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

by Stephen C. Meyer

All of these scenarios attempt to explain the origin of two similar genes by reference to descent with modification (via mutation) from common ancestral genes. Yet genomic studies are now turning up hundreds of thousands of genes in many diverse organisms that exhibit no significant similarity in sequence to any other known gene.15 These “taxonomically restricted genes” or “ORFans” (for “open reading frames of unknown origin”) now dot the phylogenetic landscape. ORFans have turned up in every major group of organisms, including plants and animals as well as both eukaryotic and prokaryotic one-celled organisms. In some organisms, as much as one-half of the entire genome comprises ORFan genes.16