From Jonathan Wells at Evolution News & Views
According to a recent Science Daily news item, Oxford University researchers say that only 8.2% of our DNA is likely to be functional. The rest is “junk.”
The 8.2% figure contradicts the conclusions of the ENCODE Project (for “Encyclopedia of DNA Elements”), which was established after the Human Genome Project to make sense of our newly sequenced DNA. In September 2012, the results from over a thousand experiments — involving dozens of laboratories and hundreds of scientists on three continents, published almost simultaneously in dozens of articles in five different journals — provided evidence that 80% or more of our DNA is functional.
It might have to do with who the DNA works for:
A clue might be found in a presentation given by Dan Graur at the 2013 meeting of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution in Chicago. As Graur — a vocal, even nasty, opponent of ENCODE — reasoned in his presentation:
If the human genome is indeed devoid of junk DNA as implied by the ENCODE project, then a long, undirected evolutionary process cannot explain the human genome. If, on the other hand, organisms are designed, then all DNA, or as much as possible, is expected to exhibit function. If ENCODE is right, then Evolution is wrong.
So while the definition of “function” is close to the heart of the controversy, adherence to Darwinian evolution is even closer.
So DNA doesn’t behave like junk because it isn’t working for the Darwin lobby?
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