We recently reported that the common squid, Doryteuthis pealeiirecodes, uses massive, tissue-specific, RNA editing to modify many of its proteins. One evolutionary explanation for this apparent intelligent design would be that the editing machinery is merely an uncontrolled, random process. This would be in keeping with evolution’s view of life as a train off the tracks and many past findings were initially described as vestigial or junk, until the design could no longer be denied. One current example is the finding that most of the human genome is transcribed. Apparently it is functional, and so isn’t mostly junk, but one evolutionary explanation that continues to have currency is that the transcription machinery is uncontrolled and has gone wild. Read more