Darwin's Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design

by Stephen C. Meyer

Now, the number of combinatorial possibilities corresponding to a chain with four amino acids only marginally outstrips the combinatorial possibilities associated with the five-dial lock in my first illustration (160,000 vs. 100,000). It turns out, however, that many necessary, functional proteins in cells require far, far more than just four amino acids linked in sequence, and necessary genes require far, far more than just a few bases. Most genes—sections of DNA that code for a specific protein—consist of at least one thousand nucleotide bases. That corresponds to 41000—an unimaginably large number—possible base sequences of that length.