No wonder people are backing away from the Darwinian staple of junk DNA. We wonder, when will the pop science articles start to appear, claiming that junk DNA was never really an argument used by Darwinian evolutionists in support of their cause and that, in any event, they were right to use such an argument. Read More ›
At GenEng and BioTech mag: "In a new study, stem cell scientists at the Lund University, Sweden, explore the role of non-coding regions of the genome—previously deemed to be functionless “junk” DNA—and find humans and chimpanzees use a part of their non-coding DNA in different ways. This they claim affects how and when the human brain develops." Read More ›
Wells: It’s not a moral failure to be mistaken about evidence that supposedly supports Darwinian evolution. But the title of Collins’s Language of God was deceptive from the start. And Collins has looked the other way as it has continued to deceive. I consider this one more moral failure of Francis Collins. Read More ›
Luskin: “these authors remember a day when ‘the common doctrine was that the nonprotein coding part of eukaryotic genome’ consisted of ‘“useless sequences, often organized in repetitive elements.’” Good. Keep the history alive. It won’t be very long before Darwinians start claiming that they never thought it was junk. Then they will start insinuating that WE said it was junk. No, that doesn’t make any sense but if the history is forgotten, it doesn’t need to either.
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“The days of ‘junk DNA’ are over…”? So the house is clearly supporting this move away from the Darwinian position. Oh yes, let’s not forget that “junk DNA” was very much a Darwinian position. Most or all of the Darwinian Bigs signed onto junk DNA as part of their thesis about the unguided nature of life. The big question will doubtless be put off for now: Why does it only count if Darwinian predictions are right but never if they are wrong?
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Researcher: “The paper describes an important new mechanistic insight into the way one can trigger inflammatory signals in cancer cells to either kill them directly or make them vulnerable to cancer-killing therapies,” says cancer biologist Stephen Baylin of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, who was not involved in the research. “The importance of it is really quite profound.” Read More ›
At Quanta: “Genomes hold immense quantities of noncoding DNA. Some of it is essential for life, some seems useless, and some has its own agenda.” Read More ›
At Phys.org: When the researchers deleted a protein called Prod that binds to a specific satellite DNA sequence in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, the flies' chromosomes scattered outside of the nucleus into tiny globs of cellular material called micronuclei, and the flies died. "But we realized at this point that this [piece of] satellite DNA that was bound by the Prod protein was completely missing in the nearest relatives of Drosophila melanogaster," Jagannathan said. "It completely doesn't exist. So that's an interesting little problem." Read More ›
William Dembski: The big question, then, is whether CRISPR gene editing will allow for huge improvements of human and other animal forms via genetic enhancements. My prediction is that it won’t. Specifically, I predict that attempted enhancements of the human germ line using CRISPR gene editing will (1) quickly hit an “enhancement boundary” beyond which enhancements are no longer feasible and (2) prove self-canceling in the sense that intended benefits will be undone by unintended deficits. Read More ›
Researchers: “Long disregarded as junk DNA or genomic dark matter, endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) have turned out to represent important components of the antiviral immune response. " Read More ›
At Nature: “A new study in Nature underscores just how important noncoding DNA can be for human development. The authors show that deletions in a noncoding region of DNA on chromosome 2 cause severe congenital limb abnormalities. This is the first time a human disease has been definitively linked to mutations in noncoding DNA, says lead author Stefan Mundlos, head of the development and disease research group at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin, Germany.” Read More ›
Also: “The work revealed that the last surviving kākāpō population, isolated on an island off New Zealand for the last 10,000 years, has somehow purged deleterious mutations, despite the species' low genetic diversity.” Hmm. Read More ›
Sheldon: If I recall correctly, the original definition of "functional" was whether that piece of DNA was turned into a protein, which depended on finding a "start" and a "stop" codon. The Human Genome Project reported that some 90% of the human genome didn't have these "start/stop" features, and hence was "non-functional". ["Non-functional" underwent considerable revision later.] Read More ›
At Nature: "Likewise, the number of publications about such elements also grew in the period covered by our data set. For example, there are thousands of papers on non-coding RNAs, which regulate gene expression." We also learn the possible origin of the term "junk DNA." Read More ›
But wasn’t a vast pile of junk DNA supposed to be one of the Great Proofs of Darwinism in the DNA? Funny, no one suggests that the constant diminution of the pile is evidence against the theory that its presence was supposed to be evidence for. Now why do you think that might be? Read More ›