[GodGunsGuts]

I won’t be able to really mix it up for a couple more weeks, but I couldn’t pass this one up!

All the best—GGG

[editor-surveyor]

And they still want to call themselves ‘scientists!’

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[allmendream]

You going to bet the farm that no function for these highly conserved sequences will be found?

The entire reason it is news is its novelty. The notion that genomic regions of high evolutionary conservation will have high functionality has been confirmed so often, that when a stubborn case comes up it makes the news.

The Actual article, not a silly blog where they don't know the difference between translation and transcription.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081001181306.htm

“Evolution is a lot of fun,” said Bejerano, who plans to continue the investigation into what the ultraconserved segments might be doing. “You answer one question, and five others pop up. But one of the most rewarding things to me is the fact that we're developing a growing appreciation for how much these regions (of high evolutionary conservation)actually matter.”

Seems the guy working on the subject is still convinced that these regions are highly important. When he figures it out it will just be one of a thousand other cases where highly evolutionary conserved regions are found to be functional.