[GodGunsGuts]

Ping!

[exist]

I saw in a documentary Mike Tyson wanted to fight a gorilla.

[FormerRep]

The article used massive generalities centering briefly on enzymes as some sort of proof. The authors could as well mentioned enzyme linked immunosorbant assays (ELISA) for their point. At least, then, it would have been a process. Both enzymes and antigenic reaction require a specific site of attachment for the agent to bind and do work (work loosely defined as any function). There is no almost fit - it either binds or not. The authors premise that evolution requires random best fit is flawed. Using antigenic reactions as an easy example you will find that when presented with a foreign entity for the first time, the host does not have a specific antigenic response. Only when the host acclimates and creates new antibodies that are specific to that antigen will the host be able to recognize and eliminate the foreign body (antigen). This is the reason why we were all subjected to small pox vaccines back in the day - to develop a response.

In short, the biology staff in the article used known systemics to make broad unsupported generalities.

[Last Dakotan]

Physicists Finding Perfection...in Biology

Yeah but, all those websites featuring biologically perfect females are blocked at work.

[gusopol3]

Thanks , the post deserved a better level of commentary than it got.

[Ben Ficklin]

Another example of how the biologists must delay their studies until the physicists have finished their studies.

Just like astro-biology.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

This article is misleading. It creates a strawman (biological perfection), then fantasizes a case for all measurable biological systems as perfect.

Here's what Dr. Bialek actually wrote,

"Strikingly, when we do this (and there are not so many cases where it has been done!), the performance of biological systems often approaches some limits set by basic physical principles."