome is a complicated and formidable example of a multi-subunit molecular machine, with the pre-catalytic form being the largest spliceosomal complex, containing 5 RNA molecules and 65 proteins, in addition to a substrate mRNA precursor. The arrangement and activities of all of these has to be intricately coordinated, paradoxically to catalyse a rather simple chemical reaction."

The paper here describes the spliceosome as a highly dynamic machine, like some race car that has its parts changed or replaced by a pit crew as the race car stops for pit stops:

"Indeed, ∼45 proteins are recruited to the human spliceosome as part of the spliceosomal snRNPs, whereas non-snRNP proteins comprise the remainder. The composition of the spliceosome is highly dynamic with a remarkable exchange of proteins from one stage of splicing to the next. These changes are also accompanied by extensive remodeling of the snRNPs within the spliceosome."

Below are the number of amino acids involved in these parts, which I looked up using the UniProt online database (you can use the links to check the numbers I have given):

Protein

Number of amino acids

Conment

SF3A1

793

On Chromosome 22

SF3A2

462

On Chromosome 19

SF3A3

501

On Chromosome 1

PRPF3

683

On Chromosome 1

PRPF4

522

On Chromosome 9

PRP8

2335

On Chromosome 17

U5S1

972

On Chromosome 17

PRP31

499

On Chromosome 19

PRP4

522

On Chromosme 9

SNUT1

800

On Chromosome 11

SLU7

586

On Chromosome 5

RBM22

420

On Chromosome 5

FAM32A

112

On Chromosome 19

XAB2

855

On Chromosome 19

CACTIN

758

On Chromosome 19

PLRG1

514

On Chromosome 4

Altogether the structure shown above requires more than 9000 amino acids that have to be arranged in just the right way. The structure shown above is not specified in DNA, which merely specifies which amino acids make up each of the protein parts. The amino acid information needed to make the structure above (insufficient to specify the physical arrangement of the structure) is not at all contiguous in DNA. To assemble the structure above, among other wonders of construction a human body must magically gather genetic information scattered across many different chromosomes in the nucleus, like someone quickly finding just the right 45 loose pages hidden in random books of 46 tall, long bookcases in a public library. The table above shows that at least eight of the 23 human chromosome pairs would need to be accessed: Chromosome 1, Chromosome 4, Chromosome 5, Chromosome 9, Chromosome 11, Chromosome 17, Chromosome 19 and Chromosome 22. 

The CORUM database page here gives details on 39 different proteins involved in just one part of the spliceosome, a part called the spliceosome C complex. The CORUM database page here gives details on 38 different proteins involved in another part of the spliceosome, a part called the spliceosome pre-B complex. The CORUM database page here gives details on 43 different proteins involved in another part of the spliceosome, a part called the spliceosome B complex. The CORUM database page here gives details on 113 different proteins involved in another part of the spliceosome, a part called the spliceosome A complex. The CORUM database page here gives details on 139 different proteins involved in another part of the spliceosome, a part called the spliceosome E complex. The paper here says, "The spliceosome is composed of as many as 300 distinct proteins and five RNAs, making it among the most complex macromolecular machines known."

Example # 3: RNA Polymerase II

The page here discusses RNA polymerase:

"RNA is a versatile molecule. In its most familiar role, RNA acts as an intermediary, carrying genetic information from the DNA to the machinery of protein synthesis. RNA also plays more active roles, performing many of the catalytic and recognition functions normally reserved for proteins. In fact, most of the RNA in cells is found in ribosomes--our protein-synthesizing machines--and the transfer RNA molecules used to add each new amino acid to growing proteins. In addition, countless small RNA molecules are involved in regulating, processing and disposing of the constant traffic of messenger RNA. The enzyme RNA polymerase carries the weighty responsibility of creating all of these different RNA molecules...RNA polymerase is a huge factory with many moving parts".

There are three different versions of RNA Polymerase, RNA Polymerase I, RNA Polymerase II, and RNA Polymerase III. In a previous post I discussed the proteins that make up the RNA Polymerase III complex: more than a dozen proteins with amino acid sequences specified across ten or more different chromosomes, with the complex requiring thousands of well-arranged amino acids. Below are the number of amino acids involved in RNA Polymerase II, which I looked up using the UniProt online database (you can use the links to check the numbers I have given):


