But sequence comparisons simply can't account for the development of complex biochemical systems any more than Darwin's comparison of simple and complex eyes told him how vision worked.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The human brain is built to compare; it's Darwinian to consider an alternative when one presents itself.
One of the central mysteries of biology is why the genome is largely identical from cell to cell, even though cells do different things.
If genetic research doesn't seemed to have lived up to its therapeutic promise, it's because sequencing is just too slow and expensive.
But, as we have before been led to remark, most of Mr. Darwin's statements elude, by their vagueness and incompleteness, the test of Natural History facts.
At the deepest level, all living things that have ever been looked at have the same DNA code. And many of the same genes.
And the actual achievements of biology are explanations in terms of mechanisms founded on physics and chemistry, which is not the same thing as explanations in terms of physics and chemistry.
Organisms by their design are not made to adapt too far.
As Darwin himself was at pains to point out, natural selection is all about differential survival within species, not between them.
Although Darwin was able to persuade much of the world that a modern eye could be produced gradually from a much simpler structure, he did not even attempt to explain how the simple light sensitive spot that was his starting point actually worked.
In Darwin's time all of biology was a black box: not only the cell, or the eye, or digestion, or immunity, but every biological structure and function because, ultimately, no one could explain how biological processes occurred.