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To: Ogmios
Now, if it were indeed intelligently designed, then indeed, we would expect no junk at all, no useless DNA, but it exists, and evolution expects that it exists.

But junk is not protected from mutation. This stuff is, therefore it is not junk. It has a purpose.

The following from previous work.
Description of project and results for Dermitzakis et al - Nature 5 Dec. 2002.

The scientists of the Division of Medical Genetics of the University of Geneva Medical School with the assistance of members of the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics in Lausanne, compared all the letters of chromosome 21 in human and the corresponding part of the mouse genome. They discovered something unexpected : most of the important part of genetic material (DNA) that has functional significance and is therefore almost identical between human and mouse is not the genes ! This observation has profound implications in the study of genomes and the identification of mutations involved in human disorders. The exact role of these non-gene, but important genomic elements is unknown but probably regulate the function of genes (when, where, and how a gene functions) or provide the necessary structure of chromosomes so that they work properly. To be more precise, a total of 3491 evolutionary conserved DNA segments were found after a comparison of the human chromosome 21 and the mouse corresponding chromosomes. Of those 1229 corresponded to regions of known genes. Extensive computational, experimental, and evolutionary analysis of the remaining 2262 conserved DNA segments strongly supported the conclusion that these pieces of DNA are not genes

110 posted on 10/07/2003 2:45:40 PM PDT by AndrewC
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To: AndrewC
Why is that surprising?

Sure, it probably does have a purpose, but there will be junk in the DNA itself, just not as much as they consider junk now.

I have stated that already, a lot of the socalled Junk DNA is going to be found to be useful, and I have never said otherwise.

But some here have said that there is no junk DNA, and that will be wrong, there will be junk DNA, and that is exactly what it will be.

Just because they are discovering useful properties for some of it, does not make it a fact that all of it is useful.

Such generalities are incredible as far as I am concerned.

To make the assumption that because some of it has been found useful that wasn't understood to be useful before, therefore indicates that all of it is useful, is a silly assertion.

Some junk DNA is there, but some of it that is believed to be junk today, will be found to be useful through further study.

It is what we should expect as this discipline of science matures.

And I am not saying that you are the one making that assumption, I am just stating here that some seem to be jumping to some rather fascinating conclusions that this type of evidence, should not make them draw.
111 posted on 10/07/2003 3:16:26 PM PDT by Ogmios (Who is John Galt?)
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To: AndrewC
Sorry, I seemed to have missed your point totally and I apologize, you are correct, my saying that CNG's are junk was indeed not true, and you were correct to bring that to my attention.

Junk will indeed be subject to mutation, but for some reason this is not, so it cannot be considered junk per se.

What it actually is, will be fascinating to watch unfold.
112 posted on 10/07/2003 3:19:30 PM PDT by Ogmios (Who is John Galt?)
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