Protein

Number of amino acids

Comment

RPB1_HUMAN

1970

On Chromosome 17

RPB4_HUMAN

142

On Chromosome 2

RPB7_HUMAN

172

On Chromosome 11

RPB2_HUMAN

1174

On Chromosome 4

MED21_HUMAN

144

On Chromosome 12

RPB9_HUMAN

125

On Chromosome 19

RPB3_HUMAN

275

On Chromosome 16

RPB11_HUMAN

117

On Chromosome 7

RPAP3_HUMAN

665

On Chromosome 12

RPAB1_HUMAN

210

On Chromosome 19

RPAP1_HUMAN

1393

On Chromosome 15

RPAB5_HUMAN

67

On Chromosome 11

MED20_HUMAN

212

On Chromosome 6

RPAB3_HUMAN

150

On Chromosome 3

A0A3B3IRX3_HUMAN


2222

On Chromosome 12

MD13L_HUMAN

2210

On Chromosome 12

MED12_HUMAN

2177

On Chromosome X

MED13_HUMAN

2174

On Chromosome 17

MD12L_HUMAN

2145

On Chromosome 3

Requiring many more well-arranged amino acids than RNA Polymerase III, the RNA Polymerase II protein complex clearly requires more than 10,000 amino acids that have to be arranged in just the right way. The RNA Polymerase II structure is not specified in DNA, which merely specifies which amino acids make up each of the protein parts. The amino acid information needed to make RNA Polymerase II  is not at all contiguous in DNA. To assemble RNA Polymerase II, among other wonders of construction a human body must magically gather genetic information scattered across many different chromosomes in the nucleus, like someone quickly finding just the right 15+ loose pages hidden in random books of 46 tall, long bookcases in a library. The table above shows that at least eleven of the 23 human chromosome pairs would need to be accessed: Chromosome 2, Chromosome 3, Chromosome 4, Chromosome 6, Chromosome 7,  Chromosome 11, Chromosome 12, Chromosome 15, Chromosome 17, Chromosome 19, and Chromosome X.

Example # 4: Proteasomes 

The wikipedia.org article on proteasomes tells us this:

"Proteasomes are protein complexes which degrade unneeded or damaged proteins by proteolysis, a chemical reaction that breaks peptide bonds...In structure, the proteasome is a cylindrical complex containing a 'core' of four stacked rings forming a central pore. Each ring is composed of seven individual proteins."

A paper on this topic is entitled "Gates, channels, and switches: elements of the proteasome machine." We read this:

"The proteasome has emerged as an intricate machine that has dynamic mechanisms to regulate the timing of its activity, its selection of substrates, and its processivity. The 19-subunit regulatory particle (RP) recognizes ubiquitinated proteins, removes ubiquitin, and injects the target protein into the proteolytic chamber of the core particle (CP) via a narrow channel."

Another paper is entitled "The 26S Proteasome: A Molecular Machine Designed for Controlled Proteolysis." A page on the site of the Theoretical and Computational Group tells us this:

"Recycling of unneeded protein molecules in cells is performed by a molecular machine called 26S proteasome (Figure 1), which cuts these proteins into smaller pieces for reuse as building blocks for new proteins. Proteins that need to be recycled are labeled by tags made of poly-ubiquitin protein chains. The 26S proteasome machine recognizes and binds to these tags, pulls the tagged protein close, then unwinds it, and finally cuts it into pieces. As the cell's recycling machinery, the 26S proteasome is vital for a variety of essential cellular processes, including protein quality control, cell cycle regulation, adaptive immune response, and apoptosis....The 26S proteasome recruits, unfolds, and degrades poly-ubiquitin tagged proteins through a complex interaction clockwork of over 60 known protein subunits that is driven through ATP hydrolysis."

A scientific paper tells us this:

"The 26S proteasome is a multisubunit complex that catalyzes the degradation of ubiquitinated proteins. The proteasome comprises 33 distinct subunits, all of which are essential for its function and structure.

Below is a depiction of the human 26S proteasome structure, one that labels some of its protein parts. We see three different views of the same protein complex, with different protein parts labeled (the Greek letters used stand for alpha and beta parts mentioned in the table below):

26s proteasome

Image credit: Xing Guo et. al, link.

Below are the number of amino acids involved in these parts, which I looked up using the UniProt online database (you can use the links to check the numbers I have given):

