Depletion of MERVL transcripts [ retrotransposons] results in embryonic lethality with profound defects in development and is associated with dysregulation of MERVL including their adjacent transcripts, and retaining two-cell-like transcriptome and chromatin state. Read More ›
So evolution has foresight? In any event, there are tons of science news stories out there about “junk DNA” that turned out to be functional. There are 252 stories on the topic here at Uncommon Descent alone. Read More ›
Researchers: With the special case of junk DNA in mind, we explore how to model and understand the causal specificity, reach, and corresponding efficacy of difference makers in biology. Read More ›
Perhaps science is a bit more like business than we think. In business, products get rebranded when vice presidents outnumber customers for the old brand. Read More ›
And the winner is “genomic dark matter”: "Most DNA in the human genome still has unknown functions and is referred to as “genomic dark matter.” Read More ›
EVs, which are found in human fluids including urine and blood, may be used in liquid biopsies as biomarkers for disease because healthy and sick cells package different EV cargo. It’s getting harder all the time to find genuine junk in the human body. Just as well that Nathan Lents, author of Human Errors: A Panorama of Our Glitches, from Pointless Bones to Broken Genes, probably isn't listening. Read More ›
Okay, why, until recently, did researchers think that “the majority of our genes were made up of junk DNA, which essentially didn't do anything”? Because that vast sunken library of dead information (sheer randomness and waste) was a slam dunk for Darwinism, as politically powerful theistic evolutionist Francis Collins was quick to point out in The Language of God. (2007). If that’s not true, an argument for Darwinism is disconfirmed.
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“the large proportion of our genome that does not instruct our cells to form proteins” The phrase is a bit longish, of course, but concision is usually a product of usage. It’s better than “non-coding DNA” because it’s more specific and limited as a privative. That is, there is a specific thing that that vast mass of DNA does not do. The longish phrase does not come with the implication that it doesn’t do anything.
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Apparently, repeated sequences have a function: "Marshall explains that previous technology that was used to sequence the human genome made scientists “blind” to the fact that such sequences are, in fact, useful." Read More ›
Douglas Fox at SciAm: The salamanders would be on death’s door if they were human. “Everything about having a large genome is costly,” Wake told me in 2020. Yet salamanders have survived for 200 million years. “So there must be some benefit,” he said. The hunt for those benefits has led to some heretical surprises, potentially turning our understanding of evolution on its head. Read More ›
Researchers: "This suggests that the basis for the human brain's evolution are genetic mechanisms that are probably a lot more complex than previously thought, as it was supposed that the answer was in those two per cent of the genetic DNA. Our results indicate that what has been significant for the brain's development is instead perhaps hidden in the overlooked 98 per cent, which appears to be important. This is a surprising finding." Read More ›