"The findings — from a massive project involving hundreds of scientists in 11 countries and detailed in 29 papers being published today — confirm growing suspicions that the vast stretches of so- called 'junk DNA' flanking hardworking genes are not junk at all." -The Vancouver Sun, June 14, 2007See also http://" Intricate Toiling Found In Nooks of DNA Once Believed to Stand Idle" By Rick Weiss; Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 14, 2007;
A (growing!)list of related articles.
"New Findings Challenge Established Views" - Science Daily
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070613131932.htm
The National Institute of Health..
http://www.nih.gov/news/pr/jun2007/nhgri-13.htm
http://www.genome.gov/25521554
6 comments:
Hi William,
A while back, you invited me to join ICON-RIDS, and I said I would consider it. Time and business got in the way, but Uncommon Descent reminded me about it - I would like to join the blog and contribute, as a matter of fact I have several ideas for blog posts already. Sign me up! (ejklone AT yahoo DOT com)
EJ Klone
Wow, I haven't heard from you in a while, but UD reminded me.
It's good to see someone like you championing ID -- I think the ultra-materialist zealots will be quivering in their boots when they hear that, not only do they have Dembski to contend with, but now the author of the cosmological physical incompleteness proof.
You're a latter day Godel -- and you'd make Kurt proud.
Claim CB130:
So-called junk DNA is not really junk. Functions have been found for noncoding DNA which was previously thought to be junk, and we cannot be sure that the rest of the junk DNA is not functional as well.
Source:
Behe, Michael J., 2003. A functional pseudogene?: An open letter to Nature. http://www.arn.org/docs2/news/behepseudogene052003.htm
Response:
1. It has long been known that some noncoding DNA has important functions. (This was known even before the phrase "junk DNA" was coined.) However, there is good evidence that much DNA has no function:
* Sections of DNA can be cut out or replaced with randomized sequences with no apparent effect on the organism (Nóbrega et al. 2004).
* Some sections of DNA are corrupted copies of functional coding DNA, but mutations in them, such as stop codons early in the sequence, show that they cannot have retained the same function as the coding copy.
* The fugu fish has a genome that is about one third as large as its close relatives.
* Mutations in functional regions of DNA show evidence of selection -- nonsilent changes occur less often that one would expect by chance. In other sections of DNA, there is no evidence that any changes are selected against.
Links:
EvoWiki, 2004. Junk DNA. http://www.evowiki.org/wiki.phtml?title=Junk_DNA
References:
1. Nóbrega, Marcelo A., Yiwen Zhu, Ingrid Plajzer-Frick, Veena Afzal and Edward M. Rubin, 2004. Megabase deletions of gene deserts result in viable mice. Nature 431: 988-993.
Further Reading:
Knight, J., 2002. Evolutionary genetics: All genomes great and small. Nature 417: 374-376, http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v417/n6887/full/417374a_r.html
Hi Noetic Guru,
Thank you for visiting. I noticed you also commented at Dembksi's site. Just to let you know, I am not actually a doctor and I don't have any patients (none that lived anyway HA).
"Junk DNA" seems to be a very unfortunate phrase - most geneticists seem to prefer the term "Non-coding DNA" which more accurately describes what we are talking about.
Just because this DNA cannot code for proteins does not mean it has no function at all; However it's pretty safe to say that the vast majority of non-coding DNA sequences serve no apparent purpose.
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William, this is the first I have ever heard of the "cosmological physical incompleteness proof".
Given that you are able to produce such substantial theoretical works, why is it that you chose to operate outside the world of academia, thus dooming your work to obscurity?
I could not find any publication or review of this paper in any scientific journal, no doubt a fact which leads many less charitable people than myself to scoff and claim that it is unworthy of serious scientific attention.
I'd like to judge your work on it's own merits - so where can I find it?
Here -- see "Part One"
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