Protein

Number of amino acids

Coment

Proteasome subunit beta type-1

241

On Chromosome 6

Proteasome subunit beta type-2

201

On Chromosome 1

Proteasome subunit beta type-3

205

On Chromosome 17

Proteasome subunit beta type-4

264On Chromosome 1

Proteasome subunit beta type-5

263On Chromosome 14

Proteasome subunit beta type-6

239On Chromosome 17

Proteasome subunit beta type-7

248On Chromosome 20

Proteasome subunit alpha type-1

263On Chromosome 11

Proteasome subunit alpha type-2

234On Chromosome 7

Proteasome subunit alpha type-3

255On Chromosome 14

Proteasome subunit alpha type-4

261On Chromosome 15

Proteasome subunit alpha type-5

241On Chromosome 1

Proteasome subunit alpha type-6

243On Chromosome 14

Proteasome subunit alpha type-7

248On Chromosome 20


The structure shown above clearly requires several thousands of amino acids that have to be arranged in just the right way. The structure shown above is not specified in DNA, which merely specifies which amino acids make up each of the protein parts. The amino acid information needed to make the structure above (insufficient to specify the total structure) is not at all contiguous in DNA. To assemble the structure above, among other wonders of construction a human body must magically gather genetic information scattered across many different chromosomes in the nucleus, like someone quickly finding just the right 60 loose pages hidden in random books of 46 tall, long bookcases in a library. The table above shows that at least eight of the 23 human chromosome pairs would need to be accessed: Chromosome 1, Chromosome 6, Chromosome 7, Chromosome 11, Chromosome 14, Chromosome 15, Chromosome 17, and Chromosome 20.

Example # 5: The ATP Synthase Complex

Another example of accidentally unachievable molecular machinery in the human body is the ATP synthase protein complex. It's a very complex molecular motor system described in a paper entitled "ATP Synthase: Motoring to the Finish Line." The paper refers to this complex as a "sophisticated molecular machine."  We read this: "ATP synthase is an unusually efficient rotary motor that synthesizes ATP at rates exceeding 100 molecules per second."  Another scientific page tells us this:

"ATP synthase is one of the wonders of the molecular world. ATP synthase is an enzyme, a molecular motor, an ion pump, and another molecular motor all wrapped together in one amazing nanoscale machine. It plays an indispensable role in our cells, building most of the ATP that powers our cellular processes....Why have two motors connected together? The trick is that one motor can force the other motor to turn, and in this way, change the motor into a generator. "

ATP Synthase
ATP Synthase (image source: link)

Below are some of the components of ATP synthase, as listed in the UniProt database.

Protein

Number of amino acids

Comment

ATP5E_HUMAN

51

On Chromosome 20

ATP8_HUMAN

68From Mitochondrion

ATP6_HUMAN

226From Mitochondrion

ATP5S_HUMAN

215On Chromosome 14

ATP5J_HUMAN

108
On Chromosome 21

ATP68_HUMAN

58On Chromosome 14

ATP23_HUMAN

246On Chromosome 12

ATP51_HUMAN

69On Chromosome 4

ATP5H_HUMAN

161

On Chromosome 17

ATPPK_HUMAN

94

On Chromosome 7

ATPB_HUMAN

529

On Chromosome 12

ATPD_HUMAN

168

On Chromosome 19

ATPA_HUMAN

553

On Chromosome 18

AT5G1_HUMAN

136

On Chromosome 17

ATPG_HUMAN

298

On Chromosome 10

ATP5G2_HUMAN

141

On Chromosome 12

ATPO_HUMAN

213

On Chromosome 21

AT5G3_HUMAN

142

On Chromosome 2

AT5F1_HUMAN

256

On Chromosome 1



ATP Synthase seems to require thousands of amino acid parts arranged in just the right way, which amounts to a special arrangement of tens of thousands of atoms. The arrangement of the parts of the ATP Synthase complex is not specified in DNA, which does not specify which proteins are parts of particular protein complexes. To assemble the structure above, among other wonders of construction a human body must magically gather genetic information scattered across many different chromosomes in the nucleus, like someone quickly finding just the right 19 loose pages hidden in random books of 46 tall, long bookcases in a public library. The table above shows that at least 12  of the 23 human chromosome pairs would need to be accessed: Chromosome 1, Chromosome 2,  Chromosome 4, Chromosome 7, Chromosome 10, Chromosome 12, Chromosome 14,  Chromosome 17, Chromosome 18, Chromosome 19, Chromosome 20 and Chromosome 21.

Example # 6: The Origin Recognition Complex/Replicative Helicase Complex

Mammalian cells are so complicated they have been compared to factories or jet aircraft. The reproduction of most cells in the human body is a miracle of replication beyond the understanding of today's science. Scientists have confessed that they do not know what causes the fantastically complex process of cell reproduction. Scientists merely understand phases of such a process, and what components play a role in the process. 

