Not that you’d ever guess from the story at Scienmag, but
It took nearly a half trillion tries before researchers at The University of Texas at Austin witnessed a rare event and perhaps solved an evolutionary puzzle about how introns, non-coding sequences of DNA located within genes, multiply in a genome. The results, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, address fundamental questions about the evolution of new species and could expand our understanding of gene expression and the causes of diseases such as cancer.
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For a long time, scientists have known that much of the DNA within any given organism’s genome does not code for functional molecules or protein. However, recent research has found that these genetic sequences, misnamed “junk” DNA in the past, often do have functional significance.More.
So we’ve got it straight, have we, that “junk DNA,” the signature of Darwinian evolution, is often functional?
Thank you. Witness may step down.
Wasn’t this an unforced error on the part of Darwin’s boys? They didn’t have to front the idea of masses of junk in the genome. Did they?
Maybe junk DNA is shaping up to be a worthy successor to Piltdown Man.
Not that that’ll make any difference to Darwin’s pop culture believers. Fourth rate science teachers will still be telling it to their students.
See also: It’s a better time to be Jonathan Wells than Dan Graur
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