No waves of intelligent design

In PNAS, Phillips (1) attempts to explore the evolution of dynein, a major motor protein of the eukaryotic cytoskeleton, using different hydropathy scales, and comes to several dramatic conclusions. The results of this analysis are taken to indicate that self-organized criticality (SOC) is integral to evolutionary optimization, that evolution of all proteins occurs, primarily, via positive selection, that this pervasive positive selection is shaped by “water waves” traveling along proteins, and even that the optimization in protein evolution stems from intelligent design. However, the actual observations reported in the article do not appear to support or even to be compatible with any of these far-reaching conclusions. What the paper effectively … [↵][1]1To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: koonin{at}ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1