One of those components is called the origin recognition complex. The wikipedia.org article on this protein complex says this: "The origin recognition complex (ORC) is a highly conserved six subunits protein complex essential for the initiation of the DNA replication in eukaryotic cells." The ORC complex works as a team with a "replicative helicase" complex consisting of the six bottom rows on the table below. So the wikipedia.org article on the ORC complex lists all of the items in the table below as the items in the complete complex. Below are some details of these subunits:

Protein

Number of amino acids

Comment

ORC1

861

On Chromosome 1

ORC2

577

On Chromosome 2

ORC3

711

On Chromosome 6

ORC4

436

On Chromosome 2

ORC5

435

On Chromosome 7

ORC6

252

On Chromosome 16

Cdc6

560

On Chromosome 17


Mcm2

904

On Chromosome 3

Mcm3

808

On Chromosome 6

Mcm4

863

On Chromosome 8

Mcm5

734

On Chromosome 22

Mcm6

821

On Chromosome 2

Mcm7

719

On Chromosome 7


Science writer Amber Dance skillfully describes the operations of the unit above:

"The average dividing cell must copy—perfectly—3.2 billion base pairs of DNA, about once every 24 hours. The cell’s replication machinery does an amazing job of this, copying genetic material at a lickety-split pace of some 50 base pairs per second. Still, that’s much too slow to duplicate the entirety of the human genome. If the cell’s copying machinery started at the tip of each of the 46 chromosomes at the same time, it would finish the longest chromosome—No. 1, at 249 million base pairs—in about two months. 'The way cells get around this, of course, is that they start replication in multiple spots,' says James Berger, a structural biologist...'But that poses its own challenge,' says Berger, 'which is, how do you know where to start, and how do you time everything?' Without precision control, some DNA might get copied twice, causing cellular pandemonium... It takes a tightly coordinated dance involving dozens of proteins for the DNA-copying machinery to start replication at the right point in the cell’s life cycle...Kicking off the process is a cluster of six proteins that sit down at the origins. Called ORC, this cluster is shaped like a double-layer ring with a handy notch that allows it to slide onto the DNA strands, Berger’s team has found...Once ORC has settled onto the DNA, it attracts a second protein complex: one that includes the helicase that will eventually unwind the DNA. Costa and colleagues used electron microscopy to work out how ORC lures in first one helicase, and then another. The helicases are also ring-shaped, and each one opens up to wrap around the double-stranded DNA. Then the two helicases close up again, facing toward each other on the DNA strands, like two beads on a string."

The molecular machinery shown above clearly requires more than five  thousand amino acids that have to be arranged in just the right way. The structure of the molecular machinery described above is not specified in DNA, which merely specifies which amino acids make up each of the protein parts. The amino acid information needed to make the structure above (insufficient to make the 3D structure) is not at all contiguous in DNA. To assemble the structure above, among other wonders of construction a human body must magically gather genetic information scattered across many different chromosomes in the nucleus, like someone quickly finding just the right 14 loose pages hidden in random books of 46 tall, long bookcases in a library. The table above shows that at least nine of the 23 human chromosome pairs would need to be accessed: Chromosome 1, Chromosome 2, Chromosome 3, Chromosome 6, Chromosome 7, Chromosome 8, Chromosome 16, Chromosome 17 and Chromosome 22.

Example # 7: The Nuclear Pore Complex

The nuclear pore complex or NPC is a large protein complex found in the "nuclear envelope" that is the outer boundary of the nucleus inside human cells.  A science research press release tells us this: "

"For structural biologists, the human NPC is a challenging yet exciting 3D puzzle, with around 30 different proteins each present in multiple copies. This amounts to around 1000 puzzle pieces, which form a round core with surrounding flexible parts."

The wikipedia.org article on this complex states that it consists of "456 individual protein molecules, and 34 distinct nucleoporin proteins." So the complex apparently requires 34 types of protein molecules. The article tells us that the "principal function of nuclear pore complexes is to facilitate selective membrane transportation of various molecules across the nuclear envelope." This mean that nuclear pore complexes have the extremely complex job of acting like gatekeepers, letting the right kind of molecules get into the nucleus of the cell, and keeping out the wrong type of molecules.  The article tells us that there are typically about 1000 of the nuclear pore complexes in every cell. We read of some impressive functionality of these nuclear pore complexes:

"Notably, the nuclear pore complex (NPC) can actively mediate up to 1000 translocations per complex per second. While smaller molecules can passively diffuse through the pores, larger molecules are often identified by specific signal sequences and are facilitated by nucleoporins to traverse the nuclear envelope."

The article tells us that a nuclear pore complex has a molecular weight of about 110 megadaltons. A dalton is the mass equal to a twelfth of the mass of a carbon atom. A protein complex of 110 megadaltons would have the mass of about 9 million carbon atoms. Apparently the proteins that make up this complex are particularly complex proteins. Below are the exact numbers (we may assume that there are multiple instances of such proteins in a nuclear pore complex). 


