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“Junk” DNA Discovered to Have Both Cellular and Microevolutionary Functions Evolutionists have long sought mechanisms for the origin of reproductive barriers between populations, mechanisms which are thought to be key to the formation of new species. A recent article in ScienceDaily finds that “Junk DNA” might be the “mechanism that prevents two species from reproducing.” Basically, so-called “junk”-DNA is involved in helping to package chromosomes in the cell. If two species have different “junk” DNA, then this prevents the proteins in the egg from properly packaging the chromosomes donated by the sperm. The organism does not develop properly. As the...

Experimental Data Force Researchers to Admit There’s “No Such Thing As Junk RNA” Originally, proponents of neo-Darwinian evolution lauded “junk” DNA as functionless genetic garbage that showed life is the result of blind and random mutational events. Then “junk” DNA was disproved by the discovery that the vast majority of DNA is being transcribed into RNA. Did the failure of this Darwinian assumption cause evolutionists to terminate their love affair with biological “junk”? Of course not. They just shifted their argument back, claiming that the cell is full of “junk RNA”—DNA that is being transcribed into RNA but still does...

Shuffling genetic information has long been framed as a biological mechanism that can generate variety as well as fuel evolution. However, new details of a common cellular genetic shuffling process called “crossing over” reveal a tightly controlled system that operates under strict parameters and requires highly specified cellular machinery. It is as if each generation was programmed to have variation, and that variation had strict limitations—limitations that would preclude Darwinian evolution...

Oct 20, 2009 — Every once in awhile it’s fun to look at what biochemists and biophysicists are discovering about the cell. Since you have several trillion of cells in your body, think about some of these cool cell tricks going on inside of you right now...

Darwin’s theory that species originate via the natural selection of natural variation is correct in principle but wrong in numerous aspects of application. Speciation is not the result of an unlimited naturalistic process but of an intelligently designed system of built-in variation that is limited in scope to switching ON and OFF permutations and combinations of the built-in components. Kirschner and Gerhart’s facilitated variation theory provides enormous potential for rearrangement of the built-in regulatory components but it cannot switch ON components that do not exist. When applied to the grass family, facilitated variation theory can account for the diversification of...

A DNA cutting tool that can manipulate human genomic DNA could ultimately find applications in gene therapy, say Japanese scientists.Makoto Komiyama, Narumi Shigi and colleagues at the University of Tokyo recently made the DNA cutter - ARCUT - and used it to cut bacterial DNA at one target site. Now they have shown that it can be tuned to cut human genomic DNA selectively and also to repair it."ARCUT's selectivity meant that the Tokyo team was able to use the cutter to target one site in human genomic DNA" ARCUT consists of a cerium(IV) complex which cuts the DNA and...

Researchers have developed a new way to see where the molecules are active Researchers have illuminated a once-hidden developmental process. A fluorescent signal pinpoints the activity of a protein in fruit flies, allowing researchers to see exactly when and where this protein does its job. “The idea of watching life at the molecular level within a cell in an intact organism is really fascinating,” says study coauthor Akira Chiba. The protein, called Cdc42, is present everywhere in the developing fruit fly and controls the production of genes, among other things. But Cdc42 is only active at certain times in certain...

New projects could tackle the genomics of species both critically endangered and already extinct. On the first weekend in April, a couple of dozen leading molecular biologists, conservationists and museum curators gathered at Pennsylvania State University in University Park to brainstorm about ways of harnessing the power of the latest molecular sequencing techniques to conservation goals."The cost of genome sequencing is falling at an extraordinary rate," says workshop co-organizer Stephan Schuster of Penn State University, who was a driving force behind the 2008 sequencing of a woolly-mammoth genome, the first complete genome of an extinct animal. "Now it is possible...

A buildup of chemical bonds on certain cancer-promoting genes, a process known as hypermethylation, is widely known to render cells cancerous by disrupting biological brakes on runaway growth. Now, Johns Hopkins scientists say the reverse process — demethylation — which wipes off those chemical bonds may also trigger more than half of all cancers. One potential consequence of the new research is that demethylating drugs now used to treat some cancers may actually cause new cancers as a side effect. "It's much too early to say for certain, but some patients could be at risk for additional primary tumors, and...

One of the current handicaps of cancer treatments is the difficulty of aiming these treatments at destroying malignant cells without killing healthy cells in the process. But a new study by McMaster University researchers has provided insight into how scientists might develop therapies and drugs that more carefully target cancer, while sparing normal healthy cells Mick Bhatia, scientific director of the McMaster Stem Cell and Cancer Research Institute in the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine, and his team of investigators have demonstrated – for the first time – the difference between normal stem cells and cancer stem cells in...

One day soon patients may spit in a cup, instead of bracing for a needle prick, when being tested for cancer, heart disease or diabetes. A major step in that direction is the cataloguing of the “complete” salivary proteome, a set of proteins in human ductal saliva, identified by a consortium of three research teams, according to an article published today in the Journal of Proteome Research. Replacing blood draws with saliva tests promises to make disease diagnosis, as well as the tracking of treatment efficacy, less invasive and costly. Saliva proteomics and diagnostics is part of a nationwide effort...

Few e-mails have ever stopped me as cold as the one I am about to describe. In it, the author, a former university professor who wishes to remain anonymous, claims to know the actual mechanism behind intelligent design. That is the mechanism by which God created the universe, our world and all biological life within it. This is especially intriguing as Darwin's theory of evolution is now hotly contested by arguments of intelligent design. One weakness of ID is its failure to offer a mechanism to counter evolution's bogus explanation of diversity through macro-mutation. As a result, ID has failed...

SCIENTIST AT WORK Rick Friedman for The New York Times Three paper shapes cut and pleated by Dr. Erik Demaine, who is applying insights from wrinkling and crinkling to questions in architecture, robotics and molecular biology. CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - "Some people don't even think this exists," says Dr. Erik Demaine, turning in his hands an elaborately folded paper structure. The intricately pleated sail-like form swooshes gracefully in a compound curve and certainly looks real enough - if decidedly tricky to make. Dr. Demaine, an assistant professor of computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is the leading theoretician in...