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

by Stephen C. Meyer

For all these reasons, like most evolutionary biologists, Axe thought the second neo-Darwinian scenario—in which new genes and proteins emerge from nonfunctional or neutral regions of the genome—provides a much more plausible means of producing the information necessary to construct novel protein folds. It was to this scenario that Axe turned his experimental energies. In this scenario, neo-Darwinists envision new genetic information arising from sections of the genetic text that can vary freely without consequence to the organism. According to this scenario, noncoding sections of the genome or duplicated sections of coding regions undergo a protracted period of “neutral evolution”15 in which alterations in nucleotide sequences have no discernible effect on the fitness of the organism. Functional genes and proteins gradually rise from a nonfunctional valley floor to a functional mountain peak—generating a new gene. Natural selection plays a role, but not until a new functional gene has arisen.