Protein

Number of amino acids

Comment

NUP98_HUMAN

1817

On Chromosome 11

NU153_HUMAN

1475

On Chromosome 6

NUP93_HUMAN

819

On Chromosome 16

NU107_HUMAN

925

On Chromosome 12

NU205_HUMAN

2012

On Chromosome 7

NU160_HUMAN

1436

On Chromosome 11

NU214_HUMAN

2090

On Chromosome 9

NUP85_HUMAN

656

On Chromosome 17

NUP50_HUMAN

468

On Chromosome 22

NUP88_HUMAN

741

On Chromosome 17

NU133_HUMAN

1156

On Chromosome 1

NU155_HUMAN

1391

On Chromosome 5


The molecular machinery shown above clearly requires more than 12,000 amino acids that have to be arranged in just the right way, which amounts to a special arrangement of more than 100,000  atoms. The structure of the molecular machinery described above is not specified in DNA, which merely specifies which amino acids make up each of the protein parts. The amino acid information needed to make the structure above  is not at all contiguous in DNA. To assemble the structure above, among other wonders of construction a human body must magically gather genetic information scattered across many different chromosomes in the nucleus, like someone quickly finding just the right 34 loose pages hidden in random books of 46 tall, long bookcases in a library. The table above shows that at least nine of the 23 human chromosome pairs would need to be accessed: Chromosome 1, Chromosome 5, Chromosome 6, Chromosome 7, Chromosome 11, Chromosome 12, Chromosome 16, Chromosome 17 and Chromosome 22.

nuclear pore complex
The nuclear pore complex (credit: Protein Data Bank, link)

Six Reasons These Molecular Machines And Their Behavior Are Accidentally Unachievable

There are six main reasons why we must regard the molecular machines described above as accidentally unachievable.

Reason #1: Chance processes such as Darwinian evolution could never produce the genes needed to make the proteins that make up such molecular machines (the gene origination problem)To perform the task a particular protein molecule performs, a type of protein molecule typically requires some specific fine-tuned gene, an amino acid sequence with most or nearly all of the protein's actual amino acid sequence, a chain of hundreds or thousands of amino acids specially arranged to produce a functional effect. Evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin stated"It seems clear that even the smallest change in the sequence of amino acids of proteins usually has a deleterious effect on the physiology and metabolism of organisms." A biology textbook tells us, "Proteins are so precisely built that the change of even a few atoms in one amino acid can sometimes disrupt the structure of the whole molecule so severely that all function is lost." And we read on a science site, "Folded proteins are actually fragile structures, which can easily denature, or unfold." Another science site tells us, "Proteins are fragile molecules that are remarkably sensitive to changes in structure." paper describing a database of protein mutations tells us that "two thirds of mutations within the database are destabilising."  Those who think that functional folded protein molecules could gradually arise (getting longer and longer from a small size) will be dismayed to read this statement in a 900+ page textbook on protein chemistry: "Polypeptides less than about 70 amino acids in length should not fold because they should not be able to bury a large enough number of hydrophobic amino acids to overcome the configurational entropy of their random coils." Folding is required for most functional protein molecules. 

Accordingly, we cannot explain the origin of genes through some gradualism approach that imagines that first there was one tenth of the gene that was useful for one purpose, and then there was two tenths of the gene that were useful for some other purpose, and then finally we got the version of the gene that humans now have.  Human genes with only half of their base pairs or a third of their base pairs are not useful, and their corresponding protein molecules are not useful with half of their amino acids. 

But how hard would it be to get by chance or random mutations an amino acid sequence that would be the core of a useful protein molecule? That depends on the number of amino acids in the protein. Here we run into a simple principle that is the bane of all theories of accidental biological origins: the principle that a simple linear increase in the number of parts that must be well-arranged results in an exponential or geometric increase in the unlikelihood of such an arrangement occurring by chance. A small increase in the number of parts quickly results in what is called a combinatorial explosion, in which the number of possible combinations skyrockets. This is why computer security experts often tell you to use at at least 14-characters for the password of any financial account.  If you change your password from 7-characters to 14 characters, that doesn't make it merely twice as hard for a hacker trying all combinations to break into your account; instead it is is roughly 10,000,000,000 times harder. 

The chart below shows some of the relevant mathematics. If you doubt these numbers, you can verify them using the Large Exponents Calculator here. Since there are 20 different amino acids used in protein, you use 20 in the first row of such a calculator. Numbers such as E+6 refer to powers of ten. So 3.2 E+6 means 3,200,000; 1.024 E+13 means 10,240,000,000,000; and E+26 means 1 followed by 26 zeros. The bottom of the chart is a number of combinations equal to about 1 followed by more than 2600 zeros. 


Number of amino acids in a molecule

Number of possible combinations of the molecule's amino acids

5

3.2 E+6

10

1.024 E+13

20

1.048576 E+26

40

1.099511627 E+52

80

1.208925819 E+104

160

1.461501637 E+208

320

2.135987035 E+416

640

4.562440617 E+832

1280

2.081586438 E+1665

2000

1.148130695 E+2602


We can see from the chart above that the odds become utterly prohibitive once you start to get amino acid lengths much longer than about 160. Even if you very generously assume that a particular protein molecule only needs to have half of its amino acid sequence matching its actual sequence (an assumption too generous because of what we know about the sensitivity of protein molecules to small changes), you still have a case where we should never expect chance processes to produce successful amino acid sequences (corresponding to functional protein molecules) as long as 320 amino acids. 

In most of the protein complexes described above, we have some very complex proteins consisting of very long amino acids chains that we should never expect to have arisen by chance or Darwinian processes, never in the entire visible universe even given billions of years. Specifically:

  • One of the complexes (the spliceosome) had a protein consisting of 2335 well-arranged amino acids.
  • Another of the complexes (the apoptosome) had a protein consisting of 1248 well-arranged amino acids. 
  • The nuclear pore protein complex had one protein requiring 2090 well-arranged amino acids, and another protein requiring 2012 well-arranged amino acids, along with three other types of proteins each requiring more than 1000 well-arranged amino acids.
  • The origin recognition complex/replicative helicase complex required 7 types of proteins that each required more than 700 well-arranged amino acids. 
  • The RNA polymerase II protein complex described above had five types of proteins each requiring more than 2000 well-arranged amino acids, and three other types of proteins each  requiring more than 1000 well-arranged amino acids.
I could say much more about why proteins with amino acid sequences as long as this are not explicable by Darwinian processes, but that would involve repeating too many of the points in a previous post. See my previous post here for quite a long discussion on why it is not credible to suppose that fine-tuned amino acid sequences of this length ever could have arisen through any type of natural selection.  

Reason #2: we lack any explanation as to why very complex proteins would fold correctly. To be functional, proteins have to fold in just the right way, to achieve very complex three-dimensional shapes. But we don't understand how this folding occurs. DNA specifies only the linear sequence of the amino acids that make up a protein, not the complex 3D shape of a protein. Don't be fooled by press accounts claiming that the AlphaFold2 software did something to solve the protein folding problem. Such software did not produce any progress in solving the protein folding problem (the problem of how proteins are able to fold into the complex 3D shapes needed for their function). Such software merely produced progress in a different problem: the protein folding prediction problem, which is the problem of predicting the 3D shape of a protein from its amino acid sequence. 

One maneuver is an appeal to what is called Anfinsen's Dogma, a claim that the 3D shape of a protein is entirely a function of its amino acid sequence. Such an appeal is futile because it is a "rob Peter to pay Paul" affair rather like "solving" your college tuition burden by charging your tuition on your credit card.  If Anfinsen's Dogma were true, then genes would all-the-more-enormously have to be "just right" to allow for a properly folded 3D protein molecule; and in that case the gene origination problem becomes exponentially worsened.  The person who appeals to Anfinsen's Dogma lessens the protein folding problem at the expense of exponentially worsening the gene origination problem  (the problem of how 20,000+ suitable genes ended up in human DNA).    Appealing to Anfinsen's Dogma seem to make Reason #2 of these six reasons seem less convincing, at the expense of making Reason #1 seem enormously and exponentially more convincing. Such an appeal produces no net progress in making molecular machines like those above seem accidentally achievable. 

I may note that there are very good reasons for rejecting Anfinsen's Dogma, such as the very massive reliance of protein folding on helper molecules called chaperone proteins, which show that the 3D shapes of proteins are not a simple function of their amino acids sequences as Anfinsen's Dogma claims. 

Reason #3: we have no credible physical explanation for how  a transcription event could promptly find the right gene to make a particular protein (a "needle from the haystack" type of event). Cells are constantly creating new proteins to replace proteins that disappeared because of the short lifetimes of proteins. The page here has a chart showing the lifetimes of human proteins, and we see a bar graph showing most of the proteins have a half-life between about 10 hours and 70 hours. A muscle protein might live for three weeks, but a liver protein might live for only a few days. To create new proteins, a cell uses a process called gene transcription. In this process a particular gene in DNA will be converted to a messenger RNA molecule that helps to build the new protein. 

Cell transcription occurs quickly. The source here lists a time of ten minutes for a gene to be transcribed by a mammal, but another source lists a speed of only about a minute. The great majority of that is used up by the reading of base pairs from the gene, with typically more than 1000 base pairs being read each time a gene is transcribed. The finding of the correct gene to read in DNA seems to occur in only seconds, not minutes, or at most a few minutes. 

Descriptions of DNA transcription fail to explain a huge issue: how does a cell find the right gene in DNA so quickly? Human DNA contains more than 20,000 genes, each of which is just a section of the DNA. The DNA is like an extremely long necklace of many thousands of beads, and a typical gene is like a group of several hundred of those beads. We should actually imagine multiple such necklaces, because DNA is scattered across 23 different chromosome pairs. Now if genes had gene numbers, and DNA was a set of numbered genes in numerical order, it might be easy to find a particular gene. So if a cell knew that it was trying to find gene number 4,233, it could use a binary search method that would allow it to find that gene pretty quickly. 

But no such method can be used within the human body. Genes do not have gene numbers that can be accessed within the human body, and DNA is not numerically sorted. DNA has no indexes that might allow a cell to find some particular gene that it was trying to find within DNA.  So we have an explanatory "needle in a haystack" problem.  Or we might call it a "needle in the haystacks" problem, because human DNA is scattered across 23 different chromosome pairs, as shown in the diagram below:


A scientific text tells us some information that makes this explanatory problem seem more pressing:

"One might have predicted that the information present in genomes would be arranged in an orderly fashion, resembling a dictionary or a telephone directory. Although the genomes of some bacteria seem fairly well organized, the genomes of most multicellular organisms, such as our Drosophila example, are surprisingly disorderly. Small bits of coding  (that is, DNA that codes for ) are interspersed with large blocks of seemingly meaningless DNA. Some sections of the  contain many genes and others lack genes altogether. Proteins that work closely with one another in the cell often have their genes located on different chromosomes, and adjacent genes typically encode proteins that have little to do with each other in the cell. Decoding genomes is therefore no simple matter. Even with the aid of powerful computers, it is still difficult for researchers to locate definitively the beginning and end of genes in the DNA sequences of  genomes, much less to predict when each  is expressed in the life of the organism. Although the DNA sequence of the human genome is known, it will probably take at least a decade for humans to identify every gene and determine the precise  sequence of the protein it produces. Yet the cells in our body do this thousands of times a second."

We have here a very severe navigation problem. A cell is somehow able to find the right gene in only seconds or a few minutes when a new protein is made, even though DNA and chromosomes seem to have no physical organization that could allow for such blazing fast  access to the right information. In an article on Chemistry World, we read this:

"How does the machinery that turns genes into proteins know which part of the genome to read in any given cell type? ‘To me that is one of the most fundamental questions in biology,’ says biochemist Robert Tjian of the University of California at Berkeley in the US: ‘How does a cell know what it is supposed to be?"

Biochemist Tjian has spoken just as if he had no idea how it is that a cell is able to navigate to the right place to read a particular gene in DNA. Later in the article we read this:

"For one thing, the regulatory machinery ‘is unbelievably complex’, says Tjian, comprising perhaps 60–100 proteins – mostly of a class called transcription factors (TFs) – that have to interact before anything happens. ....As well as promoters, mammalian genes are controlled by DNA segments called enhancers. Some proteins bind to the promoter site, others bind to the enhancer, and they have to communicate. ‘This is where things get bizarre, because the enhancer can sit miles away from the promoter,’ says Tjian – meaning, perhaps, millions of base pairs away, maybe with a whole gene or two in between. And the transcription machinery can’t just track along the DNA until it hits the enhancer, because the track is blocked. In eukaryotes, almost all of the genome is, at any given moment, packaged away by being wrapped around disk-shaped proteins called histones. These, says Tjian, ‘are like big boulders on the track’: you can’t get past them easily.... ‘Even after 40 years of studying this stuff, I don’t think we have a clear idea of how that looping happens,’ says Tjian. Until recently, the general idea was that the TFs and other components all fit together into a kind of jigsaw, via molecular recognition, that will bridge and bind a loop in place while transcription happens. ‘We molecular biologists love to draw nice model schemes of how TFs find their target genes and how enhancers can regulate promoters located millions of base pairs away,’ says Ralph Stadhouders of the Erasmus University Medical Centre in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. ‘But exactly how this is achieved in a timely and highly specific manner is still very much a mystery.’ "

Later in the article Tjian says he was shocked by the speed at which some of the process occurs. He expected it would take hours, but found something much different:

"The residence times of these proteins in vivo was not minutes or hours, but about six seconds!’, he says. ‘I was so shocked that it took me months to come to grips with my own data. How could a low-concentration protein ever get together with all its partners to trigger expression of a gene, when everything is moving at this unbelievably rapid pace?’ "

The rest of the article is just some speculation, which Tjian mostly knocks down, and the article itself calls "hand-wavy." We are left with the impression that no one understands how cells are able to instantly find the right gene.


Reason #4: chance processes would never produce the arrangements of proteins like those found in the molecular machines listed above. What we must never forget is that a protein complex involves three types of organization:
  • The one-dimensional organization of amino acids found in the sequence of amino acids that makes up a protein;
  • the three-dimensional organization of such a sequence to make a complex folded three-dimensional shape needed for a particular protein molecule to function properly;
  • the entirely different three-dimensional organization needed for the proteins of a protein complex to fit together in the right way to make a physical arrangement so complex that it may be called a "molecular machine."
How is it that protein molecules form into protein complexes consisting of multiple protein molecules? Some may guess that DNA is read to determine which type of proteins should team up with other proteins to make particular protein complexes.  But that does not happen. DNA does not specify which proteins belong to particular protein complexes. In fact, the tables above show that the genes corresponding to the proteins that make up the protein complexes are typically found in widely scattered chromosomes. That would seem to be the opposite of what would happen if DNA was specifying that particular protein molecules should team up with other types of protein molecules to make particular kind of protein complexes. 

So what explanation do biologists give for how protein complexes form? Their attempts at explanations consist of little more than hand-waving.  They mainly appeal to chance collisions of molecules floating around in the human body. This is no more credible  than claiming that tornadoes passing through junkyards can create automobiles out of the spare parts that are lying around the junkyards. 

A very important point here is that vast wonders of molecular assembly are happening continuously in the human body. Every week very many of the molecular machines described above (and countless others not described) are being assembled in your body. And as I have shown above, such molecular machines are built using amino acid sequences from very scattered chromosomes So we have an effect no more explainable by chance collisions than tornadoes building cars out of junk scattered in diverse places of a junk yard. And such an effect is constantly occurring in your body, in massive numbers. 

There is no way to explain this by trotting out some Darwinist phrase such as "very lucky things can happen given a million years of chance events."  We are not talking here about some miracle of genetic luck that occurred once in an eon. We are talking about miracles of complex purposeful assembly that are occurring in massive numbers every single day in your body. Darwin doesn't do anything to get the materialist out of this jam. 

The statements below are indications that scientists simply have no credible explanation as to how very complex protein complexes (like those discussed above) can form from their constituent protein parts:

  • "The majority of cellular proteins function as subunits in larger protein complexes. However, very little is known about how protein complexes form in vivo." Duncan and Mata, "Widespread Cotranslational Formation of Protein Complexes," 2011.
  • "While the occurrence of multiprotein assemblies is ubiquitous, the understanding of pathways that dictate the formation of quaternary structure remains enigmatic." -- Two scientists (link). 
  • "A general theoretical framework to understand protein complex formation and usage is still lacking." -- Two scientists, 2019 (link). 
  • "Protein assemblies are at the basis of numerous biological machines by performing actions that none of the individual proteins would be able to do. There are thousands, perhaps millions of different types and states of proteins in a living organism, and the number of possible interactions between them is enormous...The strong synergy within the protein complex makes it irreducible to an incremental process. They are rather to be acknowledged as fine-tuned initial conditions of the constituting protein sequences. These structures are biological examples of nano-engineering that surpass anything human engineers have created. Such systems pose a serious challenge to a Darwinian account of evolution, since irreducibly complex systems have no direct series of selectable intermediates, and in addition, as we saw in Section 4.1, each module (protein) is of low probability by itself." -- Steinar Thorvaldsen and Ola Hössjerm, "Using statistical methods to model the fine-tuning of molecular machines and systems,"  Journal of Theoretical Biology. 

Reason #5: once assembled, such molecular machines act as if they knew where to go, which would not happen by accident . It is not merely the assembly of such molecular machines that defies anything we should expect to occur accidentally. It is also the behavior of such molecular machines, in the sense that they always seem to act exactly as if they knew where to go to. For example, the nuclear pore complex molecular machines go to just where they are needed (the nuclear membrane), and the splicesome and RNA polymerase II complex go to appropriate places in the cell.  To have an analogy for the whole storyline of the construction and target reaching of such molecular machines occurring accidentally, we would have to imagine something like tornadoes passing through junkyards, constructing many cars, and also blowing the cars to just the right places to pick up a million scattered people who needed rides.  How accidentally unachievable would that be? 

molecular machines acting like motors

Reason #6: such molecular machinery behavior occurs massively every dayIf something occurs only very rarely, we might regard is as accident. For example, if you come to your door with a friend, and realize you lost your  key, and your friend suggests he tries his key on your door, and his key opens your door, you may regard this as a lucky coincidence, having seen such a thing only once in your life. But when some type of lucky thing occurs all the time in massive numbers, in some way you cannot account for, chance and coincidence are no longer reasonable explanations. 

How often does there occur in your body the assembly and correct positional targeting of the molecular machines I have listed above? Billions or trillions of times every day. For example, very many  instances of the nuclear pore complex discussed above are needed in the construction of a new cell, and it has been estimated that the human body makes 300 billion new cells every day. What would be the chance of the totality of such daily feats of construction occurring accidentally? Something like the chance of a winter ice storm constructing a thousand-mile-high ice arch stretching all the way from Europe